Following on from my post about the Expression family, I said I’d follow up with some more details on Expression Design. Someone commented on my other post that Expression Design is “too basic” and I suppose for many people that will be a fair criticism. For someone like me, who’s not a graphic designer, I find it strikes a good balance between functionality and complexity (and I use some other tools to achieve things Design is not so suited to such as manipulating bitmap images – Paint.NET is great for this). It also comes in a range of attractive colours. Anyway, I’ve done a bit of a trawl to find learning resources for Expression Design.

Finding out about what it does and the basics of the UI

• Follow the “Video Feature Tour” link at the Expression Design Homepage (Silverlight required)
• There’s a more detailed demo video on the same page (“In-Depth Demo”) which covers a tour of the UI, XAML Exporting and Slicing

Getting Started Tutorials etc

• Quick Start Guide
• Training Videos (introduction to concepts)
• Tutorials (short video tutorials eg following the 2 minute video “Creating a Very Simple Gel Button” I created the image on the right)
• More tutorials on the Expression Team blog
• Alex Knight has some great Expression Design tutorials on his blog and on SilverZine

More In-Depth Webcast

• Designing Windows Experiences

Download the Trial

• Expression Design 2 Trial

Community Help and Assistance

• Expression Design Forum