Storyline: Drop Shadow Button UI Set
Create a consistent look and feel in your next e-learning project with this delightful button set. Explore this project. This amazing download is part of our Four Weeks of Fun Freebies. Find more free goodies like this right here and stay tuned to #4weeksoffreebies to scoop up all the latest stuff.Storyline: Phishing Simulation Example
Educating learners on information security risks often results in courses that are chock full of endless warnings and doomsday scenarios. That's why this stunning example course is so inspiring. With a calming coastal color palette, this example encourages learners to do a deep-dive into the topic of phishing and learn from their mistakes as they go. Explore this project Learn more about this projectStoryline 360: Adding Media from Content Library 360
Content Library 360 has more than 100,000 combinations of photographic and illustrated characters, expressions, and poses plus 22+ million high-resolution photos, illustrations, icons, and videos. You can access them right from Storyline 360, and they’re all available to use in your content for no additional charge. To add Content Library 360 media to a course, go to the Insert tab on the Storyline ribbon and click Characters, Photos, Illustrations, Icons, or Videos. See the articles below for details on each media type. Storyline 360: Adding Content Library 360 Characters Storyline 360: Adding Content Library 360 Photos Storyline 360: Adding Content Library 360 Illustrations Storyline 360: Adding Content Library 360 Icons Storyline 360: Adding Content Library 360 VideosStoryline 360: Adding Content Library 360 Icons
Content Library 360 has 22+ million high-resolution photos, illustrations, icons, and videos. You can access them right from Storyline 360, and they’re all available to use in your content without additional charge. In this article, you’ll learn how to add eye-catching Content Library icons to your courses and how to customize them with your own colors and effects. Adding Content Library 360 Icons to Your Course Customizing Content Library 360 Icons Making Icons Accessible Adding Content Library 360 Icons to Your Course Go to the Insert tab on the ribbon and click Icons in the Content Library 360 group. Type a search term in the field at the top of the media browser and press Enter. Tip: The media browser remembers your last search term, previous search results, and the last asset you selected. Zoom in and out while you’re browsing for icons by holding down the Ctrl key on your keyboard and scrolling your mouse wheel. If you want to look for a different type of media after opening the browser, use the drop-down list in the upper right corner to switch to another type: photos, illustrations, icons, or videos. Select the icon you want to use and click Insert to add it to your slide. Tip: You can select multiple icons at the same time using Ctrl+Click or Shift+Click, then insert them all at once. Customizing Content Library 360 Icons After importing a Content Library 360 icon into your course, you can customize its colors to match your course design. Just select the icon on the slide, go to the Format tab on the ribbon, and use the style galleries to edit the fill color, outline color, and effects. For example, here’s the same icon with different styles. And if an icon is composed of more than one shape, you can ungroup it and format each shape individually. Just right-click the icon, scroll to Group, and click Ungroup to see all the components that make up the icon. Here's an example of an ungrouped icon. You can tell if an icon is one shape or many by right-clicking it. If the Group option is grayed-out, it’s a single shape. If the Group option is active, it’s composed of multiple shapes. Here’s an example of a multi-shape icon. The original icon on the left has no formatting. The same icon in the middle has been recolored all at once (without ungrouping it). And the same icon again, but this time ungrouped, with specific formatting for each component is on the right. Making Icons Accessible When icons are designed with accessibility in mind, they are more likely to be intuitive and user-friendly for everyone, not just those with disabilities. Here’s how to make your icons accessible: Meet color contrast guidelines. You can use a web-based contrast checker or download a contrast checker tool to test the contrast ratio of your icons (1.4.11 Non-text Contrast). Reduce ambiguity. Use icons that communicate their functions clearly and are widely understood across different cultures and demographics. If you use an icon as a button, provide a text label that matches the icon’s function (2.5.3 Label in Name). Size appropriately. Adjust the size of any interactive icon to at least 44 pixels wide and 44 pixels tall. This ensures your icons are large enough for learners to interact with without error (2.5.5 Target Size). Offer multiple ways to navigate. Icons must be navigable by assistive technologies like screen readers to ensure an inclusive browsing experience (2.1.1 Keyboard). Stay consistent. Reuse the same icon to signify the same meaning. This lets learners know what to expect from each icon (3.2.4 Consistent Identification). Rely on text—not icons—to convey important details. Offer text-based options and make sure each icon has alternative text (alt text) descriptions. Icons that are purely decorative don’t need alt text. Hide them from accessibility tools to prevent unnecessary announcements (1.1.1 Non-text Content). You Might Also Want to Explore: Formatting Shapes, Captions, Text Boxes, and Content Library 360 Icons Ordering, Grouping, Sizing, and Positioning ObjectsUsing Pantone's 2024 Color of the Year in E-Learning #444
Pantone Color of the Year 2024 #444: Challenge | Recap Welcome to PANTONE 13-1023 Peach Fuzz! Pantone announced its 2024 Color of the Year: Peach Fuzz. Pantone describes the color as: “In seeking a hue that echoes our innate yearning for closeness and connection, we chose a color radiant with warmth and modern elegance. A shade that resonates with compassion, offers a tactile embrace, and effortlessly bridges the youthful with the timeless.” What is the color of the year and why is it important? It shows what colors will be trendy in things like fashion, home decoration, and graphic design, helping set the overall style. Designers use it as a source of inspiration to guide their creative choices. Companies and brands use it to give their products a fresh and current design style. E-learning designers looking for trendy colors to use in their projects. Why do an e-learning challenge on a single color? As course designers, you often need to adhere to a company's style guide to ensure your course's look and feel align with the organization's branding requirements. Whether you love or hate it, get ready to see Peach Fuzz everywhere. It'll show up in fashion, beauty products, and even in the design of online courses. Peach Fuzz will be the most popular color in the coming year. This type of design exercise is designed to stretch you by using colors you may not like. And learning to use Peach Fuzz in e-learning is what this final challenge of 2023 is all about! Using the Pantone Color of the Year 2024 in E-Learning View the recommended color harmonies Pantone provides color harmonies for getting the most from this year's color. Here are some ways course designers can use Peach Fuzz in their e-learning projects. Color palette: Use Peach Fuzz to create a cohesive theme color for your course. This could involve using it as a background color or incorporating it into graphical elements such as tooltips, charts, diagrams, and icons. Accent color: Use as an accent color to highlight important information or to draw attention to specific areas on your slide. This could involve using the color in buttons, markers, or other interactive elements. Design element: Use color as a graphic design element to add visual interest to your course. This could involve using the color in monochromatic themes, gradients, or patterns. Color combinations: Use Peach Fuzz in combination with other colors to create a cohesive and visually unique theme. Using with Tints and Shades to Create Custom Color Palettes One of the easiest and safest ways to create a color palette is to start with a base color and use tint and shade values for the secondary colors. Tints: Tints are lighter shades of a color made by mixing it with white. They are used when you want a color to look softer and less intense. Shades: Shades are darker versions of a color made by adding black to it. They are used when you want a color to look more dramatic or elegant than its original strong color. E-learning designers can use tints and shades as a starting point for creating custom color palettes. Here's a quick example I made using one of the slide templates from the Content Library: Creating Custom Colors in PowerPoint with Tints and Shades Creating custom color palettes with tints and shades is a fantastic way to create a cohesive and visually appealing design. Here’s a quick tutorial on how you can create your own tints and shades color palette. View on YouTube | Download the PowerPoint Template 🏆 Challenge of the Week This week, your e-learning challenge is to design a template or interaction using Pantone's Peach Fuzz. You can build anything you like this week. You aim to work from a single color and show how to carry that color across your design templates. 🧰 Resources This is our 11th Pantone color challenge. To get an idea of what course designers shared in previous color challenges, check out the previous challenges: 2014: Radiant Orchid 2015: Marsala 2016: Rose Quartz-Serenity 2017: Greenery 2018: Ultra Violet 2019: Living Coral 2020: Classic Blue 2021: Illuminating 2022: Very Peri 2023: Viva Magenta ✨ Share Your E-Learning Work Comments: Use the comments section below to link your published example and blog post. Forums: Start a new thread and share a link to your published example. Personal blog: If you have a blog, please consider writing about your challenges. We'll link to your posts so your great work gets even more exposure. Social media: If you share your demos on Twitter or LinkedIn, try using #ELHChallenge so your tweeps can follow your e-learning coolness. 🙌 Last Week’s Challenge: To help you nurture and embrace this week's challenge, check out the top things course designers wish they'd known when they started their careers: 10 Things E-Learning Designers Learned RECAP #443: Challenge | Recap 👋 New to the E-Learning Challenges? The weekly e-learning challenges are ongoing opportunities to learn, share, and build your e-learning portfolios. You can jump into any or all of the previous challengesanytime you want. I’ll update the recap posts to include your demos. Learn more about the challenges in this Q&A post and why and how to participate in this helpful article. 📆 Next Week’s Challenge Next week's challenge (Dec 15, 2023): The 2023 challenge season is over, but I'd like your help with a couple of end-of-year roundups. Next week's challenge post will be to share your favorite challenge example of 2023. I'll compile your examples into a "Best of 2023" listicle. Make-up challenge: We need to make up challenge #426 (Barbenheimer) to keep our challenge numbering consistent. We had to remove #426, so I'm reworking the challenge to be more general. It will still follow the format of mixing two distinct design styles. I'll post more on that next week. Challenge recaps: I'm going through every challenge of 2023 to ensure your entries are captured in the recap posts. If you submitted one or more challenge demos but don't see them in the recaps, you can use this form to let me know. I'll have everything current by the end of month. Got an idea for a challenge? Are you interested in doing a webinar showcasing how you made one or more challenge demos? Or do you have some comments for your humble challenge host? Use this anonymous form to share your feedback: https://bit.ly/ElearningChallengeForm.Using Glassmorphism Designs in E-Learning Course Development #310
Glassmorphism Design in E-Learning #310: Challenge | Recap It's a new year, and that means new design trends. In a recent challenge, we looked using the 2021 Pantone Color of the Year in e-learning design. If you haven't checked out the examples, stop what you're doing and check them out. The color of the year is a big deal because it will influence design, fashion, home interior, and consumer product trends in the upcoming year. 2021 E-Learning Design Trends This week, we're looking at how course creators can use the frosted glass effect, known as glassmorphism, in their e-learning designs. Glassmorphism is a design concept that’s been around for a while. Variations of the effect have been used in iOS 7 and Mac OS Big Sur. The effect is created by layering gradient or blurred backgrounds and semi-transparent shapes and panels. Here's an example: Courses Dashboard by Rudi Hartono Applying Glassmorphism Effects to E-Learning Templates If you’re looking for a place to start, try working with an existing course or template you’ve already built. This way, your content is already in place, and you’re free to focus on the design elements. Here’s a quick before and after for the Serenity template. To create the blurred background effect, I started in PowerPoint and went to Format Picture > Artistic Effects > Blur. Depending on the image you use, you might need to apply another round of blur to the image. To apply a second blur effect, save your image as a picture. Saving the image flattens the blur effect. Insert the blurred image back into PowerPoint and repeat the process. I think the effect turned out pretty well, but I would still like to play with different layouts and panels before considering this a final design concept. Challenge of the Week This week, your challenge is to share an example demonstrating how glassmorphism can be used in e-learning. Your example can be interactive or a screenshot. We want to see how this design trend can be used in course design. Resources Here are some good examples of glassmorphism to give you an idea how the design effect is being used in UI design. Glassmorphism designs and examples on Dribbble Frosted glass examples on Dribbble Glassmorphism in user interfaces Share Your E-Learning Work Comments: Use the comments section below to share a link to your published example and blog post. Forums: Start your own thread and share a link to your published example.. Personal blog: If you have a blog, please consider writing about your challenges. We’ll link back to your posts so the great work you’re sharing gets even more exposure. Social Media: If you share your demos on Twitter or LinkedIn, try using #ELHChallenge so your tweeps can track your e-learning coolness. Last Week’s Challenge: Before you dive into this week’s challenge, check out the interactive aircraft safety cards your fellow community members shared over the past week: Interactive Passenger Safety Cards #309: Challenge| Recap New to the E-Learning Challenges? The weekly e-learning challenges are ongoing opportunities to learn, share, and build your e-learning portfolios. You can jump into any or all of the previous challenges anytime you want. I’ll update the recap posts to include your demos.How to Use Typography to Improve Your E-Learning
Typography—or the art of creating characters for print—is a powerful tool for setting the right mood and tone for your e-learning course. Choosing the right typefaces will help you create clear, beautiful, and legible text that complements the content, interactions, and graphics in your course. In this rich guide to typography for e-learning designers, we'll show you how to create a professional, elegant look for your course by choosing the right typefaces. You’ll learn: Why typography matters The importance of selecting the right typeface for your project How typography can be used set the mood for your learners The impact of size on legibility, readability, and learner engagement How to use fonts to help your learners navigate your courses
