Kim Le, Author at Opus Design - Boston Web Design and Graphic Design

It has never been easier in the history of all-thing-creative to seek inspiration than it is today, and these 5 sites for design inspiration are some of our go-to’s! Before the internet was a the place to find this kind of inspiration, books, magazines, and tangible artworks were the primary sources for a creative professional to spend minutes, hours, and sometimes days to digest and absorb. Now, one can gather thousands of inspirational items with just a few clicks or swipes at the touch of a hand.

As trends come and go, and technology keeps on evolving faster than ever before, inspiration sites play a crucial role in keeping us updated with everything that is happening in our industry. In this blog series, we would like to share with you the top sites that are our go-to for design and visual inspiration that feed our creative souls and spur our motivation daily.

The first site on this list is the amazing Muzli!

If you have never heard of Muzli, here is a quick summary:

Muzli is a must-have creative source for designers and creative professionals to stay updated and in-the-known for trends, styles, as well as everything else that is happening in the vast modern design world. Within the family of Muzli, there are multiple sub tools you can use depending on the types of inspiration find you seek, whether it is color, examples of work, or publication to read, Muzli has it all covered!

Muzli Inspiration

Created and developed by InVision, Muzli offers Muzli Inspiration—a one-stop browser plugin that once installed, it will populate your new-tab feed with curated design stories and inspirations from more than 150 web sources that you can select from. If you want to replace the default search tab with a gallery of visual feast every time you open a new tab, we suggest give Muzli a try!

What is great about Muzli Inspiration is that you can populate your tab with other types of creative endeavors besides just design inspiration by simply selecting from the list of sources. For example, at Opus, since we are both a print and digital design agency, we like to keep our eyes on trends and news in both categories. Therefore, our Muzli tab is not only filled with inspirations from sites like Behance and Designspiration but also articles from anything-digital sources like Awwwards, CSS Awards, etc. All are accessible inside one single browser tab thanks to the curating and organizing power that is Muzli.

Muzli Search

Besides Muzli Inspiration, there is also Muzli Search where you can ‘search’ for a specific design-related topic, such as color values, styles, etc. and your browser tab is now filled with an array of visual spectacles related to your search keywords.

Muzli Collection

There is also the Muzli Collection, which showcases an up-to-date list of topical and non-topical design collections, ranging from successful wireframe examples, top landing pages, bold and exciting brochure designs, etc. And did we mention that they even have a Game of Thrones collection? (so awesome right?)

Muzli Colors

Next, we have Muzli Colors. This is an amazing color tool that not only allows you to search and edit color palettes, it also lets you preview your colors in a ‘live UI Kit Demo,’ gives you a quick accessibility test, examples of how the colors are applied, and more.

Muzli Magazine

Lastly, if you are someone who likes to read articles, you can check out Muzli Magazine on Medium.com where you can find tons of well-written articles and stories about trends, opinions, insights, and helpful tips. One of our recent favorite reads from Muzli is ‘Design vs. Art’ by Sonia Eno.

What is your go-to place to seek inspiration? We hope these 5 sites for design inspiration are helpful!

If you are looking for extra inspiration:

Check out our portfolio

For the longest time, we have only known image placeholders in Powerpoint in simple rectangular or square shapes. Similarly, images and pictures have always been displayed and viewed in those shapes. However, when it comes to presentation in PowerPoint, an unconventional framing of your image can elevate and add excitement to your presentation or template. Today, we would like to share with you some of the tips and tricks on how to create custom-shaped image placeholders in Powerpoint slide master.

Before We Start…

Make sure you open the “Slide Master” in Powerpoint during the entirety of this tutorial.

To go to the “Slide Master” view:

go to the navigation panel
click View > Master > Slide Master
hit Command + Alt + 1 keys.

The Tutorial

Making the custom shapes

First, we need to determine what the shape for the placeholder is. There are many ways to create a custom shape. It all depends on what you are looking for, or the level of complexity of the shape that you are trying to create.

Here are three different methods you can use to create the custom shapes that you want:

1. Use The Shapes Panel in Powerpoint:

Powerpoint does come with a collection of pre-existing simple shapes that you can use.

To access these shapes, simply go to “Insert” on the navigation panel
Click on the “Shapes” icon
Select the shape of your choice.

2. Make Your Own Custom Shapes

You can bring in custom shapes from other programs such as Illustrator, Photoshop, AutoCAD, etc.

First, create the shape (I am using Illustrator for this tutorial).
Next, export your shape into an SVG file
In Powerpoint Slide Master, go to “Insert”, select the Picture > Picture from File, select your SVG file and click “Insert”

Then, select your SVG shape, under the Graphics Format panel that appears, select “Converting to Shapes”
Click “Yes”

3. Use a font. Yes, a font!

This may sound like a strange way to create custom shapes, but you can convert type to shape if you want to place your image inside a letter(s) or word(s).

Under “Home” panel on the navigation bar, select “Text Box”
Choose a font of your choice (I am choosing “Bready Alternates Demo”)

Type your choice of letters or words (I am sticking to the good ole’ “Lorem Ipsum”)

Resize and position your text where you want it to be on the layout

Now that we have our shapes ready, let’s get to it!

Creating the Image Placeholder

This is fairly simple:

In the navigation bar, go to “Slide Master”
Go to “Insert Placeholder”, click on the down arrow next to it, then select “Picture”

Draw a rectangle big enough to cover all of your custom shapes

Now, select both your custom shape and the image placeholder
Go to “Shape Format”, select the down arrow next to “Merge Shapes”, and select “Intersect”

Now you should have something that looks like this:

Testing your placeholder

Now that you have your custom-shaped placeholders, here are a couple of ways to test and see if they are working:

Select the shape and add a fill color. This will let you know if the shape merging worked successfully.

Go back to “Normal” view mode and start placing images into your custom placeholder

There you have it! That was our tutorial on how to create a custom shaped image placeholder in Microsoft Powerpoint. We hope you find it useful and happy creating!

In the meantime, if you need help with your Powerpoint presentation, pitch deck, or simply want a beautiful custom powerpoint template of your brand, feel free to reach out to us via our Contact page, check out our other blog posts, as well as our brand new portfolio on this website.