Blog2021-05-06T12:54:43-07:00

Microsoft MVP for PowerPoint Again!

It’s a great day after receiving an email from Microsoft with this as the masthead!

I am honored to have Microsoft continue to include me in the “Most Valuable Professional” program as a representative for PowerPoint.

– Troy @ TLC

 

By |July 7th, 2017|Personal|

Educating Our Design Clients

Earlier this week we released a podcast entitled “How To Be A Good Design Client“. If you have not been a part of the conversation, I recommend it (of course I am one of the hosts, so I am obligated to recommend it!). The conversation was easy for us as a group of independent designers. I believe similar conversations happen with on-staff design teams in the corporate, education and internal team arenas.

But this specific episode is not a conversation just for us, the designers. In listening to the podcast I would hope it is forwarded to Creative Directors, Executives and bosses so they can hear the conversation they are not often invited to be a part of, but where their need to know and understand how the presentation design process can be expedited or hindered with their teams actions (or lack of action). Because we get to do as much educating others on the process and reasons for design decisions as we do the actual design.

Troy @ TLC

By |June 23rd, 2017|Resource/Misc, The PowerPoint® Blog|

Unsplash – Free Images (that are great!)

In a recent podcast, my co-host, Nolan, made a comment about a project where the client wanted to release a presentation project to the general public. Nolan’s point was that the presentation could not use standard royalty-free image resources but needed Creative Commons images. Just this week, Christie, a member of our design team, sent me a link to an image site she found. Her notes were: free, high-quality, easy search, lots of options. After looking at the Unsplash.com site, I agree, the images are high-quality, creative and the site has a good search option (often a limitation of many free image sites). And to Nolan’s point, all images are under Creative Commons licensing and would work great for a presentation design project where the ability to freely distribute the file is needed.

unsplash 1

What makes unsplash different from other image sites is that it does not actually own the images. Unsplash is a community with photographers submitting images, all of which must meet the Unsplash criteria (quality, licensing, file size, free). It was founded in 2013, based in Montreal, Canada. I am surprised that I have not run across it sooner.

On the quality side, one of the requirements is that photos are at least 3MB and 2048 by 1536 pixels in size – which is great for presentation use! The licensing is near perfect. This is just the first paragraph of the Unsplash License: “All photos published on Unsplash can be used for free. You can use them for commercial and noncommercial purposes. You do not need to ask permission from or provide credit to the photographer or Unsplash, although it is appreciated when possible.”

I will not be giving up our subscription to Adobe Stock or Getty, but, for certain projects, we have added Unsplash to our list of resources. In looking at images on the site, I found the “Black” and “Photos for Parent Bloggers” collections to be great, curated images within a theme.

Tip: After selecting a collection or doing a search, click the small grid layout icon to see images in a more friendly grid layout.

unsplash 2

To download:

  • Search for an image
    unsplash 3
  • Click on the image
    unsplash 4
  • Use the save options in the upper right (or save to collection if you have signed up with a free membership) or the download icon if viewing as a thumbnail grid
    unsplash 5
  • Use image in project!

Troy @ TLC

By |June 21st, 2017|Resource/Misc|
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