Coming from a writing background, I need to immerse myself into the technical side of the New Media classes and requirements as quickly as possible. That’s why I chose to watch “Adobe XD Essential Training: Design” on what was lynda.com, but is now called LinkedIn Learning.
I have experience with Adobe programs (InDesign and Photoshop, mostly) and have been involved with newspaper and website design throughout my career, but I wasn’t familiar with how XD worked until I watched this seven-part series of videos taught by Demian Borba, who is a strategic development manager at Adobe.
These videos helped educate me on how to get started with XD and the tools at my disposal.
Each section is broken up into short, easily digestible video nuggets between 2-4 minutes each, although a few are as long as five or six minutes. There are anywhere from 1-11 videos per section, depending on the subject.
For example, the more basic sections, such as “Get Started with Adobe” has 10 videos, and the next one — appropriately named “Design Mode Basics” — has 11. On the other hand, "Connect With CC Libraries" has only one video.
Right away, I was blown away by the most elementary functions, but was particularly impressed with how easy it is to work with images in XD. That was evidenced by several videos, but especially “Bring Images Into Shapes” in the second section.
As Borba said in one of the first videos, "You want to work smarter, not harder. XD is the answer for you."
Without being hands-on with XD, several of the later videos were more advanced for my skill level and more difficult to follow.
Obviously, watching an expert work through examples and situations isn’t going to fully prepare me for my future Emerging Media classes and projects, but the videos gave me a basic understanding of the power of XD.