Los Angeles InDesign User Group

Muse: Create Websites Using an InDesign Interface

Thursday, January 19, 2012

Westside Pavilion, Community Room B, 10800 West Pico Boulevard, Los Angeles, California 90064

Meet at 7 p.m., Presentation at 7:15 p.m.

We are cutting the meeting preliminaries a bit this time since we need to vacate the premises by 9:30 p.m. rather than 10 p.m. If you want to hear it all, be on time. We don't start late.

West Los Angeles

Continuing the policy of holding meetings in various locations throughout the southland, this meeting of the Los Angeles InDesign User Group will be held in the Rancho Park section of West Los Angeles, adjacent to Westwood and Cheviot Hills.

This Month’s Topic: Muse: Create Websites Using an InDesign Interface

This month you will learn about Muse, an Adobe application, now in beta, that allows designers to create websites as easily as creating layouts for print. One of the reasons Muse is a boon for us is that the user interface and way of working parallels working in InDesign! Design and publish original HTML pages to the latest web standards without writing code. Muse allow you to:

• Plan your project — Easy-to-use sitemaps, master pages, and a host of flexible, site-wide tools make it fast and intuitive to get your site planned out and ready for design.

• Design your pages — Combine imagery, graphics and text with complete control, flexibility and power (almost as if you were using Adobe InDesign).

• Add interactivity — Drag and drop fully customizable widgets like navigation menus and slide shows, embed HTML code snippets to include things like Google Maps, enable tool tips, rollovers and much more.

• Publish your site — Preview your site with Muse to see how it looks and test how it works. Then convert to a live website using Adobe.

About the Presenter

shaRon sachse will walk us through designing and building a complete website with Muse. When not speaking to us, shaRon creates art and expressions for the digital canvas, motion and web using a suite of Adobe tools. She studied design and photography at Minneapolis College of Art and Design and returned to the classroom at Santa Monica College for a degree in web design/development. Today she does front-end development incorporating video, animation and rich interactive experiences on multiple screens. shaRon also builds apps extending creativity to the new innovative handheld devices. Follow her at @PCartiste.

Agenda

7:00 p.m. - Meet and greet

7:10 p.m. - Welcome and announcements

7:15 p.m. - Presentation (with mid-presentation break)

9:00 p.m. - Raffles

9:30 p.m. - Goodbyes

Getting to Community Room B

Community Room B is located on Level 3E at the western end of Westside Pavilion behind Landmark Theaters. If you ask someone for directions make sure you specify Community Room B because there is also a Community Room A, which is at the other end of the mall. The door to Community Room B is located on the west end of the overpass that connects Nordstrom’s to Landmark Theaters, on the south side of the overpass. You will walk through two doors to an exterior corridor which makes one turn to the right. Follow the signs.

Parking

The best place to park is in area G1-5 west of Westwood Blvd. Parking is a flat $3 for anyone attending an event in the Community Room. We are trying to get parking comp’d but I think it’s a long shot since parking isn’t handled by the mall, but is contracted out. Bring $3 just in case.

Raffles

• SOFTWARE: one eDocker product

Value to $995.00

Your choice of ONE of the following:

eDocker2

eDocker Tablet Publisher

• SOFTWARE: one Adobe CS5.5 product

Value to $699.00

Your choice of ONE of the following:

InDesign CS5.5

InCopy CS5

Illustrator CS5

Dreamweaver CS5.5

Flash Professional CS5.5

Flash Catalyst CS5.5

• SOFTWARE: Markzware product

Value to $399.00

Your choice of ONE of the following:

Q2ID plugin

ID2Q

PUB2ID

PageZephyr

FlightCheck

• 3-MONTH SUBSCRIPTION: Stock Layouts

Value $299.00

Full access to the entire Stock Layout template library for three months.

• 3-MONTH SUBSCRIPTION: Lynda.com

Value $112.50

Full access to all Lynda.com online training courses for three months including their new Muse course.

• PUBLICATION: InDesign Magazine

Value $69.00

• SOFTWARE: TypeDNA

Value $49.00

New Sponsor

This month we welcome TypeDNA as a sponsor. TypeDNA is an Eddy-award-winning font-management tool and the only one that runs both standalone and within Creative Suite. It significantly enhances font capabilities and complements the design process for both Mac and Windows.