Wrangle Your Swatches

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Take your color workflows to the next level by mastering Adobe Illustrator’s Swatches, the most powerful tool for managing and organizing colors across your design projects.

While Illustrator offers the best functionality for swatch management, this session goes beyond just one app. We’ll also explore how swatches work in InDesign and Photoshop, comparing their strengths and limitations. Learn how to create, organize, and share color palettes efficiently across these three key applications, ensuring consistency in your designs from start to finish.

Learn how to save time, reduce mistakes, and collaborate more effectively with your team to maintain color consistency across projects. Whether you’re a seasoned pro or just getting started, you’ll walk away with actionable tips that make working with color a breeze.

You’ll learn how to:

  • Work faster by leveraging Illustrator’s Swatches panel and Global Color features
  • Organize swatches efficiently in Illustrator, Photoshop, and InDesign
  • Establish brand consistency across projects and applications
  • Share swatches across Illustrator, InDesign, and Photoshop
  • Collaborate with team members for consistent color usage

Closing Session

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It’s time to bring this five-day CreativePro extravaganza to a close. Join us for one last opportunity to catch a tip, win a prize, and learn what’s next on the horizon.

From Bland to Grand: Slide Design Makeovers

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Watch average, “been there done that” designs be transformed into visually stunning slides in real time! This session walks you through a step-by-step process, revamping poorly designed slides into clear, compelling visuals that captivate audiences and elevate your messages. Learn practical tips and techniques to turn bland slide decks into grand designs.

You’ll learn:

  • Practical slide transformation techniques
  • How to jump-start creativity and find inspiration quickly
  • How simple design elements create interest and value

— SNEAK PEAK —
How to Take Your Presentation From Bland to Grand

A Master Class in Digital Art and Photoshop Innovation

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Join Photoshop legend Bert Monroy for a tour of his hyper-realistic compositions—including a piece he created based on his experience at CreativePro Week 2023! Known for blurring the line between photography and painting, Bert shares the insights behind his process, workflow, and philosophies that bring everyday subjects to vivid, almost tangible life.

You’ll discover:

  • Lessons from Bert’s three decades of using Photoshop
  • Techniques and strategies for creating hyper-realistic digital art in Photoshop
  • How Bert approaches the creation of depth and realism.
  • Bert’s thoughts on the relationship between traditional art and digital tools
  • Practical tips for applying Monroy-inspired techniques to your own projects

A Curious Commitment: Building Habits That Foster Creativity, Learning, and Success

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For many of us, CreativePro Week is a peak experience, where we are inspired to connect and learn more than any other time of the year. But after you get home, it’s what you do with the next 51 weeks that will determine your level of success.

How do you overcome feelings of constant busyness, distraction, and exhaustion to stay focused on growing yourself? How do you make learning a habit, to consistently build and add useful skills, and use your time to accomplish meaningful long-term goals?

Learn how to carry the spark of CreativePro Week with you the whole year long!

Power Up Your Searches with InDesign’s Find/Change

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In this session, we will dive into InDesign’s Find/Change feature and take a step-by-step approach to investigate its often overlooked power. See how it can be your secret weapon for fixing problems with text, objects, colors, and more. And—since no one likes to do the same thing over and over—we’ll cover saving search queries so you can easily reuse them.

You’ll learn how to:

  • Clean up text quickly, whether it’s your own or imported into your document
  • Find and change objects based on their attributes
  • Use built-in queries for common searches, or save and share your own custom queries for easy re-use
  • Learn tricks for auto-formatting poorly styled text you’ve imported into your document and applying styles
  • Locate and apply colors by object type

Awesome Animation

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Stop making boring, static slides and bring your presentations to life with animation! In this fast-paced, fun presentation, Jole Simmons will show you how to use animation to keep your audience engaged, make your story more compelling, and take your presentations to the next level. From basic text and object animations to more advanced motion paths and timing techniques, you’ll learn how to build a rhythm in your slides to keep things moving without overwhelming your audience.

Topics include:

  • Master PowerPoint’s animation and motion path features to create smooth, dynamic slides
  • Learn how to control timing and sequencing to build a narrative with your animations
  • Use triggers and layers to add interactivity and make your presentations stand out
  • Discover ways to animate graphs and charts for better visual impact
  • Avoid common animation mistakes and create polished, professional presentations

Hands-On Creativity and Design

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As designers, our software skills are a huge advantage, making it easy for us to branch out into new creative realms, but—only if we’re willing to put down our mouse now and then. After all, studies show that creating with our hands is as good for the brain as it is for the soul!

In this session, Khara Plicanic shares what’s possible when you mix Adobe know-how with analog play, some glue, and an endless amount of curiosity.

You’ll (re)discover:

  • Easy ideas for adding more hands-on creativity to your life
  • Resources for ongoing exploration and experimentation
  • Delightful ways analog elements can enhance your digital projects

Charts in InDesign

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Sooner or later, the time comes for every InDesign user when we need to create or insert charts into our documents. But sadly, even after all these years, Adobe hasn’t given us a way to do that natively with the program. Fortunately, in this session, Nolan Haims will take you on a deep dive into strategies for creating rich data reports in InDesign using tools you already have (or which you can easily obtain).

He’ll cover ways to create standard and non-standard charts, maintain design consistency, and even keep data updatable when needed.

Topics include:

  • Excel, PowerPoint, and PDF workflows for keeping data dynamic and editable
  • Maintaining accuracy with manually created charts
  • The pros and cons of Illustrator and other chart creation tools
  • Moving beyond bars and pies with more unique chart styles
  • Accessibility considerations and techniques

12 Awesome PowerPoint Techniques for Better Presentations

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PowerPoint is an essential tool for all types of communication, but it’s almost universally used poorly. Revolutionize your content with amazing visuals, engage your audience with compelling animations, and impress them with beautiful, professional designs—all using only PowerPoint.

In this session, you’ll see a host of visual storytelling techniques, all demonstrated live, that you can use immediately to create amazing presentations or interactive content. You’ll see how to apply these to marketing content, sales conversations, and exec keynotes, plus get free sources for graphics and productivity boosting tools.

You’ll learn how to:

  • Create dynamic visuals that support persuasive stories to engage your audience
  • Develop professional looking designs for presentations and other content
  • Become a PowerPoint legend with techniques to make effective presentations quickly and easily