Unmatched Design Sense for Non-Designers
Rating:
5 / 5
DesignSense is unmatched for it's quality of presentation of graphics for non-graphics types. Though I know a great deal about graphics, I find it very helpful and am planning to use it as a training tool at my job. Our newsletters have looked amateurish way too long. This tool will help you and those in your company design better publications and graphics!
Delivers excellent presentation design guidelines
Rating:
5 / 5
I've been from the school of "use-what's there' when creating PowerPoint presentations. As long as I don't put too much text on a slide, include some clipart and charts, it's 'good enough'. As a consequence, I've never been satisfied with the results.DesignSense is the first step-by-step material I've come across that explains the underlying principles simply, and clearly illustrates how to use them. You don't need to work through all of the materials before starting to see benefits. I was able to apply early guidelines to my presentations immediately. In some cases, the results were nothing short of stunning. The progression of the material makes sense, moving from layout (relatively easy to conceptualize) to uses of type (a little more subtle), color and visual effects (the most knotty issue). I've worked through the material thoroughly once. Now, the best way I've found to work with the program is to keep it open while I'm in PowerPoint, and use it as a reference. There's a very useful critique section I run through when I think I'm finished. The package justified its purchase price on the value of any one of a number of guidelines: - Use of small vs. large caps - Use of techniques other than bold and underline for emphasis - Reducing the size of text can ADD emphasis - Limiting the number of type faces - Details on punctuation - Discussion of color palette and its use If you do a lot of presentations, DesignSense is strongly recommended. It's like having Fowler's English Usage handy - except that it applies to design.
Great interactive learning for document design
Rating:
5 / 5
One problem in written communication is that many creative possibilities are available on computers. You'd think that was the good news, but it's not. In the age of typewriters, upper case and underlining were our only design capabilities. We took our typewritten drafts to a trained graphic designer, and all was well.Today's writers have countless typefaces available, and some people use too many in a document; they add boldface, italics, and outline effects; they employ ten different font sizes in one document, or reverse out their type, or add borders galore. The result can be ugly, unreadable documents. It's especially hard with PowerPoint� (PP) presentations; the templates are predictable and encourage poor design. However, 90% of the electronic slides made in this country are created in PP. Some critics suggest throwing the program away; others advocate plug-in programs to make PP work better. DesignSense for Presentations, a CD-ROM instructional program, presents another alternative: It suggests that users can learn basic design principles to improve PP productions, Web-based documents, and all their paper texts. Design principles are normally time-consuming and hard to teach in traditional classes. There are good textbooks, but they're not interactive or dynamic. Design Sense shows different design options dynamically. The learner can experiment with reverse type (type color and ground) or view text in "tight," "regular," and "loose" options. There's an especially good section on typeface. With this 12-hour course, it's possible to work through each lesson in about a half an hour, which easily fits the time constraints of most corporate learners. There are four sections of lessons: 1. Slide Layout 2. Type 3. Color 4. Visuals An integration section follows: 1. Critique 2. Gallery 3. Templates (before and after) 4. Makeover 5. Examples 6. Glossary DesignSense subscribes to a minimalist school of design, proposing that the simplest possible design is the very best. Every graphic component should be tested against the question: "Do we really need this component?" The program runs on CD-ROM and is not installed on a user's system. It's very simple to run and has no complicated manuals. The registration form asks you to "Please fill out the following information, or tape your business card here." Such a simple, useful idea mirrors the entire program, which is simple and useful.
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