While the southern hemispheres cozy up to their autumn/fall, in the northern hemisphere it is that time when the snow starts to melt, the sun adds an extra spring to your step, and flowers bloom. There’s not a better time for getting out in nature, basking in the sunshine and falling in love with flowers of the season. Wherever you are, we hope that you make the most of the changing season this month.In line with the theme for this edition, our Community Expert, Andrea, shares a tutorial on "How to create a Facebook cover for Spring Sale in InDesign."

Also, we have a recap of the Behance live stream by David Blatner showcasing "InDesign Fundamentals", Tony Harmer depicting "How to create a dust cover jacket for book", Kieron Lewis demonstrating "How to create design spreads" and Anika Aggarwal revealing "Tips for styling text".

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I'm honored to feature "David Hayden Creamer" as our community superstar for this month. David has been a part of our community for more than 16 years. He is an expert in multiple Adobe Products like InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator, Acrobat etc. He has contributed to more than 4.2k community posts so far. We are thankful for his contribution to our community. He is an Adobe Certified Expert in multiple products. He has played versatile roles in his career journey so far. Let's learn more about him in his own words:-

"Being a comic book collector since my early teens, my graphic arts journey started in 1978 at the Joe Kubert School of Cartooning and Graphic Arts in New Jersey. While the main focus was on comic books and cartooning, they taught graphic arts so one wouldn’t starve while trying to make it in the industry. I didn’t even know what “graphic design” was when I started, but I had a great teacher named John Belfi. My class started out with over 100 students, but due to the grueling schedule, by the third year, only 10 of us were left. I dabbled in some comic book work, but I seemed to lean towards graphic arts. Of course, at the time, this was all hand-done mechanicals and comps. (Does anyone remember stat cameras?)

Fresh from graduation, I got a job as an art director at Modern Drummer magazine, learning magazine design and production on the job (with the help of some great Jan V. White books!). About 5 years into my 7 year stint at Modern Drummer, we got a Macintosh 512K computer and started designing peripheral materials on them. This was before imagesetters were readily available, so laser printer output was the only option. (I printed the items on textured stock to hide the 300 dpi resolution of the printer.)

While waiting for PageMaker 1.0 to be released, I actually started working with Ready, Set, Go! 1.0. Once PageMaker was released, I started work on a drumming product catalog that we output on a Linotype 100 for $10 per page (black-only), saving the company about $600 per page for typesetting complex tabbed data. (This was written about in the first issue of Publish! magazine.) I also did numerous overhead drum diagraphs with Altsys Freehand. When Ready, Set, Go! 3.0 came out with the first automatic hyphenation in desktop publishing software, we produced a 100-page quarterly magazine called Modern Percussion with it. At this time, I was getting written up in some of the trade magazines, including Graphic Arts Monthly and Folio: magazine. That caught the attention of a large pre-press company that worked with major publishers such as Rolling Stone and needed someone with expertise in DTP.

Hired away by this company, I learned a special version of QuarkXPress called Visionary that hooked up to their million-dollar Scitex retouching system (and this is in 1988 dollars!). From there, I started training their different customers on how to use the software and assisted them with the initial production, including the first-ever all electronic Bass Pro Shops catalog.

I wanted the prepress company to start an actual training division for publishers but I guess I was “ahead of my time” and was ignored. So—I moved to Florida and started my own company in 1990. This company, IDEAS Training, focused on graphic design, Macintosh consulting, and software training. I worked with many publishers including PC Sources, Florida Sportsman, Newsweek en Español, Dining & Doing, The Real Color Pages, and Homes & Land. I was also a contract art director for The Gourmet Retailer magazine for a number of years.

In 2000, I moved to San Diego county in California and decided to drop the graphic design and Mac consulting (too much of a P.I.A. chasing work and payments!)—to focus strictly on training. I became certified by several companies, including Adobe (Adobe Certified Expert [ACE] starting with Photoshop 3.0 in 1995), QuarkXPress, Frame Technologies, and FileMaker. I also joined the Adobe Certified Instructors [ACI] program and became an ACE in over a dozen applications. (I currently teach over 30 programs but focus mainly on Adobe and Microsoft software.) Over the past 23 years of having my own company, I’ve worked with all the military branches (often on site), many government agencies including the NASA, DHS, VA, and FBI, and major corporations including Qualcomm, Disney, ESRI.

For entertainment, I still collect comic books (mostly limited-run hardcover reprints), attend comic conventions, and work with the Scouts BSA (the unisex name for the Boy Scouts of America after allowing female troops in 2017) as a Scoutmaster in one troop and Asst. Scoutmaster in another. This keeps me pretty busy between going camping on weekends and attending summer camps. But it does tend to keep me out of trouble…

 Samples of my design, consultation, and illustration

To learn more about my company, please visit this website”

To know more about our Adobe Community Experts, click here.

InDesign Fundamentals with David Blatner

Create Dust Cover Jacket with Tony Harmer

Create Design Spreads with Kieron Lewis

Tips for Styling Text with Anika Aggarwal

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