Forget the Blue/Black White/Gold dress… Adobe’s new dress can be anything you want it to be!
While Adobe’s been known primarily for its cutting-edge creatively aligned software suites, the company surprised attendees at the 2023 Adobe MAX conference with a taste of something it was working on in secret. A presenter walked on stage in a seemingly normal dress, only to shock viewers as the dress suddenly went from matte white to reflective. Individual elements in the dress then changed colors, creating unique patterns that allowed its wearer to effectively alter their attire in real-time. Dubbed Project Primrose, this interactive dress uses ‘Reflective Light-Diffuser Modules’ to create Non-Emissive Flexible Display Systems.
Although currently just unveiled as a product showcase, it isn’t entirely clear if Primrose plans on being available to developers or even consumers anytime soon. The project is more of a proof of concept, displaying a new way to preview and prototype designs and patterns in real time. “Project Primrose, displayed at MAX as an interactive dress, makes this possible with wearable and flexible, non-emissive textiles which allow an entire surface to display content created with Adobe Firefly, Adobe After Effects, Adobe Stock, and Adobe Illustrator,” says the Adobe Communications Team. By incorporating this technology into various surfaces like clothing, furniture, and more, designers can explore endless possibilities in terms of style. For instance, individuals can easily download and ‘wear’ the latest designs from their favorite designers.
The system developed by Adobe utilizes reflective-backed polymer-dispersed liquid crystal (PDLC), an electroactive substance that is often employed in smart window technology. This energy-efficient and non-emissive material can be easily customized into various shapes and has the ability to dynamically scatter light, going beyond what e-ink and other technologies have to offer.
Speaking of electronic ink, this isn’t the first time we’ve seen dynamic color-changing designs before. At CES 2022, BMW displayed the iX Flow Concept that could change colors in real time. The technology dates back as early as 2017, when Sony displayed the e-ink-powered FES watch that could similarly change its design. What Adobe’s done is different in two notable ways – for starters, it ditches electronic ink or conventional displays for something reflective and more eye-catching. Secondly, it ties this technology in with its own creative software, showcasing how the industry will empower designers in the future to create on new surfaces… quite literally!
Your college years can be some of the best of your life, but we know it can be tough to enjoy them when you’re scrounging every dollar for textbooks, food and (if you’re lucky) the occasional outing with friends. Money is tight when you’re a student, and that financial stress can be compounded by the reality of having to stay on top of your studies.
If there’s a silver lining, it’s student discounts. Many companies offer their products and apps for less to those struggling through lectures, writing term papers and studying for finals. We’ve compiled a list of the best deals you can get on useful services, along with some things you’ll enjoy in your down time. Just keep in mind that most of these offers require you to prove your status as a student either by signing up with your .edu email address or providing some form of student identification.
Shopping
Engadget
Amazon Prime Student
If you’re not piggybacking off of your parents’ Amazon Prime account, you can have the subscription for less while you’re in school. College students can get Prime Student for free for six months, then it costs only $7.49 per month after that. That comes out to about $90 per year, and the membership includes the same perks as regular Prime does, including free two-day shipping, free same-day delivery in select areas, and access to the entire Prime Video library.
While it doesn’t offer a specific student discount, Best Buy has Student Deals that you can sign up to receive. Aside from proving your student status, the only requirement is for you to be a My Best Buy member; that program is free to enroll in. We actually recommend that most people sign up for My Best Buy because some items, especially during site-wide sales, will be even cheaper for members. All student deals will appear in the Member Offers page in your account.
Apple offers some deals to students and educators in the form of knocking down the prices of its most popular laptops and tablets. There isn’t a flat percentage rate across all products; the discounts vary by device. For example, right now students can get a MacBook Air M1 starting at $899, which is $100 less than the normal starting price, and the iPad Pros start at $749, which represents a $50 discount. These are decent savings if you must have a brand new Apple product, but those with tighter budgets should also consider Apple’s refurb program. Also for 2022, students can get up to a $150 gift card and 20 percent off AppleCare when they purchase a qualifying Mac or iPad.
Much like Apple, Samsung doesn't offer a blanket discount across all of its products for students. But you can save depending on what you're looking to buy. For example, you can save hundreds on the latest Galaxy S22 smartphones, and the discount will be deeper if you have a handset to trade in. On the laptop-and-tablet side of things, you can get a Galaxy Chromebook 2 for as low as $350 or a Galaxy Tab S8+ for. as low as $200.
Microsoft also provides students and educators with up to 10 percent off its gadgets, including the already affordable Surface Go 2 and the Surface Headphones 2. And Microsoft’s online store doesn’t only sell Surface devices: You can also find Windows PCs from Lenovo, HP, Acer and others there at discounted prices.
Spotify Premium’s student plan gives you a lot for only $5 per month. Besides access to millions of songs, it also includes Hulu’s ad-supported tier and Showtime’s ad-free service. You’d spend roughly $27 a month if you paid for all three separately at their full prices, making this student offer one of the best you can get.
Pandora also offers students its Premium membership for $5 per month. Pandora’s offering doesn’t include any additional services, but you do get an ad-free experience, personalized music, unlimited skips and unlimited offline play. Plus, you’ll get 60 days of free use before your payments kick in.
Apple also slashes 50 percent off its Apple Music subscription for students, bringing it down to $5 per month. The offer is available for up to 48 months so you can enjoy the rate for the entirety of your college experience. What’s more, the company bundles Apple TV+ in this student offer, so you can watch Apple originals like Ted Lasso and Severance.
Paramount+’s student discount knocks 25 percent off the Essentials monthly plan, so you’ll end up paying around $3.75 per month for access to the service’s content with limited commercials. With this subscription, you can watch shows like Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, South Park, RuPaul’s Drag Race and more, but just keep in mind that this particular plan doesn’t include access to your local CBS station.
Discovery+ knocks 40 percent off monthly plans for students, so you can get access for only $3 per month. You’ll pay for the Ad-Lite plan, so there will still be commercials to sit through, but you can get that discounted rate for as long as you are an enrolled student.
Tidal provides student discounts on both of its streaming services: Premium and Hi-Fi. Premium drops to $5 per month, down from $10, while Hi-Fi costs $10 per month, down from $20. Tidal is still often overshadowed by Spotify and Apple Music, but these discounts are a good way to give it a try without spending too much money.
College students can sign up for Hulu’s ad-supported plan for only $2 per month. That’s $4 less than the normal price and a great deal considering all of the content that Hulu has to offer (think: The Handmaid’s Tale, Grey’s Anatomy, Rick & Morty and more). Yes, you have to deal with commercials, but it’s a small price to pay to binge-watch shows like Brooklyn Nine Nine, which can provide a much-needed laugh when you’re drowning in coursework.
If you’re already spending a lot of time watching YouTube, you may have a better experience with YouTube Premium. The Student plan cuts nearly 50 percent off the price so you’ll pay $7 per month for ad-free video viewing, background play, video downloads and access to YouTube Premium Music. The latter is YouTube’s attempt at a Spotify/Apple Music competitor, but it has a long way to go before it can really hold a candle to those services. However, if you listen to most of your music via YouTube already, Premium could be your one-stop-shop for music and video streaming.
Being a student is stressful even in the best of times, but now it’s even more difficult to concentrate and find peace. Headspace is just one of many meditation and mindfulness apps available that can help with that, but it stands apart with an excellent student discount: $10 for the entire year, or $60 less than a normal annual membership. In addition to a large library of meditation lessons and routines to follow, Headspace recently added SleepCasts, a collection of soothing voices reading bedtime stories to help you fall asleep, as well as “mindful” workout routines.
You’re probably using Adobe products if you’re studying anything related to digital art or design. Adobe Creative Cloud is the industry standard in this space but the entire suite of programs is quite expensive at $53 per month. Thankfully, Adobe has education pricing for students that drops the entire creative suite to $20 per month for the first year. That includes the big programs like Photoshop CC and Illustrator CC along with Lightroom CC, Premiere Pro CC, Adobe XD and more.
After your first year, the monthly cost increases to $30 per month. While not ideal, it’s still more affordable for students than it is for industry professionals. If you’re not tied to Adobe programs, you might also consider Affinity Photo, Designer and Publisher apps from Serif ($50 each for the Mac or Windows versions), which compete with Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign, respectively.
Regardless of whether you’re studying music production, students can get 40 percent off Ableton Live Standard or Suite for as long as they are enrolled full-time. That brings Live 11 Standard down to $269 and Suite down to $449 — great discounts on some of the best music software available right now.
Many students have to use Microsoft 365 tools on the regular. If your college or university doesn’t provide you with an account, you can still get Microsoft 365 for free by taking advantage of the company’s student and educator discount. This gives you access to Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote and even Microsoft Teams free of charge, which is a solid deal considering an annual subscription costs $100.
Spending all day and night writing papers is even more frustrating when you don’t have all your writing organized in one place. Ulysses is a popular writing app for mac/iOS that can be used for note taking as well as thesis writing, with features like auto-save and auto-backup, word-count writing goals, markup, plain text support and DropBox integration. Normally, Ulysses costs $40 per year but students can get it for only $12 every six months, or $24 per year. There isn’t a direct alternative for Windows users, but you do have options including Scrivener (a one-time student price of $41.65), IA Writer (a $20 one-time price) and FocusWriter (free and open-source).
Evernote can be an indispensable tool if you like to keep all of your thoughts in one place — everything from class notes to web clippings to to-do lists. Students can get half off one year of Evernote Premium, which brings the price down to $4 per month or $48 for the year. Premium is the way to go if you’re investing in Evernote because it syncs your notes across unlimited devices, gives you offline access, lets you annotate PDFs and search saved documents.
Notion provides students and educators its Personal Pro plan for free just by signing up with a valid .edu email address. While the free version of the service has a ton of features, the Pro plan adds unlimited pages and blocks, file uploads and version history. That means you won’t be restricted if you want to collect your entire academic life in Notion, along with your personal to-do lists, agendas, notes and more.
Aspiring developers can sign up for Github’s Student Developer Pack, which includes discounts and resources that developers can use to learn, create projects and more. Github partnered with a bunch of companies including Educative, Canva, Namecheap, Bootstrap Studio and others to offer students access to many of the services they’ll need as the expand their skills.
Whether you’re itching to get a jump-start on your portfolio or just want an online space to show off your work, Squarespace is a good option as it gives students a 50 percent discount on any of its annual plans. The most affordable option will cost $72 for the year, which is half the normal yearly price of $144. Squarespace is one of many website builders out there, but it’s particularly popular with creative professionals. Its customizable templates make it easy to build a website and make it look exactly how you want it. Plus, you can upgrade down the line to add things like website analytics, custom JavaScript and CSS and e-commerce.
You shouldn’t rely on Twitter to be your sole source of news. With foreign wars, new viruses, Supreme Court decisions and upcoming elections making headlines daily, it’s important to get your news from reliable sources. Yes, it’s daunting to get into the news on a regular basis, but it’s crucial to know what’s going on in the country and the world as a whole. Here are some reputable news organizations that offer student discounts on their monthly or annual subscription plans.
The Atlantic: Starts at $35 per year for digital-only access.
Adobe Photoshop is still the king of the graphics software industry, by name if not in practice. It is still the bread and butter of artists, designers, illustrators, and creatives, even when there are more focused applications available, like ones for making comics or manga, for example. Despite its popularity, getting legitimate access to Photoshop isn’t as ubiquitous and as easy as, say, a Web browser or even the operating system running on your computer. There is a price to pay and one that must be paid regularly. But that could be changing soon as Adobe experiments with a new strategy that will make Photoshop more than just a household name but also a presence in every household, school, or office. And it will be doing so by using that business model that everyone seems to love or love to hate: freemium.
Adobe announced its new initiative to bring some of its products to the web browser back in October, mostly as a way for artists to collaborate quickly without having to fire up the full Photoshop version on their computers or iPads. The features of the web experience were unsurprisingly basic and revolved more around core editing tools and annotations than any of Photoshop’s advanced features. Adobe, however, may have realized they were missing out on an opportunity and is now experimenting with the idea of using that web app as a sort of trial version to hook more potential customers into its ecosystem.
The idea, according to The Verge, is to turn Photoshop on the Web as the freemium version of its product, a term that has replaced the trialware and demoware of old. Users will be given a carefully selected set of tools with basic functionality, enough for them to get most of their work done but not enough to truly harness the power of the software. If they want to finish the extra mile, they’d have to pay for an Adobe Creative Cloud subscription, which is the current requirement to even use Photoshop in web browsers.
This experiment is currently being conducted only in Canada, and a lot of the details are still up in the air. For example, it isn’t clear yet where Adobe will draw the line as far as freemium features go. In the meantime, it will continue adding features to the web experience, which also raises the question of where Adobe plans to draw the line between web and desktop experiences. Naturally, the web version will be less powerful than the full thing, but it would be nice to know what to expect.
It also remains to be seen how well this idea will fly with Adobe users. The change from a one-time purchase to a recurring subscription was and still is met with criticism and resistance. Adopting another controversial business model probably won’t do Adobe’s image any favors, but it probably doesn’t need to anyway. Despite cries and complaints about Creative Cloud, Photoshop remains a giant in its category and a cash cow for Adobe. With this freemium Photoshop, it can cast its net even wider, possibly including students using Chromebooks in schools to get them started early in becoming familiar with the Photoshop way of doing things.
Inspired by Indian bridalwear, the ‘Indian Bridal Sneaker’ bridges the gap between traditional garb and modern fashion, creating a sneaker that’s uniquely beautiful and complementary to a bride’s clothes yet equally comfortable.
An Indian wedding isn’t a low-key affair. Spread over days (sometimes even weeks), the wedding happens amidst great fanfare with loads of events, food, people, decor, and most importantly, garments designed to make the lucky couple look like royalty. This approach, however, comes at a price, especially for the bride. Any bridal lehenga worth its salt is an incredibly heavy and uncomfortable garment. As stunning as it looks, it’s equally difficult to wear over long periods of time, given the layers, fabrics, details, etc. In an effort to make it easy to walk around in such garb, modern brides have rejected high heels and ornate footwear for more comfortable and flexible sneakers. While the sneakers don’t particularly match up to the ornate fabric-work on the bridal lehenga, designer Ishan Verma decided to give the sneaker a fitting upgrade to allow it to match the lehenga’s dazzling design, while still being comfortable enough for the bride to stand and walk around in.
A closer look at the sneaker’s design shows how incredibly detailed it is. Designed to match the showstopping appeal of a bridal lehenga, the sneaker uses the same lehenga fabric along with a few special ornate leather trims. The overall color scheme follows a classic maroon/gold palette often seen with Indian bridalwear, and the golden ‘zari-work’ (metallic embroidery) and sequin-work on the shoes are beyond exquisite, allowing the sneakers to be a deserving part of the bridal ensemble. The Indian Bridal Sneaker concept is just a concept for now, but I can only imagine this industry picking up in the future!
The traditional bridalwear-inspired sneaker design also won first place at Adobe Substance 3D Designer’s The Great Shoecase Contest.
Short Story is a single cubic building constructed using architectural theories like Raumplan’s to explore the use of sustainable building materials and low-impact construction methods.
Roundhouse is a curatorial platform that fosters public engagement across industries like architecture, archival research, and post-industrial site excavation. Roundhouse investigates urban change through public engagement missions by unveiling site-specific histories through creative site exploration, archival research, publication, and exhibitions. In Spring Valley, Nevada, the collective constructed an architectural prototype built to explore the contextual relationship between space, structure, and texture within a small accessory building called Short Story, a 2.4m by 2.4m desert dwelling.
Accruing nearly three weeks in construction time, Short Story was built in the same Territorial Revival architectural style as its adjacent buildings using sustainable building materials and a low-impact construction method. Clad in recycled paper and adobe, Short Story uses both materials like insulation and render for the walls. Designed and built using the Raumplan theory, Short Story comprises a single cubic volume with an interior space that’s divided into varying wooden tiers and quadrants. From different angles of the building, Short Story’s living spaces change in size and function, housing compact spaces that resemble sleeping nooks and even lofty atriums with high ceilings.
From the outside, Short Story appears like a simple, cubic shed that’s familiar in texture, build, and shape compared to nearby desert dwellings. While the outside does look familiar from afar, a closer look reveals the building’s changing gradient from bleached sandstone with wispy textures near the building’s base to rusty, brick red tones near the building’s top as a result of the cladding materials’ varying applied thickness. Moving inside, latticed, whitewashed wood framing expands the building into a multi-level, open-plan space where residents can climb between floors using a staircase formed out of rough-hewn logs.
Despite college being (potentially) some of the best years of your life, it can be hard to enjoy it if you're scrounging every dollar for books, supplies, food and, if you're lucky, the occasional outing with friends. But there is a silver lining: student discounts. While it seems like good discounts can be harder and harder to find for the rest of us, students can find them fairly easily if they know where to look. We’ve collected the best student discounts we could find on useful services, along with some things you’ll enjoy in your down time. Just keep in mind that most of these offers require you to prove your status as a student either by signing up with your .edu email address or providing a valid student ID.
Shopping
Streaming
Tools
News
Engadget
You shouldn’t rely on social media to be your sole source of news. With foreign wars, new viruses, Supreme Court decisions and upcoming elections making headlines daily, it’s important to get your news from reliable sources. Yes, it’s daunting to get into the news on a regular basis, but it’s crucial to know what’s going on in the country and the world as a whole. Here are some reputable news organizations that offer student discounts on their monthly or annual subscription plans.
The Atlantic: Starts at $45 per year for digital-only access.
If I’m paying thousands of dollars a year for Adobe’s creative suite, it would make sense to have a hardware device that ties them all together too.
Meet the 101Keyboard, a wireless keyboard concept that puts the Touchbar from Apple’s MacBook Pro laptops to much better use. It comes with 65 membrane keys, but its piece-de-resistance is that slick horizontal touchscreen on the top that gives you one-tap access to every single Adobe software you need. The bar houses the entire suite of Adobe’s apps, allowing you to keep your taskbar clean yet still be able to summon any Adobe app within a second.
The Touchbar always seemed like it was looking for a real problem to solve. The 101Keyboard, on the other hand, is perfectly positioned to solve one problem and solve it well. Designed to be a keyboard specifically for digital creatives, the wireless peripheral empowers and expedites your workflow. You can switch between apps in seconds, and even directly access recent or active files within apps by simply touching the 101Keyboard’s dedicated screen. Want to take things to the next level? A new type of button right above the backspace key lets you even toggle brush sizes or zoom while within certain apps. Everything you need is pretty much under your fingertips!
Needless to say, the 101Keyboard has a very specific purpose. Sure, it’s a keyboard you could use for regular day-to-day tasks, but its true power is unleashed when you’re working within Adobe’s ecosystem of apps. That’s why it makes sense for Adobe to really bundle this keyboard right in with its Creative Cloud subscription service. It keeps the creatives happy and locks them right into the ecosystem by making it so convenient to use and alternate between different Adobe software.
The 101Keyboard comes with a slick, minimal design. It relies on a slim metal stand that allows you to angle it towards you for easier typing… and no, the keyboard doesn’t come with a numpad, so gamers (and accountants) might not really find this one appealing. As I said, it has a laser-like focus on the creative professional. In fact, it even comes in colors that graphic designers will appreciate. There’s a classic White, but there’s also Magenta, Cyan, and Black. Just wish there was a Yellow variant too, to complete the CMYK moodboard!
Since ditching Intel's chips for its own, Apple's M1 Macs are getting optimized apps all the time that tend to perform better than those put through its Rosetta 2 emulator. Today marks another major native release as Photoshop has officially...
Watch out, Wacom and Adobe! In a new patent granted to Apple by the US Patent and Trademark Office, the company is reportedly looking at a next-generation Apple Pencil with swappable nib modules. While the patent doesn’t exclusively outline what these nibs would look like or be used for, it focuses more on the underlying technology, which would allow nibs to connect to the pencil handle via a special lightning-style connector.
The Apple Pencil is arguably the iPad Pro‘s secret sauce. Along with the Pencil, the iPad Pro becomes the ultimate creator’s setup (for both 2D as well as 3D creation). It would therefore make sense to explore how the Pencil could further become a ‘power-user’ tool, allowing creators to unlock new potentials. Yanko Design has imagined what these new nibs could look like, with explorations for more niche 2D uses. The interchangeable nibs include a fine-tip nib, a chisel nib, and a flexible brush-pen nib. Other nib styles could unlock 3D modeling features like being able to sculpt on the iPad.
While the current Apple Pencil has features like tilt recognition and pressure sensitivity, allowing it to function as any sort of drawing tool, the presence of a specialized nib helps seamlessly replicate the tactile experience of, say, drawing with a brush pen or a chisel marker. Moreover, the ability to replace nibs essentially increases the lifespan of the Pencil by allowing you to replace nibs when they wear down after constant use. “The filing suggests the nib could contain several different sensors for varying purposes. The component list includes tactile sensors, contact sensors, capacitive and touch sensors, a camera, a piezoelectric sensor, a pressure sensor, or a photodiode”, reports Apple Insider.
Sometimes deciding when to keep a photo can almost be as tough as snapping it in the first place. Canon, however, hopes to help make the process of culling an extensive photo library down to your best shots easier and less time-consuming. It’s introd...
