Bedtime stories for

digital media fanatics

There’s a bumper crop of new multimedia titles. Here’s the best of ’em.

Macromedia Director Design Guide

Cathy Clarke and Lee Swearingen

Hayden Books, $39.99

Authoring software is where the multimedia rubber hits the road; it’s the program that drives the content, controlling the integration and presentation of audio, video, animation, type and graphics.

Macromedia Director has a well-deserved reputation among Macintosh aficionados as a professional-level authoring tool worth learning. This is the third book on Director I’ve acquired in the last few months, and it’s far and away the best.

First, it’s new. And new means a lot: there’s a freshness to the visuals, and the versions of software described are current.

Second, it comes with a cd. And what a cd: a dozen pieces of interactive multimedia, most of which are extremely well done. The list includes the full interactive portfolio of Clement Mok designs, Jim Ludtke’s step-by-step description of the Sonic the Hedgehog cover he did for Wired magazine, and demos of everything Macromedia sells. But be warned: the cd is the core of the product here, the book is little more than an extended list of credits and commentary on techniques used in the interactive pieces.

Third? It’s quick: spend your time with the cd, use the book when you want depth on something specific.

Professional Studio Techniques:

Design Essentials Luanne Seymour Cohen, Tanya Wendling

Imaging Essentials Luanne Seymour Cohen, Russel Brown, Tanya Wendling

Production Essentials Diane Tapscott, Lisa Jeans, Pat Soberanis

Adobe Press, $54.95 each

Adobe Systems’ suite of illustration and imaging graphics software, led by Illustrator and Photoshop, is the most pervasive software in the communication arts. Adobe Illustrator is used by an astonishing variety of visual communicators for everything from technical medical illustration to broadcast graphics; Adobe Photoshop is an image processing environment which has become the standard of the digital prepress industry; and Adobe Dimensions is a 3D illustration program meant to be used alone or in tandem with Illustrator.

The learning curve for Adobe’s products is long and not for the easily distracted; but the rewards of using these tools well are immense.

If you have a solid knowledge of digital imaging and prepress – that is, you know the programs and use them professionally – then you’re Adobe’s target with these books. Go get Design Essentials, and make sure it’s the second edition. It’s a delight. Carefully written, extremely well illustrated and photographed, Design Essentials and the two companion volumes, Imaging Essentials and Production Essentials, have raised the bar for everybody producing software books and instructional materials.

F’rinstance? Section 5, ‘Text Effects,’ goes through shadow effects for text – you know, the fuzzy gray shadows behind everything these days. It also explains embossing type, and placing that emboss on a textured surface, and ghostbacks – those lightened panels used to put type in ads with saturated four-color photos.

These are tricky effects to do in print, until recently left to film and computer graphics shops. But if you follow the directions, you’ll find it works. In the process, you’ll discover the extraordinary attention to detail everywhere evident in the prose, the visuals, and the organization of information. Heck, they even commissioned revered designer Louis Fishauf to do the cover.

Want to have some fun? Find some graphic design students and show them a copy of Design Essentials. Watch as their eyes widen, their lips quiver, and they mutter ‘I want this’ around page 10, when they see the dashed-line chart for Illustrator. These titles are a godsend.

Adobe Illustrator Creative

Techniques

Step-by-step solutions for designers

Ellenn Behoriam and Gary Poyssick

Hayden Books, $47.95

Well, if Adobe’s raised the bar, then the other publishers in this market should be responding, right? The format of Creative Techniques closely follows the Essentials series; two-page units, containing step-by-step, results-oriented instructions on how to accomplish specific techniques in Adobe Illustrator.

Hayden has packed a ton of stuff into this book, but aimed it below Adobe’s Essentials series. If you’re in the process of adding Illustrator to your skills base, you’ll probably find the level of depth is just right for you.

Follow the instructions in Creative Techniques and you’ll get the basics of how to do things, but because the book focuses on one program, you won’t learn to use Illustrator, Photoshop and Dimensions together. What Creative Techniques may lack in the high end, it more than makes up for in practicality.

You’ll find ross maddever wherever fine computer books are sold.