Where do you work and what keeps you busy?

I work here in Cagayan de Oro City in the Philippines. Basically, I do three things daily. I work in the hospital as an assitant administrator , and im also engaged in a multi level networking business called first vita plus, and lastly I’m a home based fireworks designer.

As a FW designer, i usually create web mockups , applications interfaces and icons, and uncommon usage of Fireworks would be creating Logos and digital artworks.

What type of project are we showcasing today where Adobe Fireworks was used in the process?

One of my recent logo projects for hope nutritionals, I was really excited on working with this project because the dove symbol + hope text combination is often being used by several groups or companies, I had to find a way integrating both of them making the logo unique or stand out amongst other logos with with the dove concept.

Are there features in Adobe Fireworks that saved you time and money?

Yes there are a lot , but I’ll mention just three of them.

Superb design tools, bitmap and vector tools in one application, well that’s a lot, I have seen a lot of effects in other graphic programs that can be achieved in fireworks in a lesser time, and even keeping their vector paths intact too.

Second would be Sophisticated Prototyping, and the CSS Export feature to be specific, although its a new feature in Adobe Fireworks CS4, and there still needs a lot to be done to make it perfect , but I’m sensing a few years from now, we will be amazed whenwe fully use this feature and will produce clean W3C compliant code. Who knows, we could create a web mockup in fireworks, show it to the client, when we export it, it’s a complete website already =) and that future is approaching fast.

Lastly, the new enhancements to Adobe Fireworks CS4. From Improved performance, to Adobe PDF File Export, to Customizable and Reusable Fireworks Assets. Fireworks keeps getting better on every release, thank you Adobe!

What current web technologies are most favored when designing and developing for the web?

In designing websites , Fireworks or Photoshop for graphics , and Flash for creating dynamic websites. For developing them , importing graphics created from your favorite graphical application and into Dreamweaver seems to be the standard process being used today. CMS like wordpress, joomla , and drupal just to name a few , are increasily popular to their ease of use and editability .

Do you remember your “Ahaa” moment you had experienced when first opening up Adobe Fireworks?

Yeah I still remember the time way back then, when I was forced to choose between FW and PS. Photoshop being widely used while Fw was still a new comer , I always believe if you want to achieve something different, you have to use something different, and thats why I ended up using Fireworks. Back then there were only a few sites showcasing Fw, one design that totally blew me away was an image created by Eric Hockman , a vector billiard 9ball , too bad his old site is no longer online =( The first year using Fireworks was quite a challenge, there were not a lot of resources you can find unlike today, I often used Photoshop Tutorials and designing them in Adobe Fireworks and see if i can recreate them. There were not a lot of tools before, but the workflow was easy to understand and thats what makes me a believer in Adobe Fireworks.

Are you involved with any communities on the web?

Yes, I’ve been a part of Deviantart for 7 years now ,  for me it was one of the first social networking sites ( for artists ) ever created. Being able to comment, upload artworks and share opinions, and these features where present even way back 2000. Logopond , the best place for logo designers who want their logos to be critiqued by top logo experts in the community. Fireworksguruforum , probably the best Fw forum in the web today , with tons of sample files and fwgurus to help out your questions , its simply the best =)

Top social networking sites (The links redirect to my profile so you can add me up)  like LinkedIn , Facebook and Twitter.

Do you have a place on the web you call home? Where can we find you?

Yes , you guys can reach me in my website , and my deviantart profile . For fireworks related stuff , if you want to ask some questions or techniques , Im continously updating my fw blog and you can post a comment there.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 9th, 2009 at 2:11 pm and is filed under Interviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.