The Easy Way to Learn Adobe Creative Suite

So even after 4 years at art college, my Adobe Creative Suite skills were still extremely limited. In Textile Design, Photoshop is an excellent resource for producing really intricate and beautiful designs for digital print but all I could wrap my head around was how to edit the colours and place filters on designs I'd drawn freehand and scanned in. I can't help but look back now and feel I could have made my work 1000 times better if I'd just taken the time to learn more about how to use programmes such as Photoshop and Illustrator. After all, if other people can do it, why can't I?!

Here I am now, 7 months in to my HND course in Interactive Design and I've finally come to realise how valuable and actually limitless Creative Suite can be. Of course I'm still learning, but now when I see designs on the likes of Dribbble and Behance I understand how they've been made and it acts as inspiration rather than my usual response of 'how the hell did they do that?!'

So I thought I would take the time to share with you my Top 5 tips for learning Adobe Creative Suite. Included are some fun, insightful and really worthwhile web resources I know you'll love!

Berlin: Abandoned

While in Berlin with my HND class, a few girls were fascinated with uncovering Berlin's 'abandoned' secrets. Teufelsberg (literally translated to 'Devil's Mountain') was top of their list and after seeing some of the stunning photographs they took there, I knew I had to see it for myself!

A short train journey west from Alexander Platz will land you by the forest of Grunewald. We walked for maybe around 20 minutes and ended up at the bottom of a small mountain…

My Berlin Top 10

So at long last I got the chance to visit a city I've always wanted to see - BERLIN! I spent a semester in West Germany studying Communication Design at Fachhochschule Düsseldorf in 2013 and looking back, I can't believe I never made the trip until now. I went with my HND class and we stayed for a week at the Wombat's Hostel. I would highly recommend this - especially if going in a big group - as we were in such a brilliant location and it was less than £300 for the week and that was including flights to and from Edinburgh. We were only one U-bahn stop from Alexander Platz and the rooftop bar and terrace had amazing views of the TV Tower (and cheap beer)!

I absolutely loved every single thing about the city. The graffiti, design shops and bars are all so cool and creative I really didn't want to leave! If I could pick just 10 things I would recommend to do they would be:
 

#Rethink

 

Here are some examples to show how the icons I designed for the Rethinking Economics infographic can be extracted. I used some excellent Photoshop templates that can be found here: 

Throwing Off The Hump

A short timelapse of Mum 'throwing off the hump'.
This is a really quick way to produce lots of little pots that are great for testing out different glazes!

Rethinking Economics

Arty Monsters!

Design in Context

Lots of Pots!

After plenty of flops and tantrums on the wheel, we finally had some finished pieces to show off for our SQA certificate!

Pottering About

After moving back to Edinburgh when I graduated, I ended up with a pretty boring job in retail which was so uninspiring and my design work certainly suffered for it. Looking for more motivation and to explore other disciplines beside Textiles - I decided to try my hand at ceramics!

I found myself involved in an evening class as part of Edinburgh Design School and signed my Mum and sister up as well. It's always something I've wanted to try and their beginner classes at St Margaret's House on London Road were perfect for us! They run different classes for all levels, from complete beginners to more experienced potters.

 

Welcome!

I thought it was about time I started storing an online collection of my work.