Midnight Cheese

Steve Jobs called Adobe “lazy.” He was referring to Flash, but it’s also spot-on for Adobe’s Creative Suite line of software most often used by Graphic Designers. With multi-touch software interaction bearing down on us like a freight train, Adobe is about to be obliterated at the crossing. With their Creative Suite stagnating, Adobe is one clever competitor away from becoming obsolete.

Here are 5 things Adobe can do to save itself and rekindle the excitement Designers once had when sitting down to use Adobe software.

1. Go Multi-touch
Multi-touch and gesturing is so much more natural than wrangling a mouse, keyboard, or pen tablet. This new way of interacting between human and machine gets us back to the way fine artists interact with pen and paper, paint and canvas, even ad layout before the age of computers.

Multi-touch page layout with iWork.

What if I could start drawing shapes in Illustrator with my hands like I would on paper? Precisely laying out a magazine in InDesign with my finger tips, carefully gauging spacing with my eyes? How about burning and dodging photos in Photoshop with the flick of my wrist like I did in the darkroom? This would be a dream come true for all artists using a computer to output their work.

2. Give us a Designer’s UI
Adobe’s user interface is over 20 years old. I’m stuck using these bland controls from the 1988 era while companies like Apple and guys like this give us beautiful controls that are masterfully crafted.

An example of a tired old Adobe control element.

An example of a UI control from Brushes. Take note, Adobe.

3. Hire some Graphic Designers
Since the Macromedia merger it’s clear there’s been zero consulting with people who actually use Adobe’s creative software. Adobe UI Gripes points this out ad nauseam. Cryptic messages, inadequate type lists, abysmal handling of typography… Adobe needs to learn from its users.

4. Start Over. From Scratch.
Obviously, to implement any of these changes, you have to start over. All your software has to be rewritten to take advantage of today’s and future technology. This is tough when you’re sitting on a 20+ year-old code base, but look what’s happened to Windows. Bloated, slow, unintuitive, unfriendly. Sound familiar?

5. Lead.
When Apple announced the iPad, they invited some big names up on stage to demo their apps and show off their innovative approach to multi-touch software interaction. EA showed us a whole new way to play games. MLB showed us a new way to interact with sports. Apple showed us a new way to interact with spreadsheets. Then someone showed us a new way to approach creative arts. But it wasn’t Adobe on stage. It was Steve Sprang, a single developer who came up and showed us his Brushes app. This app is what Adobe should have been demoing and it should have been called Photoshop Touch. But instead, a multi-billion dollar company was trumped by one guy.

Leading will come naturally once Adobe gets its heart back in it and starts implementing the above ideas. It’s tough to lead, especially since Adobe has no competition in the Graphic Design field of software.

Adobe can be Great Again
In the 1990s, Apple and Adobe pioneered the great digital transition in the world of Graphic Design. We’re about to enter a new era with multi-touch interaction becoming more mainstream and I want to see Adobe at the forefront of this movement. I want to create with my hands, again, not using a mouse or stylus pen as a proxy. Adobe has the history to make it happen. I hope they do it before Apple, or someone else does. I hope Adobe is listening.

In 2000 I had the chance to interview Shepard Fairey over the phone as a Graphic Design project for school.

I remember the most interesting aspect of the interview was Mr. Fairey talking about the balance between his street art and commercial art. He said he would often cover up his commerical art (billboards) with street art.

He sent me an envelope of stickers a few days later. These are the stickers I held on to from that mailing. The rest have been stuck elsewhere.

More stickers on Flickr.

Jimmy and I have published our first iPhone app called Clapp. It’s super simple. Clapp plays 3 different types of clapping noises for use at any event that warrants a hardy clap.

It’s about as minimal as it gets, but we wanted to get something published just to go through the process. Now it’s on to something bigger and better! Ideas are welcome.

iTunes link to Clapp

I don’t point out other websites too often, but perspctv has put together a well designed mash-up of election related stats and articles. I’m a sucker for graphs, and perspctv has them. Great use of the Google Charts API.

Today I decided to download the 30 day trial of After Effects CS3. Of course, this meant navigating the Adobe website which always results in some type of unpleasant experience. Well, today was no different.

This time I was unable to download the trial because “Product trials are unavailable until July 1.”

“Why?” I asked myself. Surprisingly Adobe had an answer for me, although I’m surprised they were willing to admit their rather embarrassing mistake:

“During the month of June 2008, certain product trials that are launched for the first time (regardless of when they were installed) will function for only one day instead of 30 days, due to an error in a line of code that counts down the remaining days in a trial. You will not experience this issue if you have launched your trial before June 1, 2008, or do not launch it until July 1 or thereafter.”

And so, rather than taking the time to fix the problem Adobe would rather let it expire by not letting potential customers try out their product for a month. Pretty amazing.

Ever since Adobe merged with Macromedia I’ve been critical about the design choices they’ve made with their website and marketing emails. I just happened to be on adobe.com today and was once again hit with a fresh round of that unfortunate feeling of unmet expectations.

Feeling down from the laziness of their craft, I decided to grab a screenshot of their site and get a little in-depth at what’s bothering me about their site design. Their “Suite Life” sweepstakes happened to be the page that I landed on. There are issues with this page in particular, but most apply to the site as a whole.

Here’s a list of issues (in no particular order of severity) that give me that low-down sad design feeling whenever I’m browsing macromediaadobe.com. (For reference, list numbers correspond to the numbers in the screenshot.)

1. No consistent regard for the grid system. The top navigation hangs off the edge of the black title box in a lonely way. The page title aligns nicely with the grey contact box toward the bottom of the page, but the CS3 Design Premium box hangs out too far to the right. The ‘Order Now’ buttons begin a stair-step routine. The headline and the CS3 Web Premium box are just off enough to look like placement wasn’t thought through.

2. Poor form and lack of hierarchy with navigation. Continuing with the top navigation, the two rows of floating menu items look noisy together. They compete with one another for attention. I also don’t understand why the graphic of the cart is placed between textual menu items.

   The bottom links arbitrarily wrap to a new line. The pipe “|” separator on the second line is hanging out for no reason.

   It’s also not apparent that ‘All rights reserved’ and ‘Terms of Use’ are links. The black box produced from the hover state is hardly noticeable. The same is true for the subtle change of text color.

3. Padding and whitespace is inconsistent. Generally, logos are given an equally generous amount of space on all sides. This keeps the logo from being cramped or associated with other elements. The Adobe logo is already crammed up there in the corner, but the space between the right page margin and between the logo and the search box is terribly different.

   Same deal with the gray boxes at the bottom of the page containing contact information. There’s much more empty space at the bottom of the box than at the top.

4. Loud dropshadows for no real reason. I can deal with dropshadows on buttons as they tend to actually help visually describe what we perceive a button to be. Adobe is also putting dropshadows on their logo/search element and the dropdown navigation. I really need a good reason for dropshadow use and I’m just not finding it in these two elements. Especially the logo/search element. (Because it moves it gets one?) You can also see a definitive line where the dropshadow grad fails to taper off properly.

5. The logo/search element is so weird in so many ways. This element goes against the rest of the layout (read left to right) and floats around in the upper right corner of the page forcing the viewer to break flow and read this portion in the opposite direction, from right to left. This is especially noticeable if you resize your browser window. (Why is this the only element that changes position when resizing the window?)

   Viewers expect to see logos in the top left area of the page. The Adobe logo is stuck on the opposite side almost like the company doesn’t want to associate the rest of the layout with the logo.

   This element goes against the stacked nature of the box elements that make up the majority of the page. Most of the layout sits while this element hangs. It looks like it could almost fit in the space adjacent to the black title box and above the main content box, but it just doesn’t fit.

   This is the most out of place and visually annoying element on the page.

6. No attention is being paid to SEO. The entire meat(description) of the page is locked up in an image. In other words, search engines can’t read any details about the sweepstakes because all the text is in image form. The alt tag only repeats the page title.

7. Typographical skill is lacking. The leading feels off in the product descriptions. Line breaks are all wrong.

8. Nothing is dynamic. The whole layout is very boxy and rigid. What if the main ‘Suite Life’ image were a background element and was allowed to flow behind the products and their descriptions? What if the rays could extend behind these elements as well?

The point of all this. When you buy a tool or a product you expect the company that sells it to know how to use it. Adobe sells design tools. I feel weary buying design tools from a company that has an OK looking website.

Machine Molle created an excellent series of animated logos based on network, production company, and TV show opens from the 80s for a DVNO music video. Using today’s tools to mimic those old-school effects really creates a nice look.

The very last rendering in the series is a tribute to Stephen J. Cannell Productions which was one of my favorite little production logo shorts of that time.

Original Stephen J. Cannell Productions logo