As many of you know, I’m spending the next week in Boston.  What brings me here?  Well two things really: 1) The Photoshop World Conference from the 24-27th and 2) vacationing with my wife from the 28-31st.  I arrived here at Logan airport on Tuesday night and have been absolutely blown away by this city so far; so much history, so much beauty, SO much to see and do.  My ‘have to visit this’ list is growing longer and longer by the day- I fear it will be a race to fit it all in.  My wife arrives here Friday and I can’t wait to share it with here.  It’s really a spectacular place.  I don’t even know if one full week is enough time to soak in this sensory-laden town.  Here’s a few updates from my short time here so far…

Boston the “Beantown”

From the moment I stepped off the plane, I have been so impressed with this gorgeous city.  I mean what else can you say when you look out of your hotel window and this is what you see (I shot this with my camerphone!):

The subway system is laid out extremely well and navigating the city is as simple as grabbing a map and heading to the nearest station.  For designers and creative types this city is a dream- it’s littered with hometown coffee shops (good riddance Starbucks…), art galleries, some incredible architecture, and friendly people who are more than willing to help you out.  I got to explore the city a bit today and hope to quite a bit more in remaining days.  Here’s just a smattering of pics that I randomly took while exploring the town today.

Projects

With all this inspiration around me I can’t help but be motivated during my off-hours.  This has led to progress on multiple projects!  While here, I’ve finished a wedding invitation I was working on, some business collateral, and am almost finished on branding/logo piece I have in the works.  Wow.  I like the effect this city is having on me.  I’ve also been learning a lot of new techniques that I’ll be able to apply to my work once I’m back in the office at Food for the Hungry (my dayjob).  Hooray for creative juices being re-infused with energy and vigor- I needed that!

Photoshop World (PSW)

I first attended PSW last year in Orlando, FL.  For what you pay, you really can’t beat the quality of what you can potentially get here.

I say potentially only because you need to know how to pick the classes, and you need to know when to get up and leave a class if you aren’t learning anything and move onto a different one.  The problem with PSW is that it, by nature, is designed to cater to both beginners and advanced users.  A majority of the classes are some what remedial, however there always at least 1 or 2 classes going on at any given time which will stretch advanced users as well- the key is finding those classes.  Having gone to last year’s conference, I’ve learned which instructors to avoid and which ones to target.  This has worked out pretty well so far and I picked up a few new tricks today.

With out a doubt, one of the best parts of this conference, is the workbook that you get.  It is massive… like really, really MASSIVE.  It contains notes for all of the classes being taught at the conference (which is roughly 80 or so I believe).  This is great, because there are 6-7 classes going on for every session time and it is impossible to visit them all.  The workbook in and of itself is worth 1/3 of fee for the conference in my opinion.  One side note- I wish they’d let you pick this thing up at the end of the day as opposed to right when you get there.  This thing is rather unwieldy and weighed down my already-full backpack for the duration of the day.  It’s no fun exploring the city with 30 pounds extra on your back… okay well its still fun, but it’d be even easier without the 30 pounds.

The Tradeshow

Interestingly enough, one of the best new ‘tricks’ I learned was actually taught to me on the showroom floor by one of the exhibitors!  I stopped by the Gridiron software booth originally in response to a tweet posted by Peter Lalonde announcing that “The first person from twitter to find me at the show will get a free copy of our new Flow software.” (which incidently, I was and did indeed win a full copy- woot!).  Angie Taylor (Gridiron’s UK Creative Director) showed me a really cool way to extract ‘piecy’ items (like hair, feathery fabrics, fur, smoke/fog, etc) using Photoshop’s calculation tools and layer channels.  It’s a great technique and the results are awesome- definitely not intuitive but really cool nonetheless.  By the way, Gridiron Flow is awesome!  Talk about a great way to control versioning, time tracking on projects, and track/find files based on their relationships all at the same time.

Two other booths/products that caught my eye at the trade show were Moo.com and Mimobot.  Moo.com just does a really quality job with their printing and presentation.  They are one of the only printers I know that lets you order business cards that have a different image on every card (granted the cost is a bit higher than other printers but this option is really nice).  I really appreciate the small details they put into their products, namely their packaging.  Their business card boxes are flat out stupendous and I’m tempted to order from them just to get that darn box!  Mimobot is just plain fun; they are a designer USB flash retailer… what does that mean you ask?  Well to put it simply they sell USB Flash drives that look like all different types of characters (cartoons, star wars, fictious, etc.). Yeah it’s nerdy/geeky but I think that’s what they were going for.

All this to say that I’m now incredibly inspired and my brain is firing off tons of ideas for personal projects.  In no particular order, my to-do list has been enlarged to add the following:

• Design a custom Mimico character based off of my DesignMutt brand and pitch to them to see if they like the design and would use it… what the heck, you never know… it just might work…
• Create an innovative leave behind piece utilizing the services of Moo.com (I can’t reveal this idea yet, but I think it would be AWESOME).
• Create a new screencast entitled “The Creative’s Guide to Never, Ever Losing Your Files… EVER!” which teaches you how to setup a virtually indestructable 4-tiered defense system on your computer to ensure that you will never lose your work.  This idea hit me like a lightning bolt and I really think it could be helpful to a lot of people and alleviate some major stress for those worried about not having a strategy for data backup/maintenance.
• Create a screencast follow-up to my previous “Using Twitter to Find Work” video.  This time show how to manage multiple accounts, monitor job results more closely, and how to combine multiple services together to empower their usefulness.
• Write a blogpost ‘interviewing’ the greatest designer this world has ever known- God.  Yeah it sounds funny, but this was a thought I had while flying this weekend.  Really, God is the the most creative being this universe has ever and will ever know.  Think about it- information design, branding, package design, 3D modeling, photography, creative writing- what we call creativity is really just our attempt to ‘copy’ THE original creative act of God himself.  This thought struck a chord in my heart and I think it would be cool to share this viewpoint through a post dedicated to it.  Not sure how I’m going to run the interview… I’ll probably search scripture up and down to get direct quotes from God to use in the ‘answers’ to my design questions.
  
• Update my portfolio using the services of AdoramaPix’s photobooks.
• Print up some new business cards for a startup idea I’ve had in the works for sometime (sneaky, sneaky my friends) through Uprinting.com.  This venture is one I’m really excited about but I will be unable to reveal for at least a few more months.

My goodness why do I do this to myself… so many things I want to do, so little time to do those in.  Ah well- at least the wheels are churning.  God has been some incredibly good to me this week and I have been refreshed in mind, body, and soul- He is so mighty and awesome!