Mathew's Thoughts and Such

A few months ago I became curious about other designer’s design software usage. Reason being because of the debates I had been a part of at the time about upgrading or not upgrading to Adobe CS4. I’m one of those who decided to stay with CS3 because I didn’t see a worthy reason of paying the price to upgrade to CS4 when it really didn’t have many features that seemed worth it to me. Sure, I could get it by other means, but I don’t even think it is worth all that trouble.

Anyways, I wanted to know if I was part of the majority or the minority when it came to my thinking on design software usage. So I decided to ask my fellow designers on Twitter what design software they use. With some help from Sheri Strykowski (writer_sheri), Gerrel Saunders (gaksdesigns) and Dwyndal (Dwyndal) I gathered 79 responses on the matter. Below are the results:

• Adobe CS4: 44
• Adobe CS3: 26
• Adobe CS2: 7
• Other:
  • Adobe CS: 1
  • Corel 14: 1

As you can see Adobe CS4 was by far the most used proving that I am part of the minority and most are willing to pay the the money for the latest (or at least that is what we are going to go with). Personally, like I said earlier, I don’t see anything in CS4 that makes me go, “Wow! I have to update!” That being said, I will be upgrading to CS5 when the time comes, because already you can tell that it will be well worth it. Lets just hope that Adobe realizes that they need to lower the price of their software when CS5 does come out.

But, enough of what I think, below are some thoughts shared by others on Twitter:

Feel free to share your thoughts and what design software you use in the comments section. I look forward to reading them.

This is a logo that I recently created for a local youth soccer team. The soccer team is part of one of those leagues where all the kids just run around around kicking the ball in groups with no goalie and no score kept. The client wanted something cute, and I think I hit what she want, because when she saw it she let out a big, AWWWWWWWW!

While surfing the interwebs today I came across this post on Friendfeed. Its a blog post by PSDTUTS showcasing 48 absolutly amazing photomanipulation pieces of art. You must take some time today and go through and look at every piece, if it doesn’t blow your mind like it did mine, I don’t know what will.

I’m a firm believer in voting to get your voice heard. Sure, what/who you vote for may not win, but at least you are speaking your mind when you do vote. Obviously not everyone voted for Obama like I did, I’m ok with that, as long as they aren’t hateful about it. But, they voted, and if Obama does mess everything up they will have every right to complain about what happens.

Yet, there are those who didn’t vote, those are the people I don’t want to hear a word out of. Not a single word! I don’t care who you “say” you support, but if things don’t go the way you want over the next four years I don’t want to hear from you. You lose your right to a voice when you don’t exercise your right to vote, its that simple.

Anyways, to go along with this idea I created a poster yesterday. And well, I just wanted to show it off to everyone of the internets. Enjoy and feel free to share your ideas on the poster or the issue at hand.