Testing… testing… testing… is this thing on?

And we’re live! After more than six years of running a specialized Desk Top Publishing website and writing about prepress, graphic design and PDF I’ve decided to start publishing in English. This website originated from the Dutch site called MacMojo. I’ve tried publishing in both languages but that just takes up too much of my time. I’ve got a daytime job as well, you know! So English it will be. I’ve had a absolutely awesome time working at the MacMojo website and getting to know all those skilled people that were kind enough to explain exactly what they did and how they did it. I think working on this international version called Digital-Engineers.net will be even better. But fist, let me tell you what I feel a true Digital Engineer is.

So what’s a Digital Engineer and where does the name come from?

In oktober 2008 my website MacMojo teamed up with a ‘software and support’ company called DOESUM in the Netherlands and set up an event for graphic designers and Desk Top Publishers called the DEA.

I felt it would be a great way to meet some of MacMojo’s readers and professionals that I interviewed during the six years I ran MacMojo. For DOESUM from it provided a unique opportunity to get free publicity and the new Acrobat User website they planned to launch. I used the MacMojo network to reach out and ask for professional speakers. And boy did I get ‘em!

I set up the ‘marketing side’ of things and quickly realized the event was bigger than just Desk Top Publishing. Nowadays the person we use to call ‘Desk Top Publisher’ is actually so much more. Think about it: you don’t just use QuakXpress/Illustrator/Photoshop now do you? No, you probably use InDesign as well and you send artwork to printers around the world. For that you need RGB- and Certified PDF Workflows, color profiles and color management, you name it! You’re no longer just a person between an Art Director and a printer’s pre-press department. You can create anything form a perfect concept-presentation (using Keynote.app of course) all the way down to a perfect Certified PDF with Certified Color. You’re an Art Director, graphic designer and pre-press department in one person.

More than DTP

“You’re an Art Director, graphic designer and pre-press department in one person”

So it was obvious to me the name had to be more than just ‘Desk Top Publishing’. After a long and hard struggle the Digital Engineer Assembly, or DEA, was born*. It didn’t take long for me to round up the a great group of professional speakers. Ton from Adobe Amsterdam was kind enough to let the DEA be the first non-Adobe event where Adobe showed off the new Creative Suite 4 features and Leo Verdonck from Enfocus (Esko Art Systems) was kind enough to support the DEA and even give away two Instant PDF licences. Other speakers included Erik Koldenhof, Frank de Man, Frans van der Geest and Peter Villevoye.

Thanks to Yuri Doesum I had a good location, and I had arranged great and well known speakers, had set up a name, logo and a quick website and all I really needed now was… an audience! What if no one showed up? Wouldn’t that be a bummer? Using the MacMojo website and Yuri’s network the DEA got mentioned in the Dutch graphic design magazine ‘Publish’ and we made the frontpage of just about all Dutch and Belgium Mac communities. Within a few weeks every seat was booked and we reached the maximum capacity of 80 visitors.

We had a great day and I’m sure it wasn’t because of the free Mojito’s! The only thing that did not go according to plan was the timeframe I put up for the speakers. We had to really ‘dragg’ some of them off stage because of time limits and the enthusiastic audience. At the end of the day I had spoken to a great deal of the MacMojo visitors and it was those great and motivated guys and girls that convinced me to let the Digital Engineer be more than just this ‘one time’ event.

This new website will of course still focus on technology-trends and ways to become better at your job. I feel a Digital Engineer uses more then just InDesign, Photoshop and Illustrator, so I am hoping to also inform you about other technologies. Just like the DEA, where we discussed and demonstrated KeyNote, ICC, CS4, PDF, Switch, and professional ways to produce illustrations. I hope I’ll be able to create the same good vibes online!

One of the other things the new site Digital Engineer will also focus on is ‘Dutch Design’. I want you to be able to see and feel the website is produced in The Netherlands. Apart from good articles we’ll try to focus on Dutch professionals and get them to share some of their knowledge and experience with you. Also this new site needs to be nice, clean and fast. I feel that with this new maximum non-pixel design I made a very good start. I hope you’ll agree. Please take the time to respond in the comments (English if you can). I enjoy hearing from my readers and hope you’ll enjoy reading Digital-Engineer.net.

*If you want I can tell you more about the Marketing side of the Digital Engineers Assembly. How I set up the ‘Brand personality’, the ‘Reasons to believe’, the ‘Consumer Insight’ and the ‘Essence of the DEA-brand’. All of these were very important because I really had to ‘lure’ my readers away from their computer! This could only be done if I gave them the respect they deserved and provided ‘bang for buck’. Time is money after all! Let me know using the ‘Reply’ at the bottom of this article if you want to know more about how I created the DEA-brand.