Take Learning to the Virtual Classroom

Friends of Design is delighted to announce that we have more training options for your to choose from, namely Adobe's eLearning® Suite, and we are one of the few training institutions that offer training in this field.

Do you need to train large numbers of people over a long distance, or create software simulations? Or how about demonstrating how to handle a precarious situation or piece of equipment without putting your team in the line of fire? Or are you simply bored with designing your training materials with only Microsoft Powerpoint®? Well, look no further as Friends of Design now offers you training in a set of creative tools to prepare and deliver engaging, interactive training for staff and students, the result of which would be fun and engaging learning material which will, best of all, allow them to learn effectively without leaving their desks and without you losing the integrity of the original training material in the delivery of said training.

So, for those new to this rapidly growing creative field, what is eLearning? Well, in a nutshell, eLearning is all types of electronically supported learning and teaching, so, for instance, anything learning done on a computer, whether web or network based, via the Internet, Intranet, audio / video tape, or CD's. Not only can you teach, or be taught, but also collaborate at any distance. Many people might think that this form of learning is not as effective as hands-on traditional learning, but Adobe has proved, with its popular eLearning Suite, that this type of education is not only effective, but efficient, easy to create and implement and powerful in its results.

With new integrated, user friendly technology, eLearning is sweeping the globe from virtual classroom to classroom, and along with collaborative technologies such as Adobe Captivate®, Adobe Presenter®, Adobe Photoshop®, Adobe Dreamweaver® and Adobe Flash Pro®, eLearning looks set to take off and reduce costs and time, both extremely valuable resources in our frantic office environments today. Large organisations are also on board, leveraging the connectivity of their large intranets, so they too can have effective training tools to present tests and training to up-skill and evaluate staff. With Adobe Captivate®, the flagship program of the suite and our main focus in the training, HR staff and lecturers can create presentations from scratch, or import them from Microsoft Powerpoint®, overlay explanatory videos and sound files "live", integrate them with the content and even include fun Flash® animations and other powerful interactive elements such as quizzes and surveys from their desktops. Wow!

So why delay? Contact us now to learn more about this amazing course, which can be specialised to suit you and your teams' specific needs. Call 021 402 0303 or email info@friendsofdesign.net for more info.

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We look forward to seeing you in class, as always.

Yours in Design
Éva

Featured Book: The Beautiful - Illustrations for Fashion and Style

Featured Book: Naïve - Modernism and Folklore in Contemporary Graphic Design

"Illustration is one of today’s fastest growing creative disciplines. Its versatility has made it a key visual element in fashion, lifestyle, editorial design, and advertising. Illustrations depict and enrich content in magazines and other publications. They help advertisers to address target audiences more precisely."

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"Naïve documents the extraordinary renaissance of Classic Modernism, from the 1940s to 1960s, in contemporary graphic design. This compilation introduces a new wave of young designers who are rediscovering the stylistic elements reminiscent of classic graphic design such as silkscreen printing, classical typography, hand lettering, woodcutting and folk art and integrating them into their work."

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FEATURED WEB COURSE

FEATURED DTP COURSE

FEATURED DIGITAL PUBLISHING COURSE

Wordpress Essential Skills (4 Week Evening Course)

Our Wordpress Essential Skills evening course offers you a comprehensive program that provides you with all the necessary tools and techniques to create amazing websites.

Wordpress is a free and open source blog publishing application and Content Management System. WordPress has a templating system, which includes widgets that can be rearranged without editing PHP or HTML code, as well as themes that can be installed and switched between. The PHP and HTML code in themes can also be edited for more advanced customizations. WordPress also features integrated link management; a search engine-friendly, clean permalink structure; the ability to assign nested, multiple categories to articles; multiple author capability; and support for tagging of posts and articles. Automatic filters that provide for proper formatting and styling of text in articles and so much more.

Next Wordpress Essential Skills: Evening Course: 5 September - 28 September 2011

Next Adobe Flash Essential Skills Evening Course: 3 October - 2 November 2011

Adobe Illustrator Essential Skills CS5 (4 Week Evening Course)

Our Adobe Illustrator Essential Skills evening course offers you a comprehensive program with all the necessary tools and techniques to create gorgeous Illustrations.

Adobe Illustrator is a popular graphics application that allows the user to create complex and attractive illustrative designs in vector format. In this course, you will learn how to use Illustrator to draw and manipulate simple shapes to create logos; how to create impressive type effects; and combine text and graphics to create poster designs and advertisements. By learning how to create custom graphics in Illustrator, you will be able to adapt your styles to many different types of illustrative projects. This course is suitable for any creative person from the genres of graphic or communication design to fashion design.

Next Adobe Illustrator Essential Skills: Evening Course: 5 September - 28 September 2011

Next DTP module Finishing Arts: Evening Course: 3 October - 5 October 2011

Apple Final Cut Pro™ Essential Skills (4 Week Evening Course)

Apple Final Cut Pro™ has become the industry standard in film and video editing, its capabilities ranging far and wide from editing, processing and output to a variety of formats. Apple Final Cut Pro™ supports a number of applications from simultaneously composited video tracks, audio tracks, multi camera editing and huge editing resources. We will show you how to apply these marvelous tools to your creative video workflows, resulting in top notch high quality productions guaranteed to impress every time.

Next Apple Final Cut Pro Essential Skills: Evening Course: 26 September 2011 - 19 October 2011

Next Motion Graphics module Adobe After Effects Essential Skills: Evening Course: 1 August - 24 June 2011

Create a Gang of Vector Ninjas - Tutorial

Create Vector Whiskey on the Rocks Using Adobe Illustrator CS5

WordPress - Best of 2011

"It can be quite tricky getting the hang of Adobe Illustrator, but if you take a step back and concentrate on the basics there's a range of options for creating great looking images." Have a look at this fun tutorial!

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"If you want to learn how to create a complex object with exacting details, then we have an awesome tutorial for you. Learn how to use multiple advanced Illustrator and art techniques to make this creative work."

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"WordPress has seen significant growth throughout the entire year, with an estimated 32 million sites running WordPress as of December, 2010. Whether you are completely new to WordPress or are a seasoned pro, this page contains some of the absolute best Free & Premium WordPress Themes available today."

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Creative Training Solutions

Featured Customised Course - Evening Digital Publishing for Mobile Devices Course

Are you an experienced Print Designer looking to migrate to screen? With just InDesign essential skills required as a prerequisite, you can up your game in a short time and embrace the new technologies such as content delivery to mobile devices and tablets. Let us help you get there – Friends of Design is the very first in the country to be training traditional Print Designers to effectively work with Adobe Indesign and Adobe's new Digital Publishing Suite to create stunning and readable content on mobile de vices such as the Apple iPad and Blackberry Playbook.

Having already achieved great success teaching this groundbreaking new software in Nigeria recently, and in the throes of delivering the first ever evening DPS course with a number of delegates from the local advertising industry in participation, Friends of Design is more than ready to deliver training to advertising and publishing professionals who want to get ahead and stay cutting edge. Publishing Digital Content is definitely the way of the future, with many well known publishing companies and brands heading in that direction. Consumers are also on board, eager to experience a richer, more interactive ex perience with the brand, and helping them feel more connected with the message that the brand is putting across.

From creating the layout design itself, to adding interactive overlays, embedding video and sound, to publishing it to the tablet or mobile device, Friends of Design will guide you through each step, and ensuring you get to grips with design best practice for tablets, understanding the commercial aspect of distributing to your clients, and producing interactive layouts that immerse and fascinate your clients, and please your advertisers.

Learn how to deliver content that wows, without appli cation development. With extras such as the Folio Bundler and Content Viewer, workflows are that much easier from testing and bundling to final distribution, and the ability to export your layouts to mobile devices such as the Apple iPad and Blackberry Playbook with ease and efficiency has made Digital Publishing completely accessible to the traditional print, publishing and advertising industries.

Also learn to produce content in for screen readers exporting from InDesign to .ePub and .Mobi format for the Kindle or Sony screen reading devices. Learn basic HTML and CSS for page layout control to ensure that your content display and be comfortable with validating and testing your ePub content for screen readers using Adobe Dreamweaver.

So don't delay, join us now for the next in-depth 5 week Comprehensive Digital Publishing Course evening course from 5 September – 5 Octiber 2011, 6 – 9pm.

Seats are limited so contact us now on 021 402 0303 or email info@friendsofdesign.net.

Office Space To Rent

Rent a "cube" in our cubefarm and meet and work with other creative people.

The advantage of working in a creative hub is enormous - you will be surrounded by other creatives which is the perfect environment for collaboration, feedback and even friendship. If you are working in any design genre (be it video, fashion, interiors, photography, sound film, illustration, web) and would like to be a part of a creative hub sharing ideas and skills, then please contact us asap for viewing.

We are situated at 186 Bree Street. Your cube is within the walls of a buzzing digital design training academy and includes free internet access.

Contact Margarita today for more info.

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