Today marks the end of my two month break from classroom teaching. I’ve been busy writing up lesson plans for the Professional Communication and Presentation course reboot, revising assignment for the coming month, and tweaking my core slidedecks. As I am always working on minor or major adjustments to my deliverables, I am always looking for new sources of design inspiration and know how. A Tweak Your Slides reader, Richard Garber, who writes Joyful Public Speaking, shared the Assertion-Evidence format created by Michael Alley with me yesterday, and today, while browsing the latest Slideshare offerings on design and presenting, I ran across today’s Slideshare, “29 Design Resources That Work Miracles” by SEO.com:
The deck begins with a brief rationale–visual content today is one of the most powerful marketing tools for individuals and companies alike. But, like any good tool, it must be used in the right way, and this means placing the focus on good design and using good design resources. I was surprised at how many of the resources listed were new to me. Several are sources I wish I’d had in creating particularly difficult decks in the past and several others are sources I cannot wait to try this coming month. Here are a few of my favorites:
For Design Inspiration:
Creattica: though I already use Pinterest to curate designs I am inspired by, the added value of Creattica is that the site’s offerings are voted on and only displays examples of a designer’s greatest work–it’s a great way to filter inspiration down to great design for someone who is not a formally-trained designer.
For Image Editing:
Pixlr: I am lucky enough to have the entire Adobe Illustrator suite on my employer-provided laptop, but on my personal mac, I am limited to photo editing tools inside of Keynote and PowerPoint. Thankfully, user-friendly photo editing services like Pixlr are here to help. Available as a full online editor, express editor, and mobile app Pixlr is an easy to use tool for the novice designer
For Patterns:
Subtle Patterns: this is my absolute favorite new source. Again, as I am now teaching myself to use the Adobe Creative suite with the help of Lynda.com, my skills in creating depth through texture and patterns are limited to what I can find on image sites like compfight.com, ColourLovers, or what I can create myself using slide design software. As soon as I opened Subtle Patterns, I fell in love. The site contains hundreds of patterns available for download as .pngs and also features a Photoshop plugin similar to Kuler‘s that allows you to access the patterns without visiting the site.
Check out these and the other 26 awesome resources by scrolling through today’s Slideshare of the Day!
Tweak Your Slides 