Flex your creative muscles, learn a few tricks to make your book even better, and win some brand new Adobe® Creative Suite® 5 software while you’re at it!

As a young creative, we don’t have to tell you how important technology is when it comes to bringing your creative ideas to life. Chances are you might be able to teach a thing or two to the creative directors you’ll be meeting on May 20th! The thing about technology though, it never stands still. Adobe® Flash® Catalyst™ CS5 software is an approachable new interaction design tool that lets you transform Adobe Photoshop®, Illustrator®, and Fireworks® artwork into expressive, fully interactive projects without writing code, and leverage the reach and consistency of the Adobe Flash Platform. And we want you to get your hands on it before all the big-shot Creative Directors do.

One constant challenge facing creatives in advertising is how to cost-effectively create immersive, interactive content that can engage customers more directly with the client’s brand, product, or service.

For the Creative Catalyst Competition, Your mission — should you choose to accept it — is to create a website component, widget, or project for your portfolio that helps better tell a brand’s story and engage with its audience.

The catch: you must use Adobe Flash Catalyst CS5 to create it.

Now this project can be an extension of something already in your book, or it can be something entirely new. This project can incorporate static graphics as well as video, sound and dynamic media. The choice is yours.

The final project can be delivered either as a SWF file for the Flash Player 10 or as an Adobe AIR® project, both of which can be exported directly from Flash Catalyst.

Ah, those pesky eligibility rules, huh? Due to different laws regulating this kinda thing, the Creative Catalyst Competition is only open to Portfolio Night 8 ticket holders (naturally) 18 years of age or older who are residents of the United States, Canada (excluding Quebec), United Kingdom, Ireland, Switzerland, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands or Australia. This means people attending Portfolio Night in the following cities: Atlanta, Austin, Chicago, Dublin, Frankfurt, London, Los Angeles, Melbourne, Milan, New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Seattle and Toronto.

The Creative Catalyst Competition will be judged by the Creative Directors of the Portfolio Night 8 Host Agencies in participating cities — the very same people you’ll be trying to impress on May 20th. Way to make a name for yourself before the big day, huh?

Confirmed judges:

Lars Huvart International Exec. Creative Director Ogilvy & Mather Host of PN8 Frankfurt	Aaron Griffiths Executive Creative Director Ogilvy & Mather Host of PN8 New York	David Houghton VP, Creative Director Young & Rubicam Host of PN8 Toronto
Alex Brunori Executive Creative Director MRM Worldwide Host of PN8 Milan	Tom Sabonis-Chafee Creative Director Ogilvy & Mather Host of PN8 Atlanta	Otis D. Gibson Founder, Chief Creative Officer GERTRUDE Host of PN8 Chicago
David Angelo Chief Creative Officer David&Goliath Host of PN8 Los Angeles	Andy Bird Head of Art Ogilvy & Mather Host of PN8 London

• Chris Bradley | Group Creative Director | Ogilvy & Mather and Host of PN8 San Francisco
• Hart Rusen | Creative Director | Publicis in the West and Host of PN8 Seattle
• Jon Milne | Creative Partner | Ogilvy & Mather and Host of PN8 Dublin

Your entry should be submitted via email to nat@ihaveanidea.org with the subject line “Creative Catalyst Competition”, and should include a URL to a landing page that contains the project or links to the project. If your landing page or links require passwords, don’t forget to send those. And keep those pages and links up and running until at least May 20th, 2010!

Please include the following with your submission:

• Your Name
• Portfolio Night 8 City you’re attending
• Home Address
• Telephone Number
• Email Address
• A brief description of of what you’ve created and what you’ve learned
• Your choice of Silver or Bronze prize, should you win that accolade

The deadline for submissions to the Creative Catalyst Competition is Wednesday, May 12th, 2010 at 11:59 PM Eastern Standard Time.

That’s a very good question. Luckily Adobe has provided a special link where Portfolio Night 8 attendees can download a free trial version of Adobe® Creative Suite® 5 Design Premium. This includes Flash Catalyst 5 and well as everything else you’ll need to enter the competition.

To download your PN8 trial version, CLICK HERE.

Flash Catalyst CS5 is going to be new to just about all of you. Heck, we bet a lot of you haven’t even dabbled in regular Flash yet. But the cool thing about Flash Catalyst is that if you’re at all familiar with Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator, you’re well under way to becoming a Flash Catalyst guru.

Nevertheless, we’ve put together a collection of the best videos from Adobe TV to help you get started. You can check out those videos RIGHT HERE.

What, the sheer satisfaction of learning a brand new piece of creative technology isn’t enough of a reward? Just kidding, of course there are some sweet Adobe prizes in store for the best submissions: one Gold Prize, two Silver Prizes and three Bronze Prizes.

Whoo-ee, this is the Big Kahuna! The one Portfolio Night 8 attendee whose entry is judged to be the best of the best will win his or her own copy of the brand-spanking new Adobe® Creative Suite® 5 Master Collection.

Design without boundaries.
Design sophisticated interactive content using innovative vector drawing and painting tools and create functional interfaces in new Adobe Flash Catalyst CS5 without writing code. Transform your unique vision into compelling online experiences and deliver perfect project files to developers.

Work swiftly with precision.
Work 10x faster in high resolution due to native 64-bit support in Adobe Photoshop CS5, Adobe After Effects CS5, and Adobe Premiere Pro CS5. New GPU-acceleration quickens work in Photoshop, the new Adobe Mercury engine speeds effects processing and rendering in Premiere Pro, and Dynamic Link is now dramatically faster.

Streamline critical processes.
Streamline your creative reviews from within Adobe Photoshop CS5, Adobe Illustrator CS5, and Adobe InDesign CS5. As part of new integrated CS Live online services, CS Review provides easy-to-use annotation tools and comment view in the context of your design.

CS5 Master Collection includes:

• Adobe® Photoshop® CS5 Extended
• Adobe® Illustrator® CS5
• Adobe® InDesign® CS5
• Adobe® Acrobat® 9 Pro
• Adobe® Flash® Catalyst™ CS5
• Adobe® Flash® Professional CS5
• Adobe® Flash® Builder™ 4 Standard
• Adobe® Dreamweaver® CS5
• Adobe® Fireworks® CS5
• Adobe® Contribute® CS5
• Adobe® Premiere® Pro CS5
• Adobe® After Effects® CS5
• Adobe® Soundbooth® CS5
• Adobe® OnLocation™ CS5
• Adobe® Encore® CS5
• Adobe® Bridge CS5
• Adobe® Device Central CS5
• Adobe® Dynamic Link

Prize Value: $2599 USD

Two Portfolio Night 8 attendees will go home that evening with more than just compliments on their books. They also score their choice of one of three sweet Adobe Premium packages: Adobe® Creative Suite® 5 Design Premium, Adobe® Creative Suite® 5 Production Premium or Adobe® Creative Suite® 5 Design Premium.

CS5 Design Premium includes:

• Adobe® Photoshop® CS5 Extended
• Adobe® Illustrator® CS5
• Adobe® InDesign® CS5
• Adobe® Acrobat® 9 Pro
• Adobe® Flash® Catalyst™ CS5
• Adobe® Flash® Professional CS5
• Adobe® Dreamweaver® CS5
• Adobe® Fireworks® CS5
• Adobe® Bridge CS5
• Adobe® Device Central CS5

CS5 Production Premium includes:

• Adobe® Photoshop® CS5 Extended
• Adobe® Illustrator® CS5
• Adobe® Flash® Catalyst™ CS5
• Adobe® Flash® Professional CS5
• Adobe® Premiere® Pro CS5
• Adobe® After Effects® CS5
• Adobe® Soundbooth® CS5
• Adobe® OnLocation™ CS5
• Adobe® Encore® CS5
• Adobe® Bridge CS5
• Adobe® Device Central CS5
• Adobe® Dynamic Link

CS5 Web Premium includes:

• Adobe® Photoshop® CS5 Extended
• Adobe® Illustrator® CS5
• Adobe® Acrobat® 9 Pro
• Adobe® Flash® Catalyst™ CS5
• Adobe® Flash® Professional CS5
• Adobe® Flash® Builder™ 4 Standard
• Adobe® Dreamweaver® CS5
• Adobe® Fireworks® CS5
• Adobe® Contribute® CS5
• Adobe® Bridge CS5
• Adobe® Device Central CS5

Prize Value: $1699–$1899 USD

Three Portfolio Night 8 attendees whose entries have what it takes will have a little extra to show off at the end of the night. These young creatives will receive their choice of one of seven brand-new Adobe CS5 software products:

Adobe® Photoshop® CS5 Extended
Adobe® Illustrator® CS5
Adobe® InDesign® CS5
Adobe® Flash® Catalyst™ CS5
Adobe® Flash® Professional CS5
Adobe® Dreamweaver® CS5
Adobe® Fireworks® CS5

Prize Value: $299–$999 USD

Isn’t there always? For the full Official Rules of the Creative Catalyst Competition, CLICK HERE.