Hive Health

Layer Tennis is a series of live design events on Friday afternoons presented by Adobe® Creative Suite® 4.

What the hell’s layer tennis? Two competitors swap a file back and forth in real-time, adding to and embellishing the work. Each artist gets fifteen minutes to complete a “volley” which is then posted that to a site live.

Way back when in the misty days – Layer Tennis was called “Photoshop Tennis”. A few old schoolers remember that to-the-death match with Derek Powazek against Heather Champ. Anyway, the match was going along well when Heather played this for volley six and then all of the sudden Derek disappeared from the backstage chat-room. In a beautifully creative move, Derek printed out volley six, crumbled it up, took it outside, stapled it to a telephone poll, took a picture of it, formatted that picture and posted it as his volley seven. So cool.

The players may be designers, animators, illustrators or pretty much anything else, and they can use any tool or application they like. The match progresses volley by volley. A third participant, a writer, provides play-by-play commentary on the action as it happens.

The match lasts for ten volleys and when it’s complete, Season Ticket Holders sound off and we declare a winner. Its brilliant and a design joy.

Today sees an All-UK Layer Tennis match featuring Simon Cook vs.Rex Crowle with commentary by Anne Ward.  First serve at 4pm. Get your tickets here.