It is that time of the year again where I am lucky enough to be able to announce a series of speaker opportunities. The conference season is almost upon us again and so I get to announce where you can find me (online).

April 15: Creators Innovation Webinar

This is a Dutch online webinar jointly organized by HP, Nvidia and Adobe where we talk about content creation, the role of A.I.  and online collaboration. While HP and Nvidia will talk about optimizing online work procesess and which hardware and solutions will keep your hardware secure.

More info here.

April 15-16: Present to Succeed

Present to Succeed is the largest, premium online presentation conference for business professionals who want to improve the way they present their ideas, products, and services. Present to Succeed will immerse you into the world of storytelling, slide design, public speaking, and the most popular presentation tools on the market. During Present to Succeed I am presenting a session that talks about how to build better graphics for presentations, how stock content speeds up the design process and how AI-driven technology can make the difference when designing for on-time delivery.

More info here.

April 27: TechData webinar: Adobe Sign + M365

On April 27th I am hosting a webinar for TechData, one of Adobe’s partners. During this webinar I will show off how Adobe Sign integrates with Microsoft 365 solutions for automating and streamlining digital documents and electronic signature workflows. If you are a Microsoft user and are thinking of transforming your business, this is a session not to miss.

More info coming soon!

May 17-21: CreativePro Week

CreativePro Week is the world’s best HOW-TO event for creative professionals who design, create, or edit in Adobe InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator, Acrobat, and Microsoft PowerPoint. On top of that it is one of my favorite conferences so it’s extra painful I won’t get to speak there in person this year due to Covid restrictions. I have previously described the contents of  my presentations on my blog so be sure to read up here.

June 14-15: Making Design

Making Design is the Nordic region’s largest Adobe conference focusing on creative design and inspiration in InDesign, Illustrator, Photoshop and UX Design. Normally it takes place in the beautiful city of Oslo but this year it is mainly happening online. In my session I’ll talk about how to better organize your design assets, how to maintain your branding and how to better collaborate with designers and non-designers.

More info here.

Of course more news is to follow soon! (did anyone mention Adobe MAX?)

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InDesign, tips and friends

I’m very stoked to have been asked to speak during this year’s CreativePro Week event (happening online again). This year I’ll be presenting 2 sessions on Adobe InDesign.

10 Essential InDesign productivity tips

Let’s kick off Day 2 with a fast-paced, fun-filled tip-a-palooza to boost your productivity! We’ll zip through a ton of handy tips and tricks that every InDesign user needs to know. Plus, you’ll get amped to soak up all the InDesign goodness the rest of the conference will bring.

• If you’re not customizing InDesign, you’re not doing it right
• Essential shortcuts
• What to do when something (inevitably) goes wrong

New InDesign features you should be using right now

You’ve been using InDesign for a long time, but why are you still using it the way you did 5 or 10 years ago?! Adobe has released a ton of new features, but most InDesign users don’t take advantage of them. Take this opportunity to get up to speed again and learn what you’ve been missing!

More information here.

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It’s that time of the year again! Adobe MAX, the biggest creative conference in the world is again taking place. However this time it is from the comfort of our couches and office chairs. But this years online edition does come bearing gifts. Because you can register for Adobe MAX for free and access all of the +350 sessions of the conference. So pretty amazing stuff if you ask me. And I am honored to be a part of Adobe MAX again!

My Adobe MAX speaker shirt was sent in the mail.

How to combine Photoshop-Illustrator-InDesign

My session at MAX this year is about using Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign as a powerhouse combination to save time, simplify your workflow, and create impressive work. Discover the value and benefits of using native file formats in each application to make roundtripping easy, and learn how you can speed up production workflows using techniques involving file placements, snippets, linking or embedding files, and much more.

The session is split into three separate sessions in order to make them easily consumable. After all nobody likes to sit in on a 90 min virtual session.

In Part 1, you’ll learn how to manage content in InDesign by:

• Using linked Photoshop snippets
• Using Photoshop layer comps to simplify your workflow
• Knowing the difference when placing Illustrator layers versus artboards
• Nesting InDesign documents

In Part 2, we’ll focus on bringing content into Photoshop by:

• Learning various ways of importing Illustrator artwork
• Discovering the value of InDesign snippets for mockups
• Learning how to use nested layer comps

In Part 3, it’s all about Illustrator. You’ll learn how to upgrade your artwork by:

• Discovering how to exchange text with InDesign
• Nesting native Illustrator documents
• Using linked Photoshop snippets to your advantage

Be sure to register for my session here.

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I’m super happy to announce that I’m speaking at CreativePro Week early June. Well, virtually at least since this year CreativePro Week has become an online event due to the quarantine. And because of these changed circumstances you’ll be able to follow all of my sessions online and rewatch the recordings later (which might be very valuable to some). Of course this is not the same as being able to say hi to myself and other speakers in person. But at least no one will have to miss out on great content this year. Here’s a quick rundown of my sessions.

InDesign+Photoshop+Illustrator

Tuesday, June 2, 10:30 am – 11:30 am Central

It’s the ultimate Adobe power-trio: InDesign, Photoshop, and Illustrator! But you’ll never be efficient with any one of them if you don’t understand how they work with the others!

Topics include:

• Why layers are such a big deal
• How to properly set up Photoshop and Illustrator files for InDesign
• Choosing between layers and artboards
• CC Libraries: the secret back door conduit
• Best practices for managing vectors and pixels
• And much more!

Managing Your Assets with Libraries

Tuesday, June 2, 3:45 pm – 4:30 pm Central

Working smarter-not-harder is possible when you leverage features in InDesign like native libraries and Creative Cloud libraries. Both offer a way to save, organize, and share your brand assets. In this session, you’ll explore the differences between InDesign native libraries and Creative Cloud libraries, and see how you can significantly speed up your daily workflow and help you push through global updates over multiple programs and projects.

Topics will include:

• The difference between InDesign libraries and Creative Cloud libraries
• How to create and manage Creative Cloud libraries
• How to store your assets in online folders
• How to use the web portal to manage your assets
• How to share your libraries and collaborate with others
• Best practices when re-using assets in multiple Adobe applications

XD for presentations

Thursday, June 4, 3:30 pm – 4:30 pm Central

Adobe XD is changing the way many think about designing and prototyping for the web and mobile applications, but it’s also found an unexpected use case. With its blazing fast performance and intuitive features like Auto-Animate, more and more users are starting to craft their presentations completely using XD. In this session, Bart will share their tips and tricks for how to get the most out of Adobe XD for presentations, how to build incredible animations to tell your story (without having to use a complicated timeline interface), how to collaborate with others to build your presentation, and how to share and present your final masterpiece.

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My top reasons for attending CreativePro Week

The people

First of all, it’s actually my first time speaking at CreativePro Week. I know I know, I’ve spoken at PePcon and the InDesign Conference before. But this is CreativePro Week, the all-in-one-super-awesome-graphic-design-conference, with a pickle on top. So this means I’ll get to talk to not only print designers but also photographers, illustrators and many other talented people. And then of course there are the speakers. I have to say it’s quite an impressive line up (for the record, not because I’ll be there myself ;-P). Mark Heaps, Julieanne Kost, Nigel French, Von Glitschka, Russel Brown … the list goes on and on. To me it’ll be a time of seeing old friends and hopefully making new ones.

The content

Because of this wide range of speakers and topics through out the week, there’s bound to be a few very juicy tips and tricks. And though I live and breath “Adobe” everyday I’d never go around claiming I know everything. I always like to compare this to cooking. It’s not because someone is a great chef that he can’t experience good food or learn a few new dishes using the same ingredients. So I hope I’ll have some extra time to attend a few sessions myself. And if I don’t learn any new tricks, I can always end up learning interesting presentation techniques (btw, did you know during CPro there’s the “Click” conference as well? Be sure to attend that if you want to beef up your own presentation skills).

I’ll be able to disclose more about my exact sessions pretty soon, so stay tuned!

The location

I’ve visited the U.S. many times now, on an average of 2 times a year. But I’ve never been New Orleans before and it looks so exciting and different. So I’m very much looking forward to just being a tourist. You know, try the food, stroll around, buy things I don’t need. And best of all, the conference is located downtown.

So as you can see it’s more than worth jumping on a plane and visiting New Orleans next June. And if you do, be sure to say hi when you see me. You can’t miss me, I’ll be the tall guy ;-).

More info here.

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I started out my career as a graphic designer, getting my hands dirty on every design product Adobe could come up with. But after a few years I learned that I had an even bigger love for teaching Adobe products to designers in a classroom environment and speaking at conferences. So that’s what I did for the next 8 years, through out Europe, the US and Australia, before I joined Adobe in 2015.

Last year, I was a guest speaker at Adobe MAX 2016 in San Diego. And I was thrilled to learn that my suggestion to organise an Adobe InDesign session for advanced users was approved. Not only was I excited to put on my (classroom) trainer shoes again, I got to host a hands-on lab session for 100 people at a time. And the best thing of it all was that I got to do that 3 times in total during the MAX conference.

Why I came up with my session

During my years of learning Adobe software and visiting conferences and fairs, I found that my biggest gripe was that I almost never found people or speakers with real top level knowledge. So during events I’d come up with my list of questions that I wanted to ask the speaker or trainer at the end of their session (yeah, I was THAT guy), but was disappointed to learn that it was hard to get definitive answers from them. Plus, many of the “advanced” sessions I did were also usually too basic, probably to try and get more attendees by making them more accessible. So for Adobe MAX, I wanted to give the attendees a session they could really benefit from, with techniques they could use almost every day based on my own experience as a designer and trainer. But also fast-paced, using advanced functionality that would inspire InDesign veterans to do more with the product. So I came up with projects and scenarios for the automation of common print projects like catalogs, business cards and brochures using style automation, shortcuts and regular expressions. And I named my lab session the InDesign CC Deep Dive.

The women of Walt Disney’s Animation

At the end of one of my Deep Dive sessions a lady approached me, enquiring if she could ask me a few extra questions. Her name was Tamara Khalaf and she’s the Head of Design for Walt Disney Animation Studios in Los Angeles. Her questions were related to a large project she was working on and I could tell this project had a very high priority. Tamara was working on a huge 400 page book called “Ink & Paint – The women of Walt Disney’s Animation” by Mindy Johnson. A book that talks about the history and contribution of women in Disney’s studio, and how they painstakingly brought pencil drawings to vibrant, dimensional life. Sensing the importance of her project, I suggested Tamara to meet up with her a few hours later at the conference Community Pavilion, where we could sit down to further discuss her project. Of course Tamara came well prepared and brought the entire project with her on a USB drive. I spent the next hour combing through her InDesign document, trying to understand how it was structured, styled, how text input was managed and what Tamara’s main questions were. And just like Tamara suspected, despite having a well structured document, she was losing way too much time on individual text frames, call out boxes, spacing, captions, headers and other design elements. Luckily for her I was able to teach her a few tricks and techniques that allowed her to automate most of these aspects so she could spend more time on the rest of the layout. In the end, I gave her as much information as I could during the limited time we had and she was visibly happy with the things she had learned. She saved her work and packed up the notes she so vigorously took during that hour and went on her way. A few months later I received a thank you message via LinkedIn from Tamara, saying she finally finished the book and that it was ready for print. She even wanted to send me a printed copy but in the end the 2.8kg book was proven too expensive to ship to Belgium.

InDesign CC Deep Dive – 2017

Fast forward to today. Recently, I was asked back to Adobe MAX 2017 in Las Vegas to teach the same InDesign Deep Dive session. My 2016 session had apparently awarded me a “MAX Master” title and I received further kudos for being the top overall speaker.

Adobe InDesign CC 2017 Deep Dive

And to my surprise, I had received another message from Tamara saying she was again attending Adobe MAX and that she brought a printed copy for me to take home. And before I knew it, I was kicking off my lab session and noticed her sitting behind one of the lab computers again. Following along, taking notes, and learning as much as she can from the updated course exercises. After my session had ended she came up to the stage to say hi again and explained how she finished the project during the months following our initial acquaintance. And in her hands she was holding a massive book. “Here”, she said. “We finally printed it, and I brought you a copy, as promised”.

And before I knew it we were going through this amazing book. And not only was it beautifully and professionally designed, it also had so many stories about how all the classic Disney characters came to life. Inside the book I also found a hand written thank you note from Tamara, which I still keep at my desk at home, next to the book. A wonderful souvenir.

Last thoughts

I attend many events and conferences through out the year. And it’s hard to keep track of the many times when I’m showing off Adobe tricks during a live presentation or somewhere on the web. Tricks that matter and really influence the way designers work. And because of that it’s sometimes easy to forget that, as a presenter, we really have to keep that close relationship with the end user. Whether they’re working as freelancers, working for a small agency, or for a worldwide enterprise, designers are the same, everywhere. And the size of their contract or employer has nothing to do with the fact that every designer wants to learn techniques they can actually use and apply in their daily projects. And sitting down for a little while to actually talk about their work and suggest how they can make it better can go a long way. So never underestimate the power of a conference because it can change lives.

If you’re interested in purchasing the book, it’s available via Amazon.com

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Adobe MAX 2017

With around 11,000 registered attendees, this year’s Adobe MAX conference is the biggest ever. And with that also the largest creative event in the world. Special keynotes, new technology reveals, special guests, a few hundred breakout sessions and a great party, MAX has it all. Like the pilgrimage to Mecca, it’s my opinion that designers worldwide should visit Adobe MAX at least once in their lifetime.

This year I’ll be doing my InDesign Deep Dive lab session again, just like last year (though with updated materials). I was lucky enough to have been awarded with the highest overall presenter and session score for my session at MAX 2016. So I made sure to deliver a top quality session again this year. With 4 sessions of 100 attendees each sold out I’m hoping everyone is as excited as I am.

Other conferences

I’m also visiting and presenting at other conferences this year. Unfortunately not outside of Europe. As you may know by now I cover the Benelux region (Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxemburg) so the bulk of my activities always happen there. Though I really enjoyed the Making Design conference in Oslo last June, that was an amazing experience.

If you’re from the region you can still see me present

• The Dutch Design Week at Sint Lucas College in Eindhoven on 26 and 27th Oct.
• The Adobe Symposium in Amsterdam on 6th Nov.
• After MAX event in Antwerp on 9th Nov.
• UsbyNight in Antwerp on 23-24-25th Nov.

It’s been a while

Yes, I know. I haven’t updated this blog in a long time. And needless to say, I’ve been very busy, both professionally and in my personal life. But this year has brought so many exciting things and Adobe has really been producing a lot of new content like

• The frequent Adobe XD updates
• Team Projects for Adobe’s video apps
• The new Adobe Scan app
• Project Felix
• Really cool updates for Adobe Stock for Enterprise
• Adobe Sign improvements
• The strategic partnership between Microsoft and Adobe
• Very exciting updates to the video tools

… and of course the upcoming new features which will be launched during Adobe MAX in a few days. So stay tuned for those. In the mean time you can find me on LinkedIn and Twitter if you want to connect or have me as a speaker at your conference. Talk soon!

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Just like last year, 2017 will be filled with conferences and other interesting events. And lucky for me I get to speak at several of them again this year. So if you’re around and you have a few hours to spare be sure to attend a few sessions. The importance of learning new skills, being agile and knowing what’s happening in the world of design and technology has never been greater. Here’s a preliminary list of what’s happening in my world:

I’ll be speaking at:

• 16th Feb: Mobile Matters Seminar (host) (Utrecht, The Netherlands)
• 20-21st Feb: FITC (Amsterdam, The Netherlands)
• 28th Feb: UX Meet-up: The English Breakfast edition, Dutch Digital Agencies (Amsterdam, The Netherlands)
• 18-19-20st March: Professional Imaging (Nijkerk, The Netherlands)
• 30th March: Digitale Werkplek (Brugge, Belgium)
• 20th April: UPRISE Festival Europe (Amsterdam, The Netherlands)
• 8th June: Get Smart (Affligem, Belgium)
• 12-13th: MakingDesign (Oslo, Norway)

Attending (not speaking, or too soon to say):

• 18-19th May: The Next Web (Amsterdam, The Netherlands)
• 16-20th Oct: Adobe MAX 2017 (Las Vegas, USA)

Interested (but we’ll see what happens):

• 6-7-8th April: OFFF Festival (Barcelona, Spain)
• TBA: OFFFbyNight (Antwerp, Belgium)
• TBA: Bump Festival (Kortrijk, Belgium)

If anyone else is interested in hearing me speak, I wouldn’t mind flying to the USA, Japan or Australia for a change 😉

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Here’s a list of what’s coming in the next 2 months.

Come and say hi

• 26th Oct: Adobe Creative Executive Meeting (Antwerp) – More info
• 27th Oct: Digital Government Seminar (The Hague) – More info
• 27th Oct: Adobe Creative Meetup (Eindhoven) – More info
• 28th Oct: Adobe Creative Jam (Eindhoven) – More info
• 1st Nov – 4th Nov: Adobe MAX 2016 (San Diego) – More info
• 7th Nov – 9th Nov: The InDesign Conference (Washington DC) – More info
• 15th Nov: Adobe Creative Meetup (Amsterdam) – More info
• 17th Nov: After MAX Event (Antwerp) – More info

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A busy two weeks

And here I thought I’d have my hands full presenting 3 (fully booked) InDesign Deepdive sessions during Adobe MAX in San Diego. But it seems I’ll be sticking around a bit longer and jump on the next plane to Washington D.C. to attend and speak at the InDesign Conference. After having being unable to attend PePcon this year it seems I will still have a chance to catch up with my good friends (and fellow speakers) during the InDesign Conference.

Sessions

I’ll be hosting several sessions that cover a wide range of topics:

• InDesign: What You Need to Know about the Newest Features
• Maintaining Your Digital Style Guide with CC Libraries
• GREP Demystified
• Make Your Layouts Come Alive with Interactivity and Publish Online

So it looks like I’ll have 4 opportunities to teach you more about InDesign while cracking silly jokes. Especially during my “GREP Demystified” session as I’ll be joining forces with my friend Erica Gamet.

The InDesign Conference is organised November 7-9, 2016 in Washington D.C. and I highly recommend attending if you’re into InDesign, print and publishing.

www.indesignconference.com

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