benjithegreat

Thanks Blue, that's helpful! Ben

I know that this is a bit off. Most Designers want nothing to do with PowerPoint, and I am one of them. It's not made for us, it's made for "them". The non-designers of the the world. Unfortunately, My employer insists that I learn PowerPoint and know it well. I've gone in and dabbled here and there, but it seems so foreign to me. I'm familiar with good ol' Adobe products like Photoshop and Illustrator, where you do specific things like set kerning, leading, tracking, etc. In PPt, they use super-leyman's terms for everything, like "line-spacing" What the heck does that mean? Do you mean leading? stroke width? dash gaps? Stuff like that. I feel like my knowledge of what needs to be created is there and all the things that need to be done, I just don't know how to mickey-mouse my way through the program to get there. This brings me to my ultimate question: Does anyone know of a great way to learn PowerPoint from the perspective of a Designer? I've found tons of classes, but they all seem to be aimed at the general office drones and say things like "...and then if you want to put a pretty picture in there, you do this" and they drop in a hideous clip-art from a generic bin. They also expect that you already know all the other Office products. I personally haven't used Microsoft Word in over 20 years, so when they say things like "It's just like in Excel - super easy!" - I'm thrown. Anyway, enough of my grumbling... POWER POINT FOR DESIGNERS? Anybody? Thoughts? Ideas? Ben

Awesome - Thanks much Robert! I'll look into this!

Thanks for the info and advice Niller & Robert - much appreciated! I will definitely take this info to heart. So, I guess this brings me to a couple more questions, if you don't mind: - Since it seems I may be a bit behind on the times here, do you know of any resources that I might be able to get myself up-to-speed on some of this stuff? I have general Design skills and have been a Designer for about 20 years now, but in a multitude of fields - not strictly web. - Is there any way of designing websites without coding? Or does it always come back to that? I've taken a number of classes over the years and the coding seems a little different than the way my brain works. Whatever advice you can offer would be helpful - Thanks again!! Ben

Hey! I'm an Art Director and I work with a number of international Devs. Lately, we've been having trouble getting what is produced by the Devs to match what I, the Designer create in Photoshop. Aside from creating prototypes, doing coding myself, etc, if possible, I'm curious - What is the best way to hand off work to the Developers? I've done it a number of ways before at past jobs. I've sent them pngs of the layout, and then created each asset (images, custom buttons, etc) myself to go along with it, I've sent them a PSD with everything in it and just allowed them to create the assets themselves. I've also heard that Illustrator is a better way to design layouts. I've created layouts in both Photoshop and Illustrator, as I feel each have their strengths, but feel like if I were to pick one to use, it would be Photoshop. So basically, I've got conflicting viewpoints coming at me from different angles and I'd just like to find out what other Designers are doing and what they feel is the best way to hand off work to the Devs - what format, what programs, etc. (of course I'd stay in the loop with them after, so it's not an absolute hand-off) I've tried to research this online, but keep running into the same things of "What's the difference between a Designer & a Developer" - things like that that I already know, but not a lot of solid help otherwise. Anyway - Thoughts? Any help is greatly appreciated! Thanks! Ben