Here are some goodies for you:

• AQUENT gave us a discount code ‘holytoledo’ which will give you a $50 discount.
• Also, AQUENT will give away a box of Expression Studio ($699 value) to the first 5 people who sign up to an event.  

Join an AQUENT seminar and learn more about designing Silverlight experiences with Expression Blend and other Expression tools. I reviewed their 3 day course in Redmond a few months ago when we hosted a pilot event. The event went great. They put together fun materials to go through. The theme for the course is creating a website and assets for an aquarium. You get to design some fun and wacky fish in Expression Design, you take those into Blend and they teach how to animate. You also build a video gallery with shark and other fish videos. You learn how to create and customize Silverlight controls and on the third day, mainly for designers you learn the basics of how to code in C# with fun activities like generating a new human race with code .

Here is the outline/curriculum for the course.

Our friends from AQUENT GRAPHICS INSTITUTE have been in the business of training designers for almost 15 years. Last year we began working with them to produce training content for us. Collaborating with such an amazing team of talented trainers who know how to talk to designers has paid of tremendously as they are helping us bridge the initial gap between designers who have previous experience with Flash and the new concepts now available in Expression Blend and Silverlight. They are also providing training to our internal Microsoft design community via events we call Expression Sessions. These events help us train our internal design team (Office, MS.COM, MSN, Game Studios, Live, Windows etc) in the use of Silverlight and Expression. In February AQUENT will visit Redmond to train our internal design teams once more, this time to provide a course called Coding for Designers which is a fun one day event where AQUENT will teach designers in a fun and creative way the basics of coding with C#. We are recording that day in video so I will share the videos soon after. Jennifer Smith and Fred Gerantabee will also be presenting at MIX, also covering a C# for Designers session so visit MIX. AQUENT is also the official training partner for PhizzPop both online and in person design challenges.

Anyway, going back to the seminar tour that AQUENT is running… you can visit their Seminar site and learn more about how to participate. It is a 3 Day course for designers (although UI Developers who are relatively new to Silverlight would also find it very useful). They are currently offering events in NY, Boston and LA but if you want them to visit you in other cities in the US or around the world just drop them an email.

Hello! Ok a while ago I mentioned we had produced a short video series with Total Training called UI Design for Developers. Total Training invited us to visit them at NY where they have their studios and with their help we produced these 13 video series with quick tips & tricks for non designers to learn more about design. This is something I officially consider Part I because teaching design takes longer than just 13 videos but I hope these help you to get a little deeper into design. The videos are produced using Expression Design but all the tips and tricks work with Expression Blend too. I am already working on Part II of these series which I’ll make available in the future.

Also if you want more info on design check out this amazing website that will take you way deeper into Colors. Janet has done an amazing job providing good resources there.

For colors don’t forget ColourLovers.com now supports downloadable color palettes in Silverlight, WPF and Expression Design friendly formats.

We will publish all this content in the Expression Community site, an amazing resource for Designers but as usual I couldn’t resist so I’m licking out the videos here in my blog. Enjoy!

1 - Principles of Design Series:  Learning about Balance using Expression Design
| Video | Assets|

2 - Principles of Design Series:  Learning about Rhythm using Expression Design
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3 - Principles of Design Series:  Learning about Emphasis using Expression Design
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4 - Principles of Design Series:  Learning about Symmetry and Asymmetry using Expression Design
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5 - Principles of Design Series:  Learning about Unity using Expression Design
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6 - Principles of Design Series:  Learning about Points, Lines, and Form using Expression Design
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7 - Choosing Colors to Complement Your User Interface with Expression Design
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8 - Experimenting with User Interface Colors with Expression Design
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9 - Creating Mosaic and Tiled Patterns using Expression Design
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10 - Learning to Create Icons using Expression Design
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11 - Creating a Sample Icon using Expression Design
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12 - Designing a Glassy Button using Expression Design
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13 - Applying Effects to Bitmap Images using Expression Design
| Video | Assets |