Beautiful Presentation Typography

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Mark Heaps

ARCHIVE: This session was presented at CreativePro Week 2020.

Beautiful Presentation Typography

Friday, 10:15 am – 11:00 am Central

Business people who are taught PowerPoint/Keynote skills rarely look at the beautiful world of typography, with all of its history and influence. As graphic designers, we adore type and recognize that it can make or break the effectiveness of a communication piece.

What new typographic opportunities (and challenges) might we have to think about when the typography moves? How can we create builds that integrate with type to engage audiences and peak their interests?

During this session, we’ll look at all the controls and share some ideas to boost your signal when presenting content with type.

Topics include:

  • Learning how to adjust type for improved legibility
  • Creating emphasis and order without defaulting to bullets
  • Integrating with themes in your presentation
  • Using slide master’s parent type format to improve design for common users
  • Awesome use-cases to introduce typography in presentation design
  • Making type move for visual impact

Lunch Talk: Knowing What’s Real — Exploring the Content Authenticity Initiative

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Leonard Rosenthol

ARCHIVE: This session was presented at CreativePro Week 2020.

Knowing What’s Real: Exploring the Content Authenticity Initiative

Tuesday, 11:30 am – 1:00 pm Central

When you look at a photograph in social media, how do you know if it’s real or fake? Either way, can you tell who created it? Adobe, Twitter, and the New York Times have launched the Content Authenticity Initiative to help verify the “authenticity” of images online, and fight misinformation on digital media platforms. Join Adobe’s Leonard Rosenthol as he explains CAI and how it relates to creative pros.

“At a Glance” Design

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Mike Parkinson

ARCHIVE: This session was presented at CreativePro Week 2020.

“At a Glance” Design

Friday, 9:00 am – 12:00 pm Central

We are living in an “at a glance” society. We see proof everywhere we look: social media, advertising, books, television, email, in signs, software, and websites. People no longer expect information to be succinct and clear—they require it. If we fail to embrace at a glance communication, our designs will always fall short. Attend this high energy, interactive, mind-blowing session and learn to design anything—at a glance.

Click: Three Minutes Max

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Mark Heaps

ARCHIVE: This session was presented at CreativePro Week 2020.

Click: Three Minutes Max

Friday, 2:45 pm – 3:30 pm Central

It’s time for another game where instructors will share their best tip or trick for Presentation Design in under 3 minutes, playing for a grand prize for a member of the audience they represent. There are always great tips attendees learn during this time, and we have a lot of fun.


Bonus: Three Minutes Max Tip from Our 2019 Event


InDesign for Building Presentations

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David Blatner

ARCHIVE: This session was presented at CreativePro Week 2020.

InDesign for Building Presentations

Friday, 11:15 am – 12:00 pm Central

You already have Adobe InDesign, so why not use it to help you make your presentations? After all, laying out a slide is very similar to laying out a page. Join David Blatner as he explores some of the great options for:

  • Exporting InDesign documents to PowerPoint or Keynote
  • Amazing plug-ins, scripts, and resources to help you build high-quality slides
  • Why you should consider HTML5 (exported right out of InDesign!) for your next slide deck

Data Visualization for Presentation

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Nolan Haims

ARCHIVE: This session was presented at CreativePro Week 2020.

Data Visualization for Presentation

Friday, 1:30 pm – 2:30 pm Central

Poor data design leads to overly complicated charts that take too long to understand and steal valuable time from your audiences. Worse, a careless approach to visualizing data can lead to misinterpretation of the messages you are trying to communicate.

This session will focus on fundamental design and data visualization principles to help significantly improve the effectiveness of your charts and communicate the story of your data as efficiently as possible.

We will cover:

  • Reducing color and adding emphasis
  • Identifying and removing “chart junk”
  • Why legends are so bad and how to get along without them
  • Solutions for complex data sets

Presentation Animation Techniques

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Jole Simmons

ARCHIVE: This session was presented at CreativePro Week 2020.

Presentation Animation Techniques

Friday, 1:30 pm – 2:30 pm Central

When you’re designing presentations, you need to think outside the box and function more like a filmmaker. In this focused session, veteran presentation designer Jole Simmons will teach you how! Plus, you’ll learn why you don’t need to be afraid to animate… in fact, you’ll actually start looking for places to use these tools.

We’ll explore:

  • Ways to add subtle touches to your decks to really make them look polished
  • How to use animation to create rhythm and continuity in your presentations
  • and perhaps most importantly: How to have fun with presentation design again!

Just Say No: Alternatives to Boring Slides

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Julie Terberg

ARCHIVE: This session was presented at CreativePro Week 2020.

Just Say No: Alternatives to Boring Slides

Friday, 10:15 am – 11:00 am Central

Bullet points. Walls of text with tiny pictures. Predictable slide arrangements. Same size, same color, same layouts, over and over and over. You’ve lost their attention by slide three. How can you break the monotony of boring and bland presentations? How can you create visual excitement and design interesting slides that captivate audiences? This session will show you a variety of ways to lose the snooze with slides that are designed that capture visual attention.

Topics will include:

  • Using a grid to create a variety of compositions
  • Scaling an image, graphic, or metric for emphasis
  • Adding interest with a different text style or typeface
  • Taking advantage of contrast and color
  • Other ways to add visual variety to your slide designs

Crafting Visual Stories for Presentations

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Richard Goring

ARCHIVE: This session was presented at CreativePro Week 2020.

Crafting Visual Stories for Presentations

Friday, 9:00 am – 10:00 am Central

There’s much research that shows people remember more from presentations when visuals are used. Yet most of the time we all experience “bullet point hell.”

This session looks at ways to improve your slides visually and get away from Death by PowerPoint (or any other presentation tool). Learn how to make your content more visual, using the right diagram to illustrate and bring your points to life. That means your audience starts paying attention and understands what you want to tell them, even when it’s pretty complicated. And ultimately, it means that your communication is more effective.

Building Rich PDF Forms with InDesign and Acrobat

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Richard Turner-Jones

ARCHIVE: This session was presented at CreativePro Week 2020.

Building Rich PDF Forms with InDesign and Acrobat

Thursday, 3:30 pm – 4:30 pm Central

Adobe InDesign and Adobe Acrobat are the dynamic duos of interactive PDF forms creation. While you can create great-looking, fillable forms in InDesign, integrating Adobe Acrobat into your workflow will lead to a better experience for the user and yourself. Going beyond its paper predecessor, Adobe Acrobat Forms (AcroForms) will help you collect the right information, the first time and save a few trees along the way.

Whether you work in government, education, or need to create rich interactive forms this session is for you.

In this session, you will prepare interactive PDF forms using InDesign and add further interactivity and styling via Adobe Acrobat Pro DC, including:

  • Automated field styling
  • Dynamic fields based on user’s choices
  • Adding In-form navigation
  • Working with special field types like the calendar and image fields
  • Reducing user errors with field validations and calculations
  • One-click document attachments
  • Distribute, track and manage your forms and their responses
  • Create and use Acrobat Actions to automate repetitive tasks
  • Learn best practices along the way and gain an understanding of AcroForm’s possibilities!