The recent CreativePro Week conference took place between 8th and 12th July in Washington DC and represented a unique opportunity for creative professionals and developers to get together and share the very latest trends, best practices and technologies in the creative software sector.
This year we had the pleasure to have Michel Ribera. Data Publishing Manage at the conference in behalf of Activo® and DAM News.
Creative Operations is at the heart of our dna as playing from agencies role to brands since the last 25 years, starting with Photoshop 1.0 in 1990, moving ahead Quark Xpress during years at the heart of agencies production before rolling out InDesign since the last 20 years. At the end of the day it is all about experience that we are sharing on the daily basis with our customers when deploying DAM systems.
This conference is at the heart of all designers and vendors delivering the best breed of technology to speed up the production process. It is all about to be IN or OUT. We are delighted to have such partners like Santa Cruz, Priint, Adobe and the time to talk and share about technology, projects.
Of course creative ops has moved very fast during the last years especially since the COVID. Before designers in agencies were used to work most of time with file servers, some last one with Fullpress Xinet (I started in 1998 ;)
Now half of their time designers are working remotely thanks to fast internet connexion. But the way and the software they are using has also changed. Of course most of them are using the Adobe Suite but step by step we see also people working with cloud platform like Canva, easy to use, super fast from print to digital, advanced search, connectors for a very small price / Canva is today killing the competition.
We are used to play with online editing software since 2008 but very often complex systems, cost and not super fast. InDesign server is still driving a lot of online editing platforms but it is more dedicated to print and for digital it is slow. Since the last decade we saw vendors rising at the top like Chili Publish and the scope of GraFx is to manage digital output. the role of AI, Adobe Express and Firefly are bringing innovation on the table and my friend Max Dunn shared his vision just after.
We also have our Priint partner for advanced automation connected to their platform with flat plan and great automation connected to PIM systems. Easycatlog at the heart of Activo Data Publishing services is the king in the automation as soon as you want to drive automation from any data source with the best ROI.
We also had our partner Santa Cruz Software unveiling new great cloud service like BannerUI. BannersUI empowers designers to create only one design and then render a package of artboards for a campaign, reducing the time spent resizing for various banner ad sizes and other output dimensions.
Of course Adobe CC plugins is still used with 2 key players Santa Cruz Software with LinkRUI and CI HUB with a wide range go connectors from DAM PIM and cloud drives. But we do believe it is more an add on than driving heavy production even if CI HUB just released an interesting CI HUB drive . On the daily basis we see designers 'd rather downloading files, retouch them and upload again them so....a plugin is nice to have and piece of a story for DAM systems.
This year’s multi-track agenda featured a broad range of keynotes, workshops and tutorials covering Adobe InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator, Acrobat and Microsoft PowerPoint. Two of our DAM associates, Max Dunn from Silicon Publishing and Luis Mendes from Santa Cruz Software were in attendance, and have kindly provided their feedback and insights from this unique, practitioner-driven event.
Luis hosted a sponsored breakfast session on Thursday 11th showcasing the capabilities of Santa Cruz Software’s BannersUI – an automated banner ad design platform that allows users to intelligently reposition and resize objects for optimized export to a variety of dimensions and output formats.
DAM system is also a key milestone as soon you want to organise all your asset in one single source of truth. But most designer are using today Google Drive, Dropbox, Wetranfert to share content, easy to use, small cost, mobile, organisation with folders, capacity to male up file and manage small approval....a lot of things at the foundation of DAM system but this is the reality.
What we are saying is DAM is a strong enabler at the enterprise level to empower all the digital content within metadata, connect with your ecosystem, manage advanced workflows, scalability and much more...
Luis Mendes - Solution Architect, Creative Innovator at Santa Cruz Software
“CreativePro Week ’24 was a vibrant gathering of creatives from various experience levels, spanning from industry newcomers to veterans with over 30 years of expertise. Attendees hailed from diverse sectors, including small businesses and government agencies. The event featured sponsors addressing a wide array of client needs, ranging from individual consultancy services focused on enhancing PowerPoint design techniques to advanced tips for InDesign users. Major industry players like Adobe and Microsoft also showcased their latest advancements in AI technology.
Santa Cruz Software made a significant announcement with their new BannersUI digital ad automation tool. This tool, powered by a customer-centric AI, aims to deliver higher quality derivative ad size layouts through an assisted-design AI feature. Clients can opt-in to leverage their own design data, enabling the production of branded designs in multiple sizes with just a click. This AI technology is designed to enhance scalability by producing more accurate outputs that require fewer design adjustments, continuously improving over time..
The conference featured numerous sessions focused on artificial intelligence. Some were exclusively dedicated to AI, while others explored its integration into various tools for document analysis, generative images, and text creation. The majority of the audience, being creatives, expressed both caution and appreciation for AI technology. Many attendees viewed the rapid growth and scalability of AI as potentially destabilizing to their profession. Santa Cruz emphasized the transparency of their Assisted Layout AI as a closed system that does not use internet-sourced data, contrasting with other demonstrations that showcased extensive capabilities for generating images or text.
One notable absence at the event was the Digital Asset Management (DAM) industry. For many creatives in attendance, DAM technology seemed unfamiliar, either due to limitations in their working environments or a lack of awareness. Given the significant benefits offered by DAM systems, conferences like CreativePro Week could play a crucial role in raising awareness and providing valuable introductions to these technologies, benefiting both the creatives and the industry as a whole.”
You can connect with Luis via his LinkedIn profile.
Max Dunn - CEO Silicon Publishing
“I attended the Creative Developer Summit 2024 Wednesday and Thursday of last week, which was part of CreativePro Week "
I have attended these for many years, and it is a convergence of third-party Adobe developers from around the world. Kris Coppieters came from New Zealand, Gabe Harbs from Israel, Dean Perry from Australia, Jim Birkenseer and I from California, etc. – two InDesign team members came from India.
These traditional gatherings have gone on since Adobe stopped having their own developer gatherings around 2010. David Blatner graciously let us use his conferences for a very important side-conference around the annual CreativePro conference. Adobe has consistently sent engineers, and while it’s usually friendly, there have been times when it was quite combative. For example, 2015: (David’s conference at the time was PePCon).
The past 8 years, the trend has been positive with the relationship between Adobe and us third parties. This conference continued that trend.
Here is the schedule for the 2 days: Click here
Pradeep Verma, engineering lead from InDesign, had friendly dialogue with us and there was no conflict. The summit had more energy than recent summits thanks to the new Adobe technologies: Firefly, Express, UXP, and Photoshop APIs. James Lockman (a fantastic solutions engineer from Adobe) spent a whole day with us on UXP and Firefly services on Wednesday. Then we had several sessions on Thursday. I presented on Express and InDesign, and I hope conveyed to the others our total enthusiasm for Express and especially its extensibility. My blog post corresponding to the presentation is here: Click here
All in all it was an exciting time: the time spent face-to-face with creatives and developers was invaluable. I have been meeting with many of these same people for over 15 years, and it’s well worth the trip every time. Adobe has recently surged in developer support, and does now have conferences, but they are virtual. In-person conferences like this are inevitably far more powerful.”
You can connect with Max via his LinkedIn profile.
We also had the opportunity to meet and talk with Marcus Radich CTO Pageproof. PageProof is powerful online proofing software that makes the review and approval of creative work — no matter what the file type — feel effortless. Marketing and creative teams can gather feedback and approvals at scale, transform creative productivity, and maximize workflow efficiencies with PageProof.
If you have any thoughts regarding our report let's share and talk with our team and thanks again to Luis and Max to be a witness of this great event Creative Developer Summit 2024.
Activo®
