Microsoft Word for Designers: Layout Fundamentals

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Sooner or later, your client or boss is going to insist that you design something in Microsoft Word. Don’t freak out! Instead, learn about Word’s built-in graphic elements such as shapes, icons, SmartArt, and charts. While Word is not InDesign, it has tools to create practical building blocks for professional layouts that non-designer clients can easily edit.

In this session, Jennifer Parkinson shows how common InDesign-style layouts can be re-created in Word, with an emphasis on designing templates that hold up in real-world use. Learn how to leverage Word’s graphic features to create clean, professional templates for marketing documents such as proposals, white papers, and slicks.

Topics include:

  • Best practices for importing and managing images
  • Formatting shapes, icons, and charts in Word
  • Creating and applying a document theme
  • Styling tables and text boxes for polished layouts

InDesign’s Top Ten Type Tips and Tricks

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InDesign offers even more text control than most users realize. With a few targeted tips, you can speed up everyday work, simplify text management, and feel more confident handling complex documents. In this session, Nigel French shares his favorite InDesign text tips and tricks, focusing squarely on speed, control, and smarter workflows. Expect practical insights, plenty of “why didn’t I know that?” moments, and techniques you can apply immediately to real documents.

Key takeaways:

  • Gain more control over text without adding complexity
  • Reduce manual cleanup in text-heavy layouts
  • Work more confidently with long or complex documents
  • Spot small text workflow tweaks that save serious time

Document Accessibility Starts with InDesign

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Accessibility is a design responsibility that starts the moment a document is created. For anyone working in InDesign, early decisions directly affect how usable that content will be for everyone who reads it.

In this session, Chad Chelius explains why accessible documents begin in InDesign—not in Acrobat, not in downstream fixes, and not after problems surface. You’ll gain a clear understanding of how structure, organization, and intent in your InDesign files form the foundation for accessibility. Chad emphasizes mindset as much as mechanics, framing accessibility as a core professional skill, not a niche specialty.

This session is for all InDesign users. Whether accessibility is new to you or already part of your workflow, you’ll leave with a clearer sense of why it matters, where it begins, and how better InDesign practices lead to better outcomes.

Key takeaways:

  • Recognize how document structure and organization affect accessibility outcomes
  • See accessibility as a core design responsibility, not a niche skill
  • Identify early design decisions that have the biggest accessibility impact
  • Build a stronger foundation for accessible PDFs and digital documents

Discover Your Creative Advantage in Hidden Dimensions

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In this session, Tony Harmer invites you to rethink everyday design challenges by embracing 3D thinking inside familiar Adobe environments. This isn’t about becoming a 3D expert or learning a new pile of tools. It’s about shifting how you think, explore, and experiment—then realizing how much easier and more flexible your design process can be.

You’ll see how thinking in more dimensions can speed up ideation, simplify revisions, and open creative directions that feel surprisingly natural once you stop designing flat. Along the way, Tony makes a fun, eye-opening case for why some of the most powerful design workflows start when designers add depth to their thinking.

You’ll walk away inspired, a little amused, and probably asking yourself, “Wait… why haven’t I been doing this?”

You will learn how to:

  • Overcome graphic design challenges by thinking in dimensions
  • Discover why designing with depth makes changes and revisions easier
  • Adopt a creative mindset that refuses to stay flat

Build Agentic Solutions for the Work You Dread (Part 1)

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This two-part, hands-on workshop demonstrates how to use AI to automate tedious, time-consuming tasks that no creative pro enjoys doing. Over two sessions, you’ll learn what AI agents are, see practical examples, and build one together from start to finish.

These sessions are focused on hands-on building. You’ll follow along step by step as the group creates a fully functioning AI agent in real time, with guidance and opportunities to ask questions along the way. This workshop is beginner-friendly and requires no prior AI or automation experience. Bring your own laptop and work along, or observe if you prefer. By the end of the second session, you’ll leave with a working AI agent and a clear understanding of how these workflows are built so you can adapt them to your own creative work.

In Part 1: Foundations + Direction, you will learn how to:

  • Discover the power of AI agents in creative workflows
  • Explore real examples that automate common, time-consuming tasks
  • Understand how AI agent workflows are structured
  • Choose which AI agent the group will build together

Transforming Wordy Slides into Clear Visual Stories

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Text overload is a presentation killer and the #1 frustration for designers and communicators. In this energizing session, you’ll learn five pro techniques to fix cluttered slides fast. Discover how to go from wordy to worthy, maintain credibility, and satisfy even the most text-committed authors while improving clarity and engagement. Perfect for anyone who wants slides that look great, read well, and win audiences over.

You will learn how to:

  • Turn text-heavy slides into clear, eye-catching visuals that audiences actually want to read
  • Get buy-in from authors who insist on “more text” without losing their trust or message
  • Design slides that shine on screen and double as effective handouts

Three Minutes Max: Illustrator

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This crowd favorite is back and better than ever! Don’t miss this fun-filled, action-packed, highly educational, and mind-blowing session where each of our instructors will have just three minutes to share their favorite Illustrator tip—then you get to vote for your favorite!

In past years, some of the best tips have been held for this session, so you don’t want to miss it!

Portfolio Critique

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Join Nigel French and Theresa Jackson for a live portfolio critique of attendee work. In this interactive session, selected pieces will be reviewed and discussed with practical, constructive feedback you can apply immediately.

Expect thoughtful insights on design decisions, visual communication, and presentation choices, along with broader takeaways that will benefit everyone watching. Whether your work is reviewed directly or you’re learning from others’ examples, you’ll gain a sharper perspective on how portfolios are seen and evaluated by experienced creative professionals.

Maintaining Brand Consistency

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In this session, Nicte Cuevas shares how professional designers can build a practical brand system that works for both internal teams and clients. See how to use Creative Cloud Libraries alongside Illustrator, Photoshop, and Adobe Express to create a connected brand ecosystem that supports designers and non-designers alike. Nicte shows how brand assets and brand kits can live across Creative Cloud apps, making updates easier to manage and helping teams stay on brand without constant oversight.

This session focuses on real systems designers can adapt to support teams, streamline workflows, and maintain brand consistency at scale.

Topics include:

  • Build a practical brand system that supports both designers and non-designers
  • Create brand kits that stay in sync across Creative Cloud apps
  • Reduce production cleanup by empowering teams with the right tools and structure

You’ve Got This: Designer’s Easy Guide to Motion

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Knowing how to work with motion is quickly becoming a must for every designer. Thankfully, it’s not as difficult as you think! Emmy-winning motion designer Kyle Hamrick is passionate about guiding beginners through their first steps into this exciting and rapidly-growing corner of the design world. By the end of this session, you’ll be armed with a variety of accessible techniques for bringing designs to life through the magic of motion, across multiple Adobe apps.

You will learn:

  • How to leverage your existing design skills while adding time and movement
  • Techniques for structuring your design files for animation
  • Approachable techniques to animate designs in Express, Photoshop and After Effects
  • How to easily customize existing animations using Motion Graphics Templates (aka “MOGRTs”) in Premiere