Well, what a busy old month I’ve had! I’ve crossed several time zones and been on more flights than I care to mention. But all for good reason.
Earlier this month I went to Gratz to record an After Effects training DVD for the amazing folks at Video2Brain. It was really good to [...]

There are a few nice pieces of software around at the moment that I want to share with you. The first is Beauty Box from Digital Anarchy. An incredible plug-in for video applications (like After Effects, Premiere Pro and Final Cut Pro). If you shoot interviews or wedding videos and don’t have a good make [...]

I apologize for my recent silence in the blog-o-sphere but I’ve been busy putting the finishing touches to my forthcoming book, “Design Essentials for the Motion Media Artist“.

It’s funny, I’ve written books before. Software books, teaching people how to use Adobe After Effects to be specific. I was commissioned to write these books, at the [...]

I’m hoping to see a few of you at MacWorld 2010 where I’ll be speaking next year. I love San Fransisco so will be taking a little extra time out to hang out with my old friends, Amacker and Nina at the Lucky 13 bar on Castro. I also hope to catch up with all [...]

I’ve had many careers in my lifetime, one of them being a deejay in the 1990s London club scene. I regularly deejayed at clubs like FF at Turnmills, Mix it at Heaven, The Fridge, The legendary Bell in Kings Cross, and the good old Market Tavern. I gave it all up in about 1993 to [...]

Creative Director (Europe) - Gridiron Software
As research for my book I’ve been looking at the effects of drugs on creativity, and finding out if the two are linked. I’m hoping to get some feedback from the readers of my blog regarding their own experiences but first I guess it’s fair to give you my own [...]

I’m in the process of writing a new book and my research involved talking to designers about the problems they are facing. Where do they get inspiration from? How do they keep up with new software features? How do they learn new techniques? So I decided to do a survey. To my surprise, top of [...]

Every now and then a piece of software comes along that changes your life. The first one for me was Cubase, I learned how to do music sequencing on an old Atari during my deejaying career in the late 80’s and early 90’s. Then there was Deluxe Paint, the first application that allowed me to [...]

by Angie Taylor, Creative Director (Europe) - Gridiron Software
I’ve just been preparing my demo’s for Photoshop World 2009 in Boston where I’ll be presenting Gridiron Software’s Flow in conjunction with Adobe Photoshop.
My all time favorite Photoshop book has to be ‘How to Cheat in Photoshop‘ by Steve Caplin. Steve has a unique style and makes [...]

I’ve been doing a bit of research into video formats for the web and wanted to get some feedback from viewers on what are perceived pros and cons associated with the different formats available.
I’ve always like Quicktime as it’s easy to encode and embed, plus, you can allow viewers to download the QT and view [...]

By Angie Taylor - Creative Director, Gridiron Software
I love the software industry for its diversity. It’s pretty unique and is made up from people with backgrounds ranging from designers, artists, musicians, scientists, technical wizards, PR, sales and marketing gurus, hobbyists, enthusiasts, the list goes on.
People like myself can cross the divide from user into maker [...]

by Angie Taylor - Creative Director (Europe), Gridiron Software
Well, I’ve just left Broadcast Video Forum 2009 after a successful launch event for our new software, Flow. And I must say I’m pretty exhausted, I don’t think I’ve ever talked so much in my life!
I’ve only been with the Gridiron Software for three months but already [...]

Creative Director > Gridiron Software
Software features can dominate our designs, the design becomes prevalent to such an extent that it takes precedent over the designer. We’ve all heard an ad or feature described this way; ‘y’know, the one with the puppet tool and the new 3D text animators’.
Isn’t it about time that we escaped from [...]

Creative Director > Gridiron Software
With desktop software being so accessible it means that a growing number of jobbing designers are self-taught. In many cases they are great at design but lacking in areas such as project management and development.
We have all experienced situations where our work gets challenging so we distract ourselves and procrastinate by [...]