How I Built This Colorful Image-Based Menu

Ever since I first started using Storyline I've been developing fun sample projects and templates just for the heck of it. I think I do this because I really love being creative and putting together something vibrant, colorful and engaging.

Lately I've been sharing all of these little hidden gem projects that I have tucked away in my computers' folders, because they are much better off being used by the community than never seeing the light of day!

Here is one such example. This is a neat, image-based menu I created using shapes and images. I started out by choosing five photos with intense vibrant colors. Then, I resized each image so it would fill up the screen completely. I then used the crop tool to crop each one of them down to the same height, and stacked those cropped images on top of each other. I added a fun little colorful rectangle on the left-side of each image.

The next time was to create a "Hover" and "Selected" state for each image, and I made the "Normal" state of the photo black and white, using the photo editing options available right inside Storyline. When the interaction starts, all of the images are black and white, so the image really stands out and "pops" when you hover over it. 

For each color in the menu I created a slide layer with the full-size image on it, and a rectangular area to hold some text. When you click on one of the vertical tabs it opens up it's corresponding slide layer. You can exit the layer and return to the menu by clicking "Close" in the top right-hand corner.

When you've clicked on a color in the menu, the image state becomes "Selected" and the image is colored; this helps the users keep track of which slides they've already visited. 

View the published file for this course here: E-learning Interaction - Colorful Image-Based Menu. You can also head on over to the Downloads section of the website, and download the story file. Hope you like this simple image-based menu, and I hope it inspires your next project.

Want to try something you learned here, but don't have Articulate software? Download a free trial, and come back to E-learning Heroes regularly for more helpful advice on everything related to e-learning. If you have any comments, please share them below.