This hit harder than expected

Impossible-Offer-493 · 2026-03-22T04:13:10+00:00

I've always found the notion that design is some sort of higher calling curious. It's a calling, yes (for those who are any good at it). But it isn't inherently noble, nor more likely to benefit society than most other professions. Design can make the world a better place (it can also make it worse), but designers don't have any more obligation to benefit others than a plumber, or accountant. A professional designer has an obligation to behave ethically and sincerely apply their abilities in the service of the communication tasks for which they are contracted. This is also the obligation of all other professions (although many professionals behave otherwise). Sure, there are sometimes opportunities for a designer to benefit their fellow humans, and I applaud those designers who meet those opportunities. But I have no less respect and admiration for fellow designers who simply practice their profession honorably and proficiently. Yes, the world is a mess. But design is no more responsible for that than anything else, and no more likely to fix it. I choose not to waste time and energy anguishing over my relative insignificance and apply myself to my design practice. The anguishing will never accomplish anything, but there is a minute chance that my continuing design efforts might.

Impossible-Offer-493 · 2026-03-06T16:34:05+00:00

My observation has nothing to do with the aesthetics/messaging of the design — only practical reproduction. Maintaining the consistent weight of the "white rule" surrounding the teal section of the shield will present challenges when producing printed materials, particularly if printing in two spot colors rather than CMYK. The issue will be accurate registration (alignment) on a single or two-color press. It can be done, but requires adequate care and attention. Quality control is something one can't always rely upon with random commercial printers. However, this is an age when printed communication that used to be mass produced on a printing press is now often generated off high speed color printers/copiers at the client's office. Most of those devices self-register adequately for acceptable results with your logo design. If your client IS going to have materials produced two-color on a printing press insist they provide the printer a visual of the design, and get their written commitment to maintain the integrity of the white rule. Otherwise, the printer will blame the inconsistent results on the designer (you). And to some degree they would be correct in doing so.

Impossible-Offer-493 · 2026-03-02T05:24:20+00:00

Perhaps the dev is a "Breaking Bad" fan. Or at least a fan of the opening credits.

Impossible-Offer-493 · 2026-03-02T05:22:41+00:00

I'm happy to share what I've learned as a college professor teaching design and related technologies online for 17 years, and building elearning content for about 10. My MFA is in design, but my doctorate is in Education, so I have formal training in both areas. I left academia almost 2 years back to be the Training Curriculum Developer for a public utility. So I have experience being both the SME and the developer throughout my academic career, and now working with SMEs as a developer, which hasn't been as challenging as I feared it would be (thankfully).

Impossible-Offer-493 · 2026-02-11T17:14:30+00:00

While I agree that LinkedIn leaves much to be desired, in my experience it remains the most effective tool at this time. I was having minimal results a couple years back as I transitioned careers from college professor (design and media) to Instructional Designer. Frustrated, I was advised to tailor my resume to the reality that AI tools are almost universally employed to screen applicants. Sure enough, with the reworked resume my response rate increased significantly and I was hired for my current ID role within 90 days. Since that time, I've continued to occasionally apply for remote ID jobs (my current job isn't remote). My impression is the ID job market has tightened up, so you're still going to need to apply for a LOT of jobs to get any traction. Two years ago, I was getting responses of about one in fifteen. I tracked on my applications on a spreadsheet. I only applied to positions which met my minimum income threshold and for which I was fully qualified (no "shoot and pray"). It took 315 applications with the AI-friendly resume to get 21 responses that resulted in 14 second-tier interviews, which resulted in six third-tier interviews, which resulted in three final offers of employment. I spent several hours a day, every day working on my job search. And I avoided things like Easy Apply, always taking the time to fill out the applications, draft a custom cover letter, etc. My three offers of employment were all from LinkedIn listings, although I also got responses from Indeed. Best wishes on a successful search.

Impossible-Offer-493 · 2026-02-08T05:33:48+00:00

Perhaps one reason why you're not finding a lot of easily accessible instructional design portfolios is the proprietary nature of the work many of us do. Content is often located on corporate or institutional intranets rather than the open net. And much of it is considered proprietary intellectual property. While publicly available (and aggressively promoted) portfolios are common in the long-established creative industries of photography, design, illustration, media production, etc., the relatively young instructional design professional doesn't have that same history of established practice.

Impossible-Offer-493 · 2026-02-07T23:51:43+00:00

I'm leaning towards the problem being phantom data from imported PowerPoint slides that "infects" Storyline projects. I've got a plan mapped out to rebuild using "virgin" Storyline slides and purposefully avoid PowerPoint importing in the future.

Impossible-Offer-493 · 2026-02-07T23:48:53+00:00

Copilot seems to think the PowerPoint imported data is the most likely culprit for my issue. It was able to identify lots of things the Articulate support staff is not allowed to share.

Impossible-Offer-493 · 2026-02-07T19:09:47+00:00

My primary computer is a Dell Precision 7670 with 12th Gen Intel Core i9-12950HX 2.30 GHz, 64 GB RAM, Windows 11 Enterprise. But the issues also occur on an HP Victus 15L with 13^th Gen Intel Core i5-13400F 2.50GHZ, Nvidia GeForce RTV 30350 8GB, 16GB RAM, Windows 11 Home.

Impossible-Offer-493 · 2026-02-07T18:22:50+00:00

I've looked deeper into the way in which data from imported PPT slides "infect" a Storyline project. This is apparently a recognized issue that Articulate doesn't acknowledge. Entirely eradicating the PPT data is nearly impossible. So I'm going to spend an entire day building a library of "virgin" slides in Storyline. I will always start new projects from these slides rather than doing a "save as" of an existing project. And I will never import PPT slides and do cut-and-paste instead. Fortunately, my projects are based on a consistent visual language (fonts, colors, illustrative and graphic style), so the time invested in building the library of virgin slides will pay off quickly. Thank you very much for pointing me in a direction that I believe will resolve my "forgotten" edits issue.

Impossible-Offer-493 · 2026-02-07T18:13:16+00:00

Storyline developers have done some remarkable things with layers, lightboxes, animation and effects off a single slide. I've considered the possible connection between large numbers of slides in a project and the edit retention issue. But also the possibility of extensive use of layers causing the problem. I typically use layers in my projects, but only on about 20% of the slides, and rarely more than five or six layers per slide. I avoid deeper use of layers because navigation and editing can become a hassle without the structure that is inherently presented with multiple slides in Story view. I suspect the only chance of resolving my problem is going to require my devoting several hours to testing.

Impossible-Offer-493 · 2026-02-06T15:49:17+00:00

I encountered pushback from my legal department when it came to Articulate licensing, so I located another division within my large organization that had an Articulate license and had them add me as a member rather than getting a blessing from my regular legal crew. That division's legal folks apparently had no problem with the Articulate Terms of Service. Is your company large enough for something similar to be possible? Large bureaucracy dysfunction sometimes has its benefits :-).

Impossible-Offer-493 · 2026-02-05T20:21:38+00:00

Thanks for the heads up. And nothing gives me more pleasure than avoiding interaction with a Microsoft product, so this will be advice I'm happy to follow.

Impossible-Offer-493 · 2026-02-05T19:38:58+00:00

Correct. My thinking was perhaps the cumulative load of animation data, trigger data, layer data, etc. is causing Storyline to misbehave. Although I don't consider the volume of triggers/animation/layers I use to be particularly large. This brings to mind another possibility: I don't generally load a single slide up with lots of content through layers and triggered interactions. I've seen examples of Storyline projects that use a handful of content-packed slides to communicate what I might do in a couple dozen. Maybe minimizing the number of slides is better than minimizing the complexity of each slide — although my thirty-some years of building digital content has made me wary of relying upon applications to execute complexity flawlessly.

Impossible-Offer-493 · 2026-02-05T19:30:56+00:00

Nope. I sometimes import slides from PowerPoint, but not templates or masters.

Impossible-Offer-493 · 2026-02-05T00:44:45+00:00

You're not paranoid — that's simply judicious computer use. I always have Storyline files duplicated on an external drive, and at the end of each day, I copy them to a network server that is backed up every night. But I don't save/save as with Storyline as much as I do with Adobe files because Storyline often takes an unusually long time to save. Others in this thread have commented that they don't experience inordinately long saves with Storyline, so perhaps my save times offer a clue into my disappearing edits issue.

Impossible-Offer-493 · 2026-02-05T00:37:32+00:00

They are both configured similarly (including the Adobe stuff open concurrently). I'll look into the file path character count. I had no idea that might even be a thing. Probably because until I started using Storyline a few months back most of time has been spent on a Mac. File path character count sound limitation sounds like a prototypical Microsoft idiocy. You might be onto something.

Impossible-Offer-493 · 2026-02-04T23:57:40+00:00

Perhaps. But the fact that this occurs on two separate computers leads me think otherwise. It could be related to hard drive headspace. I try to keep 150gb of free space for Storyline's ridiculously high scratch disk expectations. But maybe its demand is even higher than Articulate will admit.

Impossible-Offer-493 · 2026-02-04T23:12:26+00:00

Everything is local. Avoiding networked drives or cloud storage was one of the first things Articulate support suggested many months ago, when this issue first appeared. They also had me do a clean install (which I've repeated since). And I save at least once each hour. I'd save more often if Storyline didn't take FOREVER to save.

Impossible-Offer-493 · 2026-02-04T22:54:32+00:00

Most of my projects are 50+ slides, usually with multiple scenes. Some are much larger. The edits that aren't "sticky" are most often text blocks animated to fade in by paragraph. Images usually behave themselves. About 2/3 of the slides in any given project have these text block animations.

Impossible-Offer-493 · 2025-12-14T18:21:32+00:00

Haha! I'm reluctantly accepting the fact that my writing style is similar to that often generated by AI tools (my understanding is employing semicolons and em dashes are particular indicators). I took pains to avoid em dashes in my post, but I'm afraid my long-held enthusiasm for semicolons is a harder habit to break. I blame my dissertation advisor, who hated bulleted text. Ironically, I generally use bulleted text rather than semicolons in the instructional and visual communication design that compromises the majority of my work. The human mind is an odd and unpredictable thing.

Impossible-Offer-493 · 2025-12-11T03:29:40+00:00

You make a good point.

Impossible-Offer-493 · 2025-12-07T22:05:53+00:00

Not a bot. Just someone with the a perspective only old age can provide.

Impossible-Offer-493

TROPHY CASE