Mike Moody
Concept. Design. Production. Done.
Who am I?
Thought Process
Almost every project today touches multiple Adobe programs. Having a working knowledge of one or two programs limits the creative vision. I have spent the last 30+ years enhancing my knowledge of the Adobe Creative Cloud programs and how their convergence makes the overall design process more robust and effective.
Historically, all logos start in Illustrator. A scalable, vector image has always been the foundation of a business' brand. Today, the logo may begin as vector, but is then enhanced in Photoshop, given motion in After Effects and given life in Premiere. A print ad must be revised for social media and scaled for digital media. The use of a singular program for a complete ad is an outdated concept. Even commercial production in Premiere will find its way to After Effects for digital distribution.
Understanding the connections between programs comes with years of experience and lots of trial and error. It also makes the successes even sweeter.
History
I've been around awhile. When I began my graphic design career, there were no computers or even the Internet. Designers worked on drafting tables with line-o-type text, a hot waxer to affix type to an art board and, my personal favorites, Letraset press-down letters, tape and pens to create logos and illustrations.
In the early 90s, I bought my first computer; an IBM-compatible (back then computers were either an IBM or a knock-off) with a one-color, amber screen. My beige box had Adobe Illustrator 1.0 and Aldus PageMaker 1.0 (predecessor to InDesign) applications which had to be started from a DOS prompt. No Windows operating system.
It was a new age of graphic design. I was freelancing at the time and was honored to be invited by the largest ad agency in the area, who had contracted with me on occasion, to give a demonstration of how computer-based graphic design worked.
Later, I was the Creative Director for a local agency when a theft occurred. Someone broke into the business and stole, among other things, my IBM-compatible and monitor. I used the insurance money to purchase my first Apple computer - a Macintosh IIsi (pronounced 2si). While most of the industry gravitated toward the IIci, I liked the slimmer form-factor of the IIsi.
Before the Internet, to take a project to the printer, we had to use 3.5-inch diskettes that held a whopping 1.44 megabytes each. The computers at that time had a feature that allowed one to take a large group of files and dissect them into smaller pieces that fit on multiple diskettes. I would often take a stack of diskettes, wrapped in rubber bands, to the printer so they could be unpacked. The PDF workflow had not been invented yet so the design file, postscript fonts (both printer and screen) and linked images all had to be packaged up and spread over several diskettes.. The good ole days.
Soon after the Internet was released to the public, File-Transfer-Protocol (FTP) became the industry standard. Although it took forever to transfer files over dial-up lines, we thought it was complete magic.
So much as progressed since then and I am lucky to say I have been on the front row for all of it. Zip disks, Jazz drives, CD burners, and so much more have made geeks out of all of us. But to be a creative means that you see the world differently. That has never changed.
The creative mind is a wonderful and dangerous place to live. You can't turn if off. It affects everything you see, do and say. Just ask my wife. Analyzing ads, blurting out font names as we drive down the road, critiquing billboard design – it's all a part of the sickness.
I have a lifetime of knowledge and a true appreciation of what it has taken graphic design and advertising to get here.