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Lynda and AIGA: discover, understand, appreciate, and be inspired by design.

Published by Lynda Weinman, co-founder | Monday, July 27th, 2009

click to play movie

Last year, I was invited by one of my most-valued mentors, Clement Mok, to apply for a seat on the national board of AIGA, the professional association for design, and I was selected to serve for one year. I‘ve never been on a non-profit board before, and it‘s been a wonderful experience so far. I am inspired by the passion and dedication of the organization- from those who work tirelessly at the national headquarters in NYC to those who donate their time to the regional chapters. I‘m doing my part to spread the word of this 95 year-old(!) organization by writing this post, and inviting you to join me and 22,000 other design professionals to support AIGA.

AIGA is above all an advocate for design – to discover it, discuss it, understand it, appreciate it, be inspired by it. AIGA has 65 chapters across the US that offer networking events, inspirational talks, events, portfolio reviews, design competitions, conferences, and community outreach to evangelize the value of design. The AIGA website is full of great information and resources, from job boards, to member portfolio sites, to design archives, to design blogs, to best practices.

In the age of everything virtual, AIGA offers many opportunities to meet and mix with other design professionals. Everyone needs to get away from the computer now and again and get together in the physical world to stand and bask in the light of design.

How you can get involved:

Find your local chapter, and attend an event. Non-members are welcome to all events! See if you like it! I am pretty certain you will.

Join the chapter as a member and get discounts on AIGA events, Adobe products, lynda.com products, health insurance and more! Your membership fee is also tax-deductable.

Become active in AIGA governance; every chapter has its own local board of directors and offers a great chance to flex and build your business skills. It‘s a way to give back to others, and that always feels good. You‘ll see me evangelizing AIGA events in the lynda.com blog now and again. I hope to see you at an AIGA event soon – please let me know if you are a lynda.com member; it‘s always a great treat to meet you in person.

Tags: AIGA, associations, competitions, conference, Design, Events, national board
Posted in Letters from Lynda | No Comments »

Update on Entrepreneur of the Year award: The best is yet to come!

Published by Lynda Weinman, co-founder | Thursday, June 25th, 2009

Lynda and Bruce, Entrepreneur of the Year finalists

Lynda and Bruce all decked out for the Entrepreneur of the Year award ceremony.

Hi Everyone!

I know many of you were following our nomination for Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year for the Greater Los Angeles area. We made it to finalists, but did not win the award and will not be going on to the national competition.

We were in awe of many of the other finalists and winners, and the experience of being part of this competition was pretty fantastic. The evening event on June 23 (red carpet et all – see pics of Bruce in a tux!) was fantastic. They made a pretty cool video of us describing lynda.com that I hope to get a copy of to share with you all.

Even though we did not win, we don’t measure our success by awards. It’s nice to be acknowledged, but the truth is no award can come close to how proud we are to be building this great business. The best is yet to come!

Thanks for everything!

-Lynda and Bruce

Tags: Entrepreneur of the Year, Ernst & Young Entrepreneur Of The Year® 2009 Award
Posted in Letters from Lynda, lynda.com news | 3 Comments »

Jay Nelson recording QuarkXpress 8

Published by Lynda Weinman, co-founder | Saturday, May 23rd, 2009

Jay Nelson spotted in the lynda.com recording booth, recording a new QuarkXpress 8 Essentials course!

Had a few chances to visit with Jay while he was out here recording, having traveled from Boulder, CO to overcast Ventura, CA. Jay is celebrating the 17th year and 201st edition of Design Tools Monthly, his newsletter about all things graphics.

Jay continues to use and recommend QuarkXPress as his favorite page layout tool. He’s especially excited to share some of the newest features, such as new intuitive ways to lay out pictures boxes by dragging, twisting and rotating, the sleek and fun new interface, the new fluidity of the pen tool, and item styles, where an item can be saved as a style and replicated easily throughout a design. He’ll also be showing how to create Flash (!) and web sites using Quark. The project is super ambitious, taking two full weeks to record, and covering more in one video course than what’s available elsewhere in any format!

Catch Jay at his How Design Conference session, or speaking at the Institute of Newspaper Technology conference. We’re proud to have Jay in the library – thanks, Jay!

Tags: How Design Conference, Institute of Newspaper Technology Conference, Jay Nelson, QuarkXpress 8
Posted in Behind the scenes, Design, Letters from Lynda | No Comments »

Wild about Harry

Published by Lynda Weinman, co-founder | Friday, May 22nd, 2009

wildharry A noteworthy new Creative Inspirations video installment has been released today on the Online Training Library. Harry Marks is considered by many to be the godfather of broadcast design.

More than any other individual, he changed television by doing things with graphics that had never been attempted before. Not only did he pioneer the use of emerging imaging technologies, but he did so with style and reason. His pioneering work in the field of CGI (Computer-Generated Imagery) brought him into collaboration with many other industry pioneers, including Douglas Trumbull, Robert Abel, Carl Rosendahl (whose company evolved into DreamWorks Animation), and Dale
Herigstad (who is also the subject of a different Creative Inspirations).

In the early ’80s, Harry had the idea of bringing together people who work in
the disparate fields of technology, entertainment, and design, so he
partnered with Richard Saul Wurman and the TED Conference was born. This
installment of Creative Inspirations takes viewers on a historic journey
through the extraordinary career of Harry Marks.

Tags: broadcast design, Carl Rosendahl, Creative Inspirations Series, Dale Herigstadt, Douglas Trumbull, Harry Marks, lynda.com Online Training Library, Robert Abel, TED Conference
Posted in Documentaries, Letters from Lynda | No Comments »

Guess who’s coming to dinner?

Published by Lynda Weinman, co-founder | Monday, May 18th, 2009

Author dinner on Thursday, May 14th From left to right: Taz Tally, Lesa Snyder-King, Jay Nelson, Max Smith, Jan Kabili, Megan Anderson, Bruce Heavin

Author dinner on Thursday, May 14th From left to right: Taz Tally, Lesa Snider, Jay Nelson, Max Smith, Jan Kabili, Megan Andersen, Bruce Heavin

Taz is here recording Photoshop CS4: Color Correction, Lesa is recording internal movies for our staff related to iStockPhoto usage, Jay is recording QuarkXpress 8 Essential Training, Max is our lead training producer and he’s making sure our authors are eating a well-produced meal, Jan is here for a staff meeting, but her next project is Photoshop CS4: Selections in Depth, Megan is relating in her Author Relations role at lynda.com, and Bruce is here for the good meal and conversation with me, who is not in the shot as I am behind the lens taking the photo. We have meals with authors all the time, and now that I am blogging I hope to document these occasions and let you know which authors are in town and what new courses they are cooking up.

Tags: author dinner, Color Correction, CS4, iStockPhoto, Photoshop, QuarkXPress
Posted in Behind the scenes, Design, Letters from Lynda, Photography | 1 Comment »

Dr. Taz Tally at lynda.com

Published by Lynda Weinman, co-founder | Friday, May 15th, 2009

Taz Tally in the lynda.com recording space

Taz Tally in the lynda.com recording space as he waits for his movies to render!

My first memory of Taz is from the late 1990′s when I observed his blurry figure running up and down a giant escalator as fast as he could in the lobby of a hotel where a photography trade show was taking place. Years later, when he first came to record video classes at lynda.com in 2004, we invited him to our house for dinner. Bruce and I will never forget Taz showing up, covered in mud from a local hike he took after work, with a live caterpillar poking out of his curly hair! These two examples describe some of the many sides of Taz Tally. He’s a digital photography master, a fitness fanatic, sports a Ph.D. in geology, and is a true mountain man who loves to hike and explore the wild.

Taz is currently recording a photography color correction course using Photoshop CS4. He pitched the idea to me of creating a fitness video sharing all the techniques he uses when traveling, working at his desk, or how to take advantage of every day situations and objects instead of gyms and cumbersome equipment. What do you think? Are we ready for fitness videos at lynda.com?

Tags: Adobe, Color Correction, fitness, Photoshop, Taz Tally
Posted in Behind the scenes, Letters from Lynda, Photography | 7 Comments »

Grokking the Gravatar

Published by Lynda Weinman, co-founder | Monday, May 11th, 2009

I am usually the reassuring one; helping others get past the “feeling dumb” part, and into the mindset of being open to learning new things. Now that I’m officially a blogger (took me long enough, eh?) I wanted to learn how to make my picture show up next to my comments.

The process was a little uncomfortable, but it worked. I logged on to the free service at http://en.engravitar.com and followed the directions. Gravatar stands for Globally Recognized Avatar. I used the same email address that I use when I post a comment to our blog. Magically, once I loaded my image there, it appeared in our blog next to my comments.

It’s weird to me that one disparate service can tie my email address to my picture off my hard drive to unrelated software that we use for blogging. We’ve apparently set up our WordPress software to acknowledge the gravatar image plugin. I hope you’ll comment on this post by uploading your pictures to gravatar and seeing the magic happen yourselves. It’s easy, fun and a little weird. And it even makes a person who is feeling dumb feel a little more cheeky.

Tags: blogging, Gravitar, Lynda, WordPress
Posted in Home computing, Letters from Lynda | 4 Comments »

Flash 10 Player Course coming this summer…

Published by Lynda Weinman, co-founder | Saturday, May 9th, 2009

Lee Brimelow, a lynda.com author who has created courses in After Effects, Flash, and Expression Web, wrote to me out of the blue the other day and proposed a course on Flash Player 10.

When creating Flash movies, websites, or applications, it is important to know all the new features of the authoring tool. But it is just as important to know the capabilities of the latest version of the Flash player. Each new version of the player introduces support for the latest and greatest features, many which are not exposed in the authoring environment.

Flash Player 10 introduced a ton of new creative capabilities, from 3D, advanced Text effects, Pixel Bender (like filter effects you’d find in Photoshop, only over time), to new sound and drawing APIs. This course will explain how to tap into these new features to take your Flash work to the next level.

It’s been a few years since Lee contributed to the lynda.com Online Training Library; he’s been busy with his blogs, The Flash Blog, gotoandlearn, Flashermag, and working as Platform Evangelist for Adobe Systems focusing on the Flash, Flex and AIR communities.

Needless to say, the course idea is approved in the queue to record soon. We’re honored to work again with Lee; he fits the profile perfectly as an author with true passion, deep knowledge, and he’s addicted to sharing!

Tags: Adobe, CS4, Flash, Flash Player 10, Lee Brimelow, Lynda
Posted in 3D + Animation, Letters from Lynda | No Comments »