Adobe Bridge: Practical, Hands-On Workflows

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When your files are scattered, productivity takes a hit. This session shows why understanding Adobe Bridge matters—and how it can simplify the way you work with creative assets.

In this hands-on workshop, Melissa Piccone introduces Bridge as a visual command center for your files. You’ll see how it helps you stay organized, move faster, and maintain clarity across complex projects. The emphasis is on practical efficiency: reducing friction, minimizing context switching, and building confidence managing real-world file collections.

Leave with a clear understanding of what Bridge does, how it fits into Creative Cloud workflows, and why it’s a tool every creative professional should understand.

Topics include:

  • See, filter, and sort files across multiple folders at once
  • Organize faster with a two-window Bridge workflow
  • Batch rename, convert, and process files with confidence
  • Collect and manage InDesign-linked assets using Bridge

PowerPoint’s Vector Toolkit: Built for Designers

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Leave aside your pixels, your JPEGs, and your PNGs, and dive into all that PowerPoint can do with vector content. In this session, you’ll shift your mindset from pixels to paths and learn how to build graphics that stay editable, scalable, and lightweight.

Explore how PowerPoint handles shapes, illustrations, icons, charts, and type as true vector objects. This session will get you using PowerPoint more like Illustrator and less like Photoshop to create dynamic and editable graphics while keeping file size to a minimum. You’ll walk away with concrete techniques for creating cleaner, more flexible graphics that hold up in real-world PowerPoint workflows.

You will learn how to:

  • Draw and refine custom shapes using Bezier curves and PowerPoint’s shape-editing tools
  • Combine, subtract, and intersect shapes using PowerPoint’s pathfinder-style commands
  • Gain more control over type, SVGs, and charts by converting them to pure vector shapes
  • Learn the best techniques and file formats for icons, logos, and illustrations

Sneak Peek:
Getting the Most from PowerPoint’s Merge Shapes Feature

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 an agentic solution 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 agentic workflow 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 agentic dashboard 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 agentic solution 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.

Why participate?

This is your chance to share something you’ve created with people who get it—people who know the challenges, the constraints, and the decisions behind the work. You’ll hear how others see your work, what’s landing, and where you could push it further.

  • Present your work in a supportive, judgment-free space
  • Receive feedback from Nigel, Theresa, and your peers
  • See how others approach similar challenges
  • Leave with ideas you can apply right away

CreativePro is built on connection—this is one of the best ways to experience it.

What should you submit?

Bring real work you’re proud of, or still figuring out.

We’re looking for a mix of projects, including: brand identity, packaging design, marketing campaigns, logo design, presentations, or publications and book design.

Have something else? Submit it. Variety makes this session stronger.

How to prepare your submission

Keep it simple. Focus on showing your thinking and results.

  • Submit a PDF or MP4s only.
  • Use landscape format for PDFs (best for screen viewing).
  • Include as many pages or images as needed—no strict limits.
  • Upload video as separate MP4 files (optional).

How to submit

What happens next

  • A limited number of portfolios will be selected
  • You’ll be notified by June 26th, 2026 if your work is chosen

If selected:

  • Plan for a 3-minute presentation of your work.
  • Nigel and Theresa will lead the critique and the audience will join in with additional feedback.

Don’t overthink it. Submit something real. This is about learning, sharing, and getting better together.

Submit Your Portfolio Now!