*Transcription Disclaimer: the following transcription was automatically generated, and may have errors, or lack context.*
Andrew Hochradel:
Hello, everyone, and welcome to Adobe Live. I'm Andrew Hochradel.
Alex Lazaris:
And I'm Alex Lazaris.
Andrew Hochradel:
We got it. Welcome. We are doing a very special Adobe Express beta bootcamp this week. Today is the last day. If you've been joining us the whole time, leave us a little ice cream cone in Chat and let us know if you've seen the other two days of this bootcamp. Alex, who are you? What do you do, and what are we doing today? Quick little overview, three questions.
Alex Lazaris:
Okay, I got it. First question. I'm Alex Lazaris. I run a design studio called Lazaris www.wearelazaris.com. If you want to check out our work, I see Anika in chat. I want to see those ice creams and some memes in chat as well. Today we're going to be working on some brand bootcamp stuff inside of Express. We're going to bring brand guidelines in. You can go in and tweak it, sync it with your libraries, and then you can also collaborate in real time as well. So lots of goodies all in this beta.
Andrew Hochradel:
Lots of goodies. So if you are a creative professional and you are working in Illustrator, if you are working in Photoshop, it's very easy to also work in Adobe Express beta and collaborate with your clients. We are going to be doing a little bit of roleplay of designer client and showing you how you can use libraries, how you can use the power of Adobe Express to scale content and really help your clients build stuff out quicker to understand their brand a lot better. And we'll give you some insight about how branding works because Alex here is a branding whiz. So we'll show you a little bit of knowledge, a little bit of application, and a whole lot of fun here on Adobe Live. That cadence was good. It felt right. All right, let's hop in and let's hop into your screen and talk about where we will be existing today and how people can get there.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah.
Alex Lazaris:
So first of all, I have a free brand guidelines template that you can grab if you go to Website www.wearelazaris.com and then go up to our Resources tab and then click Simple Brand Guidelines. Just grab that asset from Gumroad and then you can use it. So essentially, boom. I've got a stripped down version of it that we'll be using to start off our template today. You just go in here, suggest it in the top row.
Alex Lazaris:
Boom.
Alex Lazaris:
First thing there, you can't miss it. Click it in your new Exprs Adobe.com and go to your desktop. Well, that's where my download is. Simple brain guidelines. Template. And then upload it directly into the file. It'll take like, just a couple of minutes. This is a stripped down version. It only has four pages in it, so I don't overload the system. I think it's 100 megabits upload limit right now. Okay, so that's just something to keep in mind when you're uploading something really big. This goes for your Photoshop, Illustrator files and PDFs.
Andrew Hochradel:
What's cool is it's going to take this. And it's not just like, here's a PNG, it's going to give us specific things.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, exactly. And I've done this last stream. There's some little bugs where the type gets nudged over a little bit. But I do give you the guides already, so you can just nudge things back a little bit. So it just kind of give you that shape layer.
Andrew Hochradel:
And what's really cool is if you're missing a font, it's not going to throw it into the default myriad or whatever. It's going to try to replace it with the next close font, which is really cool. So even if the style changes a little bit, looks a little different, it will be a close font. That is the closest font from Adobe fonts that it will pull it over there for you automatically, which is really cool.
Alex Lazaris:
So we'll do a quick high level of what is in this template that you have to start again. This is the four pages just for this practice. But you've got your logos do's Don'ts section, or really, this is just Don'ts. We'll mess up some logos in there for fun. Your color guide section, so you can import your colors from your libraries or do it manually if you want to. And then your type system to show some type ramp stuff. So that gives you a lot more flexibility there. And then you can start plopping in some Photos and images to kind of create a mood board of sorts. And you can use Firefly if you want to kind of create mood boards to give examples to your clients around. Hey, this is something that we're looking for. Look, feel wise to get your brand consistent and looking great all the time.
Alex Lazaris:
That's cool.
Andrew Hochradel:
So you can do that with PDFs, which is really cool. But if you are working in Illustrator or Photoshop, you also can do it with an AI file. So if we want to pop over into my screen, all you need to do again is click right here on the start from your content. And that content can be, as you see, there a PDF, a PSD, or an AI file. And I'm going to come in here and do this slides. So this is something that I created over in Adobe Illustrator, and it is just some slides. So maybe some branded content that I've been working on that my client needs access to. I don't have to send them the AI file. I can get everything right here, so oh, I think the size is too big. All right, let me screen this down and we'll try it again. Let's hop back over and you can continue with your branding stuff.
Alex Lazaris:
Cool.
Alex Lazaris:
So hopping back in and on my screen here's, just kind of like a simple brand guidelines that I built out in Illustrator, you can kind of see, it's got logo guides, different sizes, different types of variations, letting the client know you've got all these things at your disposal. Here's when to use it, here's when to not use it. Here's your color palette, all these things you can add into your library. So if I wanted to, I could go grab this color thing, rectangle, and then just do add, fill color. I'm adding it to the Hawk and Laz color library. So you just grab all these little pieces, just click the plus button on your library section. Add, fill, color, boom. Grab this. And then I'm going to add the Citron as, like, a pop color that we have. We also give them print colors and all that good stuff. We'll also throw in just a couple different logo marks, so we have those options as well.
Andrew Hochradel:
And what's cool is, as he's doing this, let's hop back over to my screen real quick. You can see that I'm in the Adobe Express Beta, and maybe I'm building a social media image. I have a shared library. And as you're doing this, they're literally showing up live. And so I can be working on something and be like, hey, I need that color. I need that asset, I need that logo. And you, as the designer, can collaborate with me in real time. And maybe this is set up as a template. Maybe it's something that I'm throwing my photos in. It's super easy to go back and forth, and this is literally happening. Like, he drags it and then three, two, one. It is synced. So it literally is taking, like, three or 4 seconds, which is crazy. And then again, I can just click here and start adding that in. Let's say that I wanted this logo to be on a color background. I can click on the background and just set the background color. I can actually look in my Hawk and Laz colors. Let's go ahead and click on the plus. Boom. And there all of my colors just went right in there. And we want this, like, hot, crazy chartreuse. Would this be a chartreuse?
Alex Lazaris:
Citron.
Andrew Hochradel:
Citron.
Alex Lazaris:
Okay.
Andrew Hochradel:
Yeah, I'm down with Citron. You can apply effects here. So I could do maybe if I wanted it to be white, I could do a duo tone and just make both of these white. Or I could ask Alex and say, hey, can I please have a white version of this logo? And you could upload it to the library.
Alex Lazaris:
It's in there for you.
Andrew Hochradel:
Look at you go. Look at us together at last, collaborating. And the best thing about this is maybe I'm like, Alex, you know what? Maybe we want to make a little change to this document here. But I'm away from my computer. We are collaborating live on this, right? And that's a new feature here in Adobe Express Beta. You can collaborate live. So if he wanted to, he could hop in and we'll see his little cursor show up here in just a second. It is live. Live collaboration. So as he moves something, as he moves his cursor around, there'll be a little button that's like Alex Lazaris, and he'll be able to collaborate on this with me, which is really cool. Okay, I cut you off.
Alex Lazaris:
No, you're good. Now I'm trying to jump into that.
Andrew Hochradel:
All right. So live collaboration also can do animation. You can do video, you can do all kinds of things, and you can do multiple pages. So let's say that I wanted to add a page to this because Alex is going to work on the COVID I just click on Add page, and it's going to add another page to our document. So if you hop over there we go. There he is. Alex Purple.
Alex Lazaris:
Hi.
Andrew Hochradel:
Feels on brand for you. So Live collaboration, which is really cool, between the libraries, between Illustrator, Photoshop, and over here in Adobe Express beta, it is all collaboration. It is all something that is helping you increase your workflows as a creative professional with your clients, which is really cool.
Alex Lazaris:
Let me just go in there and erase the background real quick.
Andrew Hochradel:
I was saying and while he does that, I could even add in an animation. And I think, let's see what happens if I add an animation to the object while you are removing the background. Let's see how live this live collaboration is. So I'm going to do a nice little bungee here and then out. We're going to have it bungee on out. I also want to move it up a little bit and then actually let's move it to the bottom. And then you let me know when that background is removed.
Alex Lazaris:
Okay.
Andrew Hochradel:
So it removed the background of the object and let's hit play. And that animation is still there. So I was moving it and adding animation while you were removing the background. And it updated live in real time with that collaboration. This is so fun. I always start demoing this and then just start having fun with how cool the real time collaboration is.
Alex Lazaris:
No, it's great.
Andrew Hochradel:
All right, so let's hop back and talk a little bit more about branding and setting that up and how to kind of equip your clients for that. So let's hop to your screen and take a look at that template and continue on with branding knowledge.
Alex Lazaris:
So we can either grab it directly from our libraries or we can copy paste the vectors directly in. So those of y'all who are not familiar with working in Express and you are a seasoned vet in the design community, you can download all your exprs files and it'll save it as PDFs or SVGs and all that good stuff for you. So you can do your logo creation in Express and pull it out and then do all your actual design work in Illustrator. If you need to fine tune things so you now can reverse that and upload your own vector images as well. So if I don't want to use the Libraries feature, I can just copy paste the actual logo in directly and then boom, place it in there. This is obviously a Do's Don't section, so we do want to kind of ruin it a little bit. So let's see here. What can I do on the don't section, elements can put like, Brushstrokes behind it. This brand is an interior design firm, and they're really elegant. So we want to make sure that we're not junkifying their brand. And so in the don't section, it's really important to add the junk to show them not to do that.
Andrew Hochradel:
And someone is asking, will clients need to pay for Adobe in order to collaborate with me? I believe the answer is, if you have an Adobe ID, adobe Express is available for free. That would be a really good little jingle. So if you have an Adobe ID, Adobe Express is free to use. They can't collaborate with you. There are some little crowns. And so as you're looking over here in the Media section, if we want to flip back over, if you're working with Photos or a template, and you ever see this little crown, that means it is a premium feature, which means you do need to be a Creative Cloud Member. If you are a Creative Cloud member, guess what? That's right. It is just included. It's all there. You can use everything in there. So it's really great. Also, if you are using Adobe Express and maybe want to get feedback and you're working in Illustrator Photoshop Express altogether, you can use Share for review or you can just share this with your clients to get feedback. They can add comments and let you know what's going on there. But live collaboration, have them hop on in and make some stuff, see what happens. I need an in depth from going from Illustrator to Exprs.
Alex Lazaris:
Easy.
Andrew Hochradel:
Yeah. Here's the in depth that we're going to give you. I'm going to open up a file. So this file right here, so this is just color one. I'm going to save this. So this is maybe a design that I have been working on. And we're going to save this as an AI file, and I'm just going to save it as color. Here's the in depth workflow. You open Adobe Express after saving your Illustrator file. You click right here on Start from your content and then click on Color and hit Open. And from there, it's uploading it to the cloud. And once it's in the cloud, it is going to convert it into an exprs document. Once it's converted into an exprs document, that's the workflow. That's the in depth. I click on open an Editor and watch what happens.
Alex Lazaris:
Boom.
Andrew Hochradel:
All my shapes are in here. I can ungroup everything. And you can see now we've got all these individual pieces, and we can literally play around and create here in Adobe Express from the vectors that we just built in Illustrator. Someone asking, does it have to be a vector image? No, you can do this with Photoshop as well, and it will pull in each of the layers of Photoshop into that document with you as well, which is really cool. All right, back to branding.
Alex Lazaris:
Okay, so what I'm doing here and if you're not familiar with Exprs, you have this Elements Assets section. You can go in there, you can choose design, assets, backgrounds, shapes, all these beautiful things, and you can quickly swap out assets. And for doing don't section, it's really easy to grab stuff that will break your brand guidelines and throw it in. So that's kind of what we're doing right now, is we're just trying to show the world what not to do with these brands. Yes. And so what I'm doing here is just going into the shape layer. We got this, like, flower petal thing. I'm going to grab what we did with Voodoo Val a couple weeks ago. This color palette from a different brand, I want to show don't do that. Don't pull somebody else's colors. Even though there's a lot of green in this Francis Harvey brand, we want to make sure we're not just pulling in colors at willy nilly levels. That's a new thing.
Andrew Hochradel:
Absolutely not. So I am searching through for a PSD here that we can take a look at because somebody asked, does it have to be a vector file? It does not have to be a vector file. It actually can be a PSD file as well. So I'm trying to find one. All right, cool. So this is a PSD file. These are some stickers that I made for some branding for a photographer who will be on Adobe Live on Monday, actually. And I can open this PSD. This file might be too large. But what it does, basically, is it changes the layers of your PSD into layers in Adobe Express. And I know that there are a lot of layers in this file, so it might actually be too big. Oh, it was not. So let's open an editor and see what happens. So over here I can ungroup is this just one image? Oh, they are just multiple images. Great. Anyway, you can see that that PSD did have layers of the stickers. I think one is textured and one is untextured. And so it pulled in those layers for me right there. All right, continue. We're just going back and forth between branding and demo here. If you have questions, keep asking the questions, because that's what we're here for, is to just show you how to do stuff.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah.
Alex Lazaris:
So what I'm doing right now is adding the do not add drop shadows section. And I can obviously do this in Photoshop. I can do this in Illustrator. But sometimes knowing the limits of a tool like in Exprs, how I fake a drop shadow for this is just going in and then doing an adjustments layer on it and then adding a blur and just making it kind of really not good for our brand. And then I'm just going to pull down a duplicated layer on top of it and then boom, drop shadow is engaged. And so that kind of really quickly. Or we're spinning up new logos, all done within Express, and it gives us that flexibility to crank out guidelines really fast.
Andrew Hochradel:
And this is stuff that I would have usually done in Illustrator or InDesign. Yeah, doing it in Express to me is a really good back and forth and it's really easy to update, have this accessible to the clients and have it accessible. So that over on my screen. We're actually collaborating, I believe, on no, we're collaborating on a different file. But if I was working on these brand guidelines, I could very easily come in here and just copy this color and then bring it over to my project and paste it in. So super easy to be able to grab stuff and go back and forth and collaborate with your clients. This is a PSD that when I was talking about PSD. Is this a PSD that we created? And you can see all the layers are here and have converted over from that PSD into Adobe Express. So super easy. New Adobeexpress.com, you can test it out for yourself. Grab a PSD and see what happens.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, perfect. So what I'm doing now is I went into the document that Hawkrottle is working on with me in real time. And what I'm going to start doing is start making like social graphics and things like that that we can pull together in real time. So we've got the color palette in our library. We've got our logos in our templates as well. So I'm going to actually just grab like an interior design photo. So since this is an interior design business, I'm going to look for photos of house spaces or furniture.
Alex Lazaris:
Cool.
Andrew Hochradel:
And while you do that, I think I want it to be in a frame. So I'll just add a frame to it.
Alex Lazaris:
Cool.
Andrew Hochradel:
Collaboration.
Alex Lazaris:
I'm just grabbing that, resizing it. I'm essentially just trying to plop things in and then let Andrew take it from there if needed. So if you're familiar with working with Figma, these real time collaborations just make getting that work done so much faster and being able to do that in Exprs and bring your clients into the process or your team or collaborators, it's just a really great use of kind of getting work done.
Andrew Hochradel:
And I'm going to group these in and then just pull them into the center right here. Perfect. Maybe you want to change the background color and maybe you can add a logo in there.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah.
Andrew Hochradel:
So again, I can go to background color and we do have that library. And so I can go to your stuff. We can go to brands and libraries and then background color. I'm going to add in just that olive color. Oops, right here. Olivey. That's looking good. And questions from Chat.
Alex Lazaris:
Guess what?
Andrew Hochradel:
Questions. We have chat for you. We have answers for your questions. Why would you use Adobe Express if you can do all of this in Illustrator? Because you can do it in Illustrator and bring it into Express and then collaborate with your clients. That's the big thing. Is it's for One stop shop. You also could do video. So let's say you can't do this in Illustrator.
Alex Lazaris:
You can schedule it to post your social stuff too.
Alex Lazaris:
Yes.
Andrew Hochradel:
So you can take it all if you're working in Illustrator, bring it over here. Let's say I created this whole document in Illustrator. Great. I can group this, and then from here, I can go to Animation. And let's have this kind of fall down onto the wall. That looks really good. Let's do a little bit longer duration. Let's do a little less bounces. So now that comes in right there. I also could come over here. And now in Adobe Express, I could go to Media, and then I'm going to go to Audio and record voiceover. I have my little microphone here. And let's just do a voiceover. Here we go. It come in this summer to find the perfect stuff for your perfect apartment. All right. And so let's go ahead and add some music to that as well. And again, this is just a reason for me, as a Creative, why I would use this outside of Illustrator. I'm going to have happy family loop, and from here, I'm going to throw on my headphones so I can hear what you all are hearing. And we couldn't have done this before, but Alex is designing, adding some more brand elements, and from our Illustrator document that we imported, this is what it is. Now, come in this summer to find the perfect stuff for your perfect apartment. So that's a reason why you would work in Adobe Express outside of Illustrator. I know that there are a lot of times we have our workflows in Illustrator, we have our workflows in Photoshop. Take them to the next level with Adobe Express. Bring it on over.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah.
Alex Lazaris:
And honestly, the more tools you know, the more weapons you have to get work done or do it to get it done quicker or more efficiently or whatever you need to do it's. Like, you can build brand guidelines in Illustrator. You can build it InDesign. Some people have made them in Photoshop. However, you need to do it. Whatever's comfortable for you. The more you know, the better you'll be.
Alex Lazaris:
Yes.
Andrew Hochradel:
All right, we have a ton of questions coming in, so guess what? You keep going there. We're just going to lightning round. I'll throw some quiz questions at you and see if you know the answers.
Alex Lazaris:
Oh, God.
Andrew Hochradel:
All right. Question one. For $100, does the Live Sync work in the other direction from Adobe Express into other Adobe apps?
Alex Lazaris:
You're asking me if I know yes on the spot? I don't know.
Alex Lazaris:
Okay.
Alex Lazaris:
I've never done it.
Andrew Hochradel:
The answer is kind of no. The answer is mostly no. But a hack that you can do is you can actually export as a PDF when you download and then take the PDF into Illustrator, and it will pull that back in. So 100%, that kind of is a workaround, not 100%. Yes. And someone's asking, if I use a professional image on there, would the client need an Adobe subscription? I believe it adds a water no. I think no is the answer.
Alex Lazaris:
No.
Andrew Hochradel:
I think no is the answer.
Alex Lazaris:
You're using any assets that you're getting from Adobe stock through Express, you're good to use it if you have your Adobe Creative Cloud stuff, so you're good. There's no watermarks. If you're uploading an image with a watermark, it's going to have a watermark. If you're not, then it won't.
Andrew Hochradel:
Yes. Love it. Any risks we should know about using beta? The only risk that I can know of is it still is in beta. So there are features that are being added, and I do believe that there may or may not be migration to the general release. I believe that the files that you're building now will come over, but I'm not fully confident on that. So because it is in beta and not wide release, I would say play around in here, experiment, learn the progress, learn the process. But, oh, here is a disclaimer. If you are using any of the text to image or any of the Firefly tools, those are not safe for commercial use yet, but are intended to be safe for commercial use. Continuing on, are there any risks? Got that one. Hey, great to see you both. What's up? How do you import text on a curve from Photoshop to Exprs without losing the curved text? OOH, that's a good question.
Alex Lazaris:
Oh, I haven't run into that issue.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah.
Andrew Hochradel:
So the answer is I am not sure what would happen there, but I can come into text, and I can actually add text if we want to hop to my screen and we can say, big sale, and then we can just come over here. And I believe that we can go to Shape right here, and we can put this in a circle. In the current version of Adobe Express, the wide release, there actually is options to put it on the curve. I believe, again, it is beta. So if there's something that you see in the current version of Exprs that's not here, it might be on the way. So be looking out for new updates as we go.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah.
Andrew Hochradel:
Alex, for $375, are Infographic templates available in the Adobe Express beta?
Alex Lazaris:
I don't know. The answer to that?
Andrew Hochradel:
I think, yes. There are tons and tons and tons of templates. All you need to do is come over here and we can pick where we want to go. So I think we want a flyer. And you can do browse templates and then I can just search from templates over here. So let's try info. Graphic. Hit enter and yeah, there are a couple of infographics in here. And as you can see, thousands of more templates are on the way. Once we're out of beta, you can see right there.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah.
Alex Lazaris:
And if you see something or if you have ideas around things that you want to make or turn into
templates, like Infographics, feel free to do it and then add it to the world.
Alex Lazaris:
Yes.
Andrew Hochradel:
Someone asking, can I upload to flickrfrom express? You can go to download and then just do PNG here. And then you could upload that. Not directly, but you could download it and upload. Last question we probably have time for, can I export the Adobe Express to my phone? Adobe Express on my CPU? No. Right now they are two different. So we are in the Adobe Express beta, which is the desktop experience. It is only a desktop experience. The mobile experience is a bit different. So you can't go back and forth. Right now, it is just the beta for you to experience play around with. But if you are making things in the general release of Adobe Express, it will sync to the Adobe Express app on your phone as well. All right. Time flew by. That was a lot, but all right, let's see. Oh, you doing an extra little page here.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, I can't stop. When I'm in Express, I'm just like, I got to go to the next thing and do another social graphic and another you kind of just go you just can't stop.
Andrew Hochradel:
I get it.
Alex Lazaris:
Too addicting.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah.
Andrew Hochradel:
So thanks for joining us. If you have more questions, do you know when Express will be live? I don't. It is in beta now. Eventually is the answer that I have to give you. I'm so sorry. But it will be on the way. Adobe's trying to give everybody a little insights to what's in the pipeline. You can see this in Firefly. You can see this in a Photoshop beta. You can see this over here in Adobe Express beta. We're trying to give you a little look at what's coming down the pipeline. So it's for you to play around with. Try some new stuff. And Alex, as we close out, any advice for the Creatives that are hopping into Adobe Express to get started?
Alex Lazaris:
I think my recommendation is play around with it, have fun with it. I think it's going to open up your kind of whole creative world with all the assets and starting points and templates that you can use to start working with it. So, yeah, just have fun in. Exprs. Enjoy it, play around with it and see where the limits of the tool are and how you can incorporate it into your workflow to deliver work quicker for yourself and for your clients.
Alex Lazaris:
Yep.
Andrew Hochradel:
So of things when they're playing around with it, what are your favorite things that they should explore with the Adobe Express beta?
Alex Lazaris:
Oh, man. I think any of the gen AI stuff like Firefly incorporated into it is really exciting and fun. It gives you a lot of options. I really love the new type tools features. If you've used Exprs in the past, the way that the type and text tools have been changed are really therapeutic for me.
Alex Lazaris:
Yes.
Alex Lazaris:
So I think those are my kind of favorite ones are like type shapes, libraries, firefly. Did I just list off everything except for video?
Alex Lazaris:
Yes.
Alex Lazaris:
Okay.
Alex Lazaris:
Yes.
Andrew Hochradel:
Which I think is mine. So mine is the animation stuff. Go play around with the animation. The voiceover and the music are the things that are the newest funnest pieces for me. So go play around with all of that. Let us know what you're creating. Hashtag Adobe Express. Or you can even tag us on Instagram at Adobe Live. You can go follow over there and you also can subscribe to us on YouTube to get more content for you. If you're just joining. Oh, yes, there it is right there. If you are just joining for the boot camp this week, we have so much more. We have content from 09:00 a.m to 02:00 p.m every single day here on Adobe Live. Make sure that you subscribe, come back for more content. And I believe later today we'll be live doing some fun stuff with AI at noon. At noon.
Alex Lazaris:
So.
Andrew Hochradel:
Come back, Pacific. Noon, Pacific Time. We'll be back with some AI. The future creating branding mockups. I believe. Mockups for AI.
Alex Lazaris:
We're going to be using AI.
Andrew Hochradel:
Yes. The future. We'll see you there. Thanks, everybody. Leave your comments or questions in the comments if you need them, and we'll see you later. Bye.
