I wandered lonely as a cloud...

What a difference a year makes. Exactly twelve months ago on March 4th, I left my full-time job of five years as a technical support specialist for Google to pursue a new career as an Information Developer for Johnson Controls, starting off on the second tier due to my experience and qualifications. Even though I had never "officially" worked as a technical writer, many of the projects and day-to-day communication that I was involved with at Google, fell into that area. However, my experience of working with authoring and/or publishing tools was limited to Google Apps and MS Office.

Starting in Johnson Controls, I was thrown into the deep end immediately as I started off working on documents that had been created in Framemaker, a somewhat archaic, non-intuitive publishing package designed more for book publishing than document creation. From there, I moved onto working with the Adobe Creative Cloud suite of programs including Illustrator (for creating/editing graphics), InDesign (for writing and designing documents), and Photoshop (for creating/editing images). To say it's been a steep learning curve is an understatement.

Image source

While I received very good training in all of the above, the most useful way to learn anything is simply to do it. So I tackled each challenge on a trial and error basis. If I couldn't figure it out from the Adobe help forums, or by searching online for the answers, I asked my colleagues who were more than willing to help. Overall, I have found the Adobe Creative Cloud suite user-friendly and intuitive to use. Once you get used to the layout of one package, using another one becomes quite easy. 

We did get a good grounding in using some of the above software in our one-day workshop in the first semester of the first year of the MA. Some of the tips and tricks that we learned then have proved useful on a practical basis. However, as with most knowledge - it's always better to 'do' than to 'watch'. There is nothing more satisfying than that "Aha!" moment when the virtual light bulb switches on and you finally understand how something works. 

While I really have only ventured onto the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the various skills and creative freedom that Adobe Creative Cloud allows, it never ceases to amaze me just how much you can learn and do in such a short period of time. If I can learn to do it, anyone can.  

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                      "Don't think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity. You can't try to do things. 
                       You simply must do things." ~ Ray Bradbury