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Lisa Lopuck

Lisa Lopuck is a traditionally trained illustrator and designer. Yet from the beginning of her career, she diverged from tradition. Eager to explore an intriguing new concept called multimedia, she applied her training to new media and emerging technologies. Since her introduction to new media, she has designed and produced multimedia at some of the most exciting and innovative companies, including the now defunct Apple Multimedia Lab, Skywalker Ranch, KidSoft, publisher of a quarterly CD-ROM for children, and Kaleida Labs(a joint effort between IBM and Apple) as well as many others. Having established herself as an accomplished multimedia designer with an impressive list of previous achievements, she began to expand her engagement in multimedia, donning the role of teacher as well as practitioner.
She has contributed to the community of new and upcoming multimedia designers as a teacher at San Francisco State University's Multimedia Extension Program. There she teaches both her signature class, "Graphic Design: Making the Transition into Multimedia" and all levels of Photoshop. With her design class, Lisa lays the foundation for print-based graphic designers to map their skills into multimedia. And it was through this class, and the instructional reading materials she prepared for this class, that Lisa undertook yet another professional engagement with multimedia, this time as an author of a multimedia book.
In the process of preparing materials for her class, Lisa had written and designed a 40 page handout booklet meant to explore and illustrate multimedia design to supplement her in-class lectures and discussions. The effective impact of the booklet as an instructional guide, and the enthusiastic urging of her students encouraged Lisa to consider publishing the handout as an actual book.
Despite her extensive experience in multimedia and graphic design, Lisa had never before ventured into hard-bound printed-text territory. In the absence of an agent, publishing contacts, even an inkling as to the process of publishing a book, Lisa set forth, booklet in hand, to explore the possibilities. What followed was the step-by-step evolution of an idea into the soon to be released book, Designing Multimedia.
The first step on our intrepid designer's trek was a visit to friend and colleague Nathan Shedroff, creative director of vivid publishing. With the publishing credits for Multimedia Demystified and Careers in Multimedia to the vivid name, Nathan had savvy advice for Lisa: go determine which publishers are publishing your kind of book. Who is producing books on similar topics?
Lisa conducted her research on the shelves of a local bookstore, and narrowed her options to just two publishers. With more consideration, she singled out Peachpit Press, a division of Addison-Wesley, and publishers of such seminal texts as the tome-like Macintosh Bible. Unaware that Peachpit was located across the bay in Berkeley, Lisa called the 800 directory and requested a number for the publisher. Then she made the fateful call. With tenacity and tact, Lisa overcame her first hurdle: the receptionist ("for whom are you calling?" "to what does this regard?") and left a voice mail for her soon to be editor with the simple message: a short description of her project. Within a week, the editor returned her call, expressed great interest, and requested a book proposal.
One more quick call to her vivid friends confirmed the definition and scope of the typical book proposal. With her book proposal, Lisa described her content, her audience, similar books (the competition) and a budget. Designing Multimedia is intended to be a very approachable means for people not in multimedia to learn about and become familiar with this new medium. Because Lisa herself is a visual artist, the 160, full color pages of her book emphasize a visual, rather than textual exploration of the topic.
Having finessed the daunting task of making her book idea a scheduled, financed and contracted reality, the fun part-the writing and design-lay ahead. In contrast to the current tide of print-based designers ascending the steep learning curve of multimedia authoring tools and production techniques, Lisa found herself in the unique position of translating her multimedia skills into the technology of the printed page. Designing for the print required a host of complex color transactions, resolution and layout refinements from her original multimedia files.
The web sites and multimedia titles that compose the visual examples of the book were converted from electronic files designed for the monitor screen to files that conformed to the specifications for print. The color palette for the files was changed from RGB, or red-green-blue composition, the color process for monitors, to CMYK, or Cyan-Magenta-Yellow-Black, the color process for print. (The resolution was left true to multimedia resolution, but in shrinking the files in Quark, resolution was enhanced-in most cases to 150 dpi.) In addition, the perimeters of some images needed to be extended to compensate for the cropping process that creates full color "bleeds" to the edge of the printed page.
Lisa wrote and designed the entire book in Quark XPress. She produced the book in stages, chapter by chapter. Upon finishing one chapter, she would send the chapter to her editor for typically three rounds of revisions. Following months of preparation, the Designing Multimedia is currently at the printers, and should be available in mid December. Up to date information about the release of the book is available at the Lopuck Media Design web site.
Following her four-color foray into the world of print publishing, Lisa is concentrating on her studio, Lopuck Media Design. After years of working as a hired designer and creative director, Lisa is enjoying learning the process of running her own company. Not content to limit her creative style, she prefers to work for a real variety of audiences. Given this variety, she is able to produce "mature sophisticated design for some projects, and really fun wacky stuff for others."
Regardless of her audience, however, her underlying design philosophy, to "focus on functionality as content for elegant interface design" influences all of her design.
Functionality and truly innovative design often requires customized software. Although she is not a programmer, Lisa stresses the importance of knowing the medium well enough to anticipate what can and cannot be done. Her advice to multimedia designers looking for the right software: "let creativity drive the choice for authoring tools." The choice of tools should follow, and not determine, the conceptualization of a project.
Off-the-shelf tools are typically not sufficient for producing desired effects and interface functions. The common model for producing a multimedia title has at the core a close knit team of designer and programmer working together to create original software with customized functionality. Lisa describes the unique synergy that can occur between designer and programmer on a multimedia team: approaching the challenge from a visual, and interaction design, rather than technical perspective, designers may be able to push the envelope of programming. Distanced from the semantics of strict code, designers are able to suggest new and different ways to think about creating functions.
Throughout her career Lisa has been reinventing what it means to be a multimedia designer. As designer, teacher, author, and now owner of her own company, no doubt Lisa will continue to actively contribute to the development of this evolving industry. But among her most valuable contributions to date has been the successful model she has set for aspiring women. The tale of the making of Designing Multimedia is powerful encouragement for women to seriously consider dream projects deferred because they seemed impossible, undoable, outlandish. Such stories are told with tremendous impact; the forces of inspiration and motivation transform the traditional ending of the tale, such that the conclusion of one success story is always the beginning of another.

Lisa Lopuck

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