I’m at an internal conference at Microsoft this week and one of the sessions that I attended was called Practical Design tips and tricks for Developers. It was a set of hands on labs that were created out of the Expression team. It was really slick and I learned a whole lot of new techniques and am feeling a whole lot more confident in my Expression Blend abilities. The really slick part is that you get to work through those same labs if you are interested because they have been posted on Arturo’s blog.
This 13 part video series will walk you through creating a workable color palate with a range of colors which all work together, creating brush resource out of those, creating shapes all the way from simple straight and curved lines to glass button effects with the simplest possible steps and really sets you up with the basics of what you need to know. It was really cool to be able to walk through those labs.
The labs are as follows:
1 – Principles of Design Series: Learning about Balance using Expression Design
2 – Principles of Design Series: Learning about Rhythm using Expression Design
3 – Principles of Design Series: Learning about Emphasis using Expression Design
4 – Principles of Design Series: Learning about Symmetry and Asymmetry using Expression Design
5 – Principles of Design Series: Learning about Unity using Expression Design
6 – Principles of Design Series: Learning about Points, Lines, and Form using Expression Design
7 – Choosing Colors to Complement Your User Interface with Expression Design
8 – Experimenting with User Interface Colors with Expression Design
9 – Creating Mosaic and Tiled Patterns using Expression Design
10 – Learning to Create Icons using Expression Design
11 – Creating a Sample Icon using Expression Design
12 – Designing a Glassy Button using Expression Design
13 – Applying Effects to Bitmap Images using Expression Design
For links to the videos and digital assets that you need to accomplish the the labs, check out Arturo’s post on it at ux.artu.tv » Blog Archive » New Video Series: UI Design for Developers Series, by Total Training.