Adobe Creative Days is an event to discover what’s coming next from Adobe.

The tour covered 14 different venues and, though it wasn’t the perfect stage for connecting and exchanging ideas, it was very cool to have first-hand access and explanation of all the Adobe goodies.

These were my personal highlights:

• the interaction between Creative Cloud, Béhance and ProSite;
• the use of Kuler through the camera;
• choosing your favourite fonts and generating QR codes on Adobe InDesign CC;
• the freshness of Adobe Muse CC;
• and the very responsive web now available to design in real time with Adobe Edge Reflow CC.

As always, it was a pleasure to listen to Erik Spiekermann.
Despite the fact that his lecture was in german, I was able to pick up Paul Watzlawick’s 5 basic rules that explain human communication and show their paradox:

• One can not not communicate;
• Every communication has a content and a relationship aspect;
• Communication is always cause and effect;
• Human communication uses analog and digital modalities;
• Communication is symmetrical or complementary.

Wich, I suppose, influenced Erik Spiekermann to create his own manifesto:

1. We work for your customers. We may have to take their side at times;
2. Challenge us. Complacency is the enemy of great work;
3. We don’t give answers. Unless we can explore your question;
4. We are not suppliers. Partnership gets the best results;
5. Talk to us. We thrive on feedback;
6. Trust us. You hired us because we do something you cannot;
7. Pay us. Our work adds to your bottom line, so invest in our future.

He then added:

• Don’t work for arseholes.
• Don’t work with arseholes.
  ^_^