POSTED ON 10-18-2019
Immerse yourself in the Creative Super Sessions coming to MAX for the first time this year. Hosted at the Microsoft Theater, these Creative Super Sessions are bringing some of your favorite influential speakers to a venue teeming with creative energy. Be sure to check out the sessions below and add them to your MAX schedule.
When you step into the Microsoft Theater, you’ll find yourself surrounded not just by other creators, but by potential future collaborators, mentees, mentors or even friends. The Creative Super Sessions will invite hundreds of like-minded and like-interested MAX attendees, all coming together to learn about everything from brand identities to design to Adobe products to creativity itself.
An impressive lineup of our most popular speakers like Paula Scher, Aaron Draplin and M. Night Shyamalan will share industry secrets and tricks of their trades. Can’t wait to attend? Here’s what you can see if you register for the Creative Super Sessions:
Living, Breathing Identities – Paula Scher, founder & partner, Pentagram
You don’t have to be a brand manager to impact the identity of your brand. And even brand managers may not always have the impact they desire. We live in an ever-changing cultural, political, economic and technological climate, and brands must respond to shifting currents. Join Pentagram Founder and Partner Paula Scher as she debunks the myths about identity design and shares her techniques for building successful brand identities.
A few things you’ll learn:
- How and why logos are crafted in specific ways
- How audiences can shape the way identity is perceived
- How an identity program can change with the times
- Why brand manuals are mostly useless in the long run
Ever find yourself manipulating vectors the same way you have for years and wondering whether there’s a better way? Or whether you’re missing any useful shortcuts and new features that could have an impact on your projects? Then this session is for you. Join Adobe Principal Evangelist Paul Trani as he takes you through the latest features, need-to-know fundamentals and much-needed time-savers in Illustrator. Discover how to take your work — and workflow — to the next level.
Paul will show you how to:
- Create and manipulate vectors efficiently
- Master fills and strokes with ease
- Add and change gradients and colors across graphics
- Use effects to create depth and texture
- Add dimension to designs
- Output artwork efficiently
Fake Love Letters: Graphic Design for Filmmaking – Annie Atkins, Graphic Designer, AnnieAtkins.com
How do you approach the design of graphic pieces for a movie that can tell the director’s story and contribute to the genre, period and visual aesthetic of the film? Join Annie Atkins, lead graphic designer for the film The Grand Budapest Hotel, as she takes you through the process that she uses every day to create some of cinema’s most well-recognized prop designs.
As Annie shares her work and design approach, you’ll learn:
- Why you should shut down your computer to start
- How not to design as a designer
- How to step into the shoes of the script’s characters
- Why being original is overrated
Learn to design and prototype complex layouts in a snap with XD. Combine text files, graphics and external data into XD layouts to create collaborative workflows for any project. Create design experiences that react to your users’ touch, gamepad and voice, as well as the click of their mouse.
Join designer and developer Chris Converse as he shows you how to:
- Work efficiently with Repeat Grid and components
- Connect live data to your layouts
- Visually work with audio
- Design on multiple devices at the same time
- Create complex interactions
Creative skills top the list as critical for today’s workforce. But are students getting enough of these skills in school and working them into their resumes and job interviews? M. Night Shyamalan is teaming up with Adobe executives for this session all about teaching creativity as a fundamental skill.
Renowned film director M. Night Shyamalan, who has written a book on education reform, will discuss how education at every level must quickly adapt to teach creative skills in the classroom and beyond – in spite of the current curriculum. As one of our generation’s most creative humans, his education insights promise to be no less thrilling than his films’ notoriously twisty endings.
Join Aaron James Draplin, author of Pretty Much Everything, as he shares design tips, tricks, techniques and time-saving measures. From building logos that keep the lights on to self-initiated personal projects, he spends 99% of his time in Illustrator. It’s just what he does to make a living and to live his life creatively.
In this session, you’ll hear:
- How to think differently when building logos, keeping maximum iteration versatility in mind
- Ways to save time in your design process, from discovery to creation to presentation
- Case studies from successful logos they’ve made, and what they learned along the way
- The good, bad and the ugly: A proud update to what they’ve been up to prior to MAX
Adobe InDesign: Pro-Level Secrets – David Blatner, President, CreativePro Network
You know you’re just scratching the surface of InDesign, and you’re hungry for more: more productivity, more efficiency, more power. Join InDesign guru David Blatner as he shares some of his favorite pro-level tips, tricks and techniques that will get you to the next level.
Get ready to take a deep dive as you explore:
- The two critical steps you have to take before printing or exporting (but probably don’t even know about yet)
- Five easy-to-use, free scripts every InDesign user should have
- How to turn InDesign into a powerful presentation design tool with HTML
- The hidden power of GREP, nested and object styles
- Automating layouts with add-ons, scripts and InDesign Server
Why Beauty Matters – Stefan Sagmeister, Designer, Art Director, Sagmeister & Walsh
For Stefan Sagmeister, co-founder of New York-based creative agency Sagmeister & Walsh and co-author of the groundbreaking visual book Beauty, beauty is no mere surface strategy. Join Stefan as he uses examples from architecture, design and science to show that not only do we feel differently when we are surrounded by beauty, but we also behave differently.
He’ll share:
- Why beauty became a dirty word among designers
- Why “solving problems” is not enough
- How we can reintroduce aesthetic strategies into our practice
Eager to get a seat at one (or more) of these Creative Super Sessions? Add them to your schedule here! If you’re late to the sign up party, don’t forget to register for MAX.