Similar to how they did before the launch of CS5, Adobe has been quietly slipping out a bevy of “sneaks” (now numbering 16 videos) for new features that may be in a forthcoming release of the Creative Suite…

“Check out what new technologies, features and innovations the Adobe product teams are working on behind the scenes. Stay tuned to get an early glimpse of what could be next from Adobe.”

The products covered include: InDesign, Dreamweaver, After Effects, Premiere Pro, Audition, Adobe Story, Media Encoder, Flex, Flash Pro, Flash Builder and Flash Catalyst.

Given the recent news of a “mid-cycle release to CS5″ (e.g., CS5.5), and a forecast for when CS6 could be out, one question might be in which future version might we see these new capabilities?

Well, Adobe tips their hand once again – because at the end of a couple of these videos they flash the graphic, “CS5 is Evolving: April 11th, 2011″……
Which says to us, you might expect some of these features soon, in fact you might expect more about them next week!

The company has scheduled a special session with Creative Suite Evangelists on Monday, and is tweeting: “CS5 is getting even better. Stay tuned to #Adobe.com on 4/11, and join this Q&A“

Read more…

Late yesterday, in a post entitled, “CS5 Countdown is on…“, Adobe Chief Technology Officer Kevin Lynch wrote about the recent decision by Apple to restrict which Software Development Kits can be employed to produce iPad and iPhone apps:

So, what’s all the fuss about the Apple proposed revised SDK license?

Yesterday Apple released some proposed changes to their SDK license restricting the technologies that developers can use, including Adobe [Flash] software and others such as Unity and Titanium.

First of all, the ability to package an application for the iPhone or iPad is one feature in one product in Creative Suite. CS5 consists of 15 industry-leading applications, which contain hundreds of new capabilities and a ton of innovation. We intend to still deliver this capability in CS5 and it is up to Apple whether they choose to allow or disallow applications as their rules shift over time.

Secondly, multiscreen is growing beyond Apple’s devices. This year we will see a wide range of excellent smartphones, tablets, smartbooks, televisions and more coming to market and we are continuing to work with partners across this whole range to enable your content and applications to be viewed, interacted with and purchased.

Tune In

Creative Suite 5 is a tremendous leap forward, and I encourage you to tune into the global webcast on Monday 8am PDT and find out all the details.

In talking further about CS5, Lynch also reveals some screenshots and hints about what to expect on Monday – in particular focussing on how Adobe is incorporating social computing aspects for doing work across the network, adding more cloud-based capabilities that comple­ment client-side software, and enabling creation of content and applications across an increasing number of screens.

You can read the rest of Lynch’s piece here.

[UPDATE (April 21th) – Roger Risdal, Partner Product Manager at Adobe, has further commentary here on New language in Apple's new iPhone OS v4 SDK agreement. Also Adobe Flash Product Manager Mike Chambers' follow-up, On Adobe, Flash CS5 and iPhone Applications.]

Yesterday in a remote corner of Adobe’s website emerged a surprise article written by the lead designer for their Desktop Brand team, which confirms our earlier story that Adobe CS5 is coming soon (shipping estimates) and even revealed some of its visual design and icons:

Reinventing the System: The New Adobe Desktop Brand

A New Season

Winter is fading, Spring is just around the corner, and we are rapidly approaching that magical time that comes but once every eighteen months: Adobe is releasing a new suite of products, which means Adobe’s Desktop Brand team has been hard at work for the last year creating a new branding system.

The author, Shawn Cheris, then goes into more of what his team does and its long branding history with products like Illustrator, with the style eventually culminating in the two-letter mnemonic system that came with the merger of Adobe and Macromedia… Then, a closer look at what’s coming next:

When we began thinking about what we wanted to do for CS5, the one thing we all agreed on was that we wanted to bring back a sense of joy to the brand work. Our goal was to move beyond the monolithic expression of of the CS3 and CS4 systems and create a more dynamic language. We wanted to bring back inspirational and aspirational artistic qualities to the identity system while leveraging the successful patterns we’ve established with CS3 and CS4. Everyone missed the more whimsical imagery that was such a big part of Adobe’s heritage and wanted to surprise and inspire our users and give them something new.

Cheris continues by hinting some defining aspects of the new Creative Suite 5 design, including icons. Drawing upon such diverse sources as Olympic pictograms, isometric grids, Swiss design, and turn-of-the-century lithographic posters, he unveils some components that we’ll be seeing more of.

The Birth of CS5

An isometric grid similar to [Otl] Aicher’s became the foundation of our new visual system. If nothing else, it guaranteed that we weren’t going to be working with rectilinear elements anymore. Using the grid, we started to form shapes could be used as a template for creating more complex forms. These shapes became the basis for our new system – our kit of parts.

Color has the single biggest element in Adobe’s visual brand system since the CS3 release. For CS5, we’ve opened up the system a bit by using a 2-color approach to product identity. This has substantially increased the visual differentiation between product icons, making it far more usable for customers who have a multitude of Adobe applications installed on their systems.

Next Time

After the CS5 launch, I’ll be back to show you more about the process and the results. I’ll also talk a bit about Adobe’s new proprietary typeface, Clean, and our work with the Adobe type team, along with more of our inspiration and early sketches. We’re really excited about the work we’ve done for CS5 and look forward to seeing the reaction from the design community. See you next time.

Following up to our popular post Tuesday on CS5 release timing, an alert reader discovered a new site launched yesterday morning called the Adobe Creative Suite Buzz Hub… It’s a ‘Twitteresque’ destination where you can follow and see official tweets for the products or evangelists you’re interested in. Facebook connections are there too, as well as an initial set of videos.

Thus far there are presentations on getting started with the design tool Flash Catalyst, which is new for CS5, plus Introducing BrowserLab, which allows you to easily preview and test your web pages on multiple browsers and operating systems on demand, and new script development app Adobe Story, both of which are in limited free preview. There’s also a humorous performance from Photoshop guru Russell Brown.

Adobe expects the buzz site will be a focal point for Creative Suite updates and videos going forward…