haha~~found an "ancestor" just before the ancestor presentation!

Helena and I had a wonderful Thursday! We went to Adobe Photoshop World 2009 at Hong Kong Exhibition Center. This event was a lecture given by a photoshop master Russell Brown on introducing Photoshop CS 4 and he also gave the audience a lot of tips when using CS4. Another lecturer was Michael Stoddart, who is a graphic designer focusing on 3D animation creations. He showed the audience how to make VIDEOS in PHOTOSHOP CS4!!! yes! That's true! CS4 even includes video making and 3D creating!

Though I am still using Photoshop CS3 at a very beginning, I was still very impressed by the two lecturers. Russell Brown is extremely humors and loves making jokes about Americans (But he is from New Zealand!). Michael Stoddart is rather shy compared to Russell but his skill of making a short video in a few minutes is very attractive.

What I found interesting was the promotion poster for this event. On the poster there are some hands holding the PS icon in hand and approaching to somewhere far. I am sure this design has an ancestor and I know its ancestor is the one showing below.

Those posters during the Cultural Revolution in China. People are holding Chairman Mao's Red Book in hand.

During that period of time, Chairman Mao actually had created a kind of self-worship. He wanted and in fact had made people worship him. So people at that time would rather abandon anything including academic and farming to "study" the red book. After searching and including what we have seen in class, I have already formed an idea that during those years there were a lot of posters like the above one. All were expressing an idea that the people respect and love Chairman Mao and they hold the red book firmly to show their royalty to Mao. And now Adobe adopted this ancestor as its promotion idea. I couldn't help thinking about the reasons. First, Adobe thought this gesture can give people a visual shock. Second, Adobe wanted its PS users to always follow them just like the royal people during that time in China.

Apart form the political issues, I actually do love this Adobe's design. It's simple but strong. It communicates ideas very clearly. It contains both Adobe's confidence in having a large group of PS users and its hope to have more in the future.

It was a great day today. And I am very happy to have found an "ancestor" and have written it in my blog to get some warm up exercise for the real presentation.