Legendary motion graphic designer Hillman Curtis speaks with host Scott Shephard in the March 7 episode of Inside Mac Radio [iTMS link]. The interview took place last week at the Flash Forward conference in Seattle.

Curtis, who is widely known for his work with Flash, talks about his current work and interest in digital filmmaking for the Web. He talks about his latest book, Hillman Curtis: Creating Short Films for the Web. The underlying theme of the book is a celebration of his journey into filmmaking and the reinvigoration he felt upon investing himsel in this new means of expression.

Curtis explains his current pet project -- video portraits for the Web of influential designers and artists -- all made with natural light. He also talks about the gear and software (including, of course, Photoshop) that he uses on his projects. For more on Hillman Curtis, visit his Web site.

Lynda Weinman's lynda.com has been a top-notch training resource since its inception. I speak from experience on this, because I taught at Lynda's famed Digital Arts Center in Ojai, California where I helped develop training books, movies, and courses. Good training has traditionally been expensive and difficult to find — which makes a subscription to the online movie library at the lynda.com site one of the best software training deals around. For $25 a month you can listen to all the movies you want 24/7, learning everything from Photoshop to Dreamweaver to Flash and more. Check out some of the free sample movies on the site and see what you think.

Which brings me to news about the latest offering from the lynda.com online training library - Illustrator CS2 Essential Training.

Conferences don't just happen. Someone is always in charge, and the planners can design a conference so that it's innovative and participatory or so that it's just another boring series of lectures. The Podcast Hotel in Portland Oregon, as explained by Alex Williams at Corante, is a new conference model that brings together podcasters/bloggers and musicians in an experimental format. Podcast Hotel coincides with Portland's MusicFest NW. Participants can book rooms at the cool Jupiter hotel, which can be used as studios for recording, editing or producing, discussion spots, or just to crash. Rooms will be open on some days. There will be how-to workshops on podcasting and videoblogging, interviews of musicians, recordings, and lots of podcasts. The conference was originally scheduled for July, but has been reset for September 6-7, 2005.  Doc Searles calls this latest in conference design, the unconference.

I know you're probably sick of hearing about the Apple - Intel deal by now. But it's worth reading Andy Ihnatko's take on it over at the Chicago Sun Times site. I'm sitting here giggling to myself over Andy's comment that: "It's a huge change. A switch in CPU families is just about the biggest wedgie you can give to a hardware platform."

Andy is a true wordsmith. I had the chance to hear him talk about blogging at the Conference on World Affairs at the University of Colorado at Boulder in April. If you're going to Mac World Boston in July you can catch him there. Andy, thanks for the laugh after a hard work day.

Be the first on your block to get your hands on the lastest versions of Adobe's design software. You can now download free 30 day tryout versions of InDesign CS2, Illustrator CS2, Photoshop CS2, and GoLive CS2. Go for it!

You've made the switch to InDesign and you've even upgraded to the latest version - InDesign CS2. But you may still get Quark documents from clients or printers. Which ones do you have a chance at opening? Quark 3.0 - 4.x documents are supposed to open in InDesign CS2. A Quark 5 document has to be saved back to Quark 4 before you can open it in InDesign CS2. The biggest problem is a Quark 6 document. Quark 6 does not save back to Quark 4. So you have to save a Quark 6 document back to Quark 5, then open it in Quark 5 (assuming you still have that version on your system) and save it back to Quark 4 before opening it in InDesign CS2.

Once you get the Quark document saved as Quark 3 or 4, choose File>Open in InDesign CS2. You'll see a message that the document is being converted. Then you'll see a warning if any links, fonts or other items did not translate. If you just can't get the file to open properly, try breaking the Quark document into smaller pieces before opening, or save the file as a PDF or EPS and place it into an InDesign document.

Design Within Reach

is bringing sleek furniture design to the masses through its retail and web outlets. We're lucky to have a Design Within Reach store here in Boulder. Every day on my way to the office on the ever-hip Pearl Street mall (but that's another design subject) I stop and stare as I walk by the store window with its minimalist display of sexy Wassily chairs, Noguchi tables, and Pablo Pardo lighting. I particularly covet these Sapien bookshelves by Bruno Rainaldi. The industry news is that Jennifer Morla, of Morla Design, will be the new Creative Director of Design Within Reach. Jennifer plans to work on design strategies, brand launches, and an innovative design language. Congratulations Jennifer!

Chris Murphy, co-author of Real World Color Management, is without a doubt one of the smartest guys I know  — particularly on the hard-to-digest subject of graphics color management. So I listen up when Chris talks. Chris writes on the new ability to synchronize color settings across Adobe Creative Suite 2 software (Photoshop CS2, Illustrator CS2, InDesign CS2, and GoLive CS2) using Adobe Bridge.

Chris suggests you first set up your color settings in one application, like Photoshop. He recommends different settings for general purpose work (North America General Purpose 2 settings), Internet production work (North America/Internet settings, which convert images to sRGB when they are opened), preparing images for the Web in Photoshop (North America General Purpose 2 along with choosing Edit>Convert to Profile and using sRGB as the Destination space), and RAW photo editing in the Camera Raw interface (Adobe RGB or ProPhoto editing space). Then launch Adobe Bridge (which comes with Creative Suite 2) and synchronize color settings across all your Creative Suite software by choosing the settings group you want from Bridge.

If any of this sounds like geek speak, don't worry. It is. But it's geek speak you really need to know. If you need further explanation, read Chris' full article in print in the May 2005 issue of SBS Digital Design Magazine or this excerpt from the article at graphics.com.

Watch the earth-shattering announcement that Macs will be powered by Intel processors for yourself. Apple has posted a streaming video of Steve Jobs' keynote address at today's World Wide Web Developer's Conference 2005. I have to admit it. This man is one of my all-time heros. He strikes me as a guy who understands that the ride is often more important than the destination.