This week’s E-Learning Heroes Challenge is to come up with a “Top 10” list of things you’d tell someone about Storyline. You can collect your favorite resource links and curate them any way you’d like.
I basically took everything that I normally say to someone who asks me about Storyline, put it all together with appropriate links, and tied a bow on it. (Not unlike last week’s challenge where I did the same for what I tell future freelancers.)
The Design
One advantage of the gallery layout on my blog is that I can instantly see what sort of design I should do to contrast with my recent work. Since my last two entries haven’t had vibrant color palettes, and since spring is officially here, I went for bright and springy with a little bit of silliness and a little bit of elegance.
I also didn’t want a main menu with squares or buttons that linked to the 10 points. I wanted the menu to be a creative, vibrant, graphic embodiment of the theme. Once I made that decision, the idea for the springing-up flowers came easily.
Main Menu Flowers: I wanted flower shapes that I could fill with photo captures from their related content pages. So I took out my trusty Wacom tablet and started drawing the basic outlines of the flowers, stems, and leaves. I did it in Storyline by going to Insert > Shape > Lines > Scribble and drew them right on the slide.
Then I adjusted the outline weight and color and did a picture background fill for each shape using a tight capture from each of the larger flower photos.
To make the flowers pop in their hover states, I increased the weight of the flower’s outline by a pixel or two, and increased the size of each flower by about 4 pixels in width and height.
Audio: The sound effects for the flowers are two different sounds on top of each other. One’s a pop and one’s a spring. The singing birds are a piece of audio that I looped. I knew it was possible, but had never done it before. A quick Google search took me to this simple how-to. (Thanks, David!)
Content Page Colors: To get colors for my text, fills, and outlines that went perfectly with the flower images, I used the heck out of the eyedropper tool.
Photos: They’re all from Microsoft Clipart. I wanted big, clean, bold, colorful images.
Fonts: I’ve used the title font, Blue Chucks, a couple of times lately. Same with the paragraph font Copse. When you’re a cute font, you’re gonna get used.
The Content
It is what it is! This is what I tell people who ask, and these are the resources I direct them to.
The Finished Product
You can see it in all of its springy loveliness right here. Enjoy!
That was beautiful, and very informative, I love it!
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Thank you, Dan! It was a lot of fun to create, too. :)
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Love it! Thanks for the shout out to Ron and Yukon Learning!
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Thanks so much, Brooke! I’m glad you like it. The shout out is well-deserved for you and Ron and Yukon. I had a full-day pre-conference workshop with you guys at Learning Solutions two years ago, then another one last year, and I heard nothing but rave reviews from those who attended your workshops this year, too. What can you do? You guys are just good. :)
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This is great Jackie, as always. I learn so much from your blog posts about how you create the final product. I’m not sure how I would survive without the eyedropper – don’t you just love it!
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Thank you, Dianne! Whenever I’m in a program that doesn’t have the eyedropper tool I just end up entering endless RGB or hex codes to get the custom colors I want. The eyedropper rules! :)
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Hi Jackie! I found your work on the eLearning Heroes site and started following your blog. I love the projects you post! I just recently switched to eLearning development from a career in newspaper page design and am trying to improve my skills. I am really enjoying the projects you’re creating for the challenges. I’m hoping to post some of my own responses to the challenges in the coming months!
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Hi Lindsey! I’m so glad you found me and my blog. (And congrats on getting your own blog going!) I’m really happy you like my projects and I hope you’ll jump in with your own entries soon. When I put in my first challenge entry, which was just a couple of months ago, I didn’t think I had any time. But I made the decision to do it once, and now I’m completely addicted to the fun of it. You can do it! I’m looking forward to seeing you in the challenges – and thank you so much for getting in touch!
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