We’ve spent our fair share of time waxing poetic about the benefits of using Evernote in the presentation design process, and we maintain that it’s truly one of the best new applications out there. However, in our lusty fanfare of Evernote, we neglected its humble ancestor that many of us at Ethos3 use even more than it’s more robust cousin, and that, dear readers, is Apple’s tried-and-true Stickies application.
An Apple employee by the name of Jens Alfke developed the very first version of Stickies in 1994, and the application is still included in the newest OS versions–– a nod to its continuing relevancy. Let’s look at a few ways to harness the humble functionality of Stickies for presentation design.
The very best thing about Stickies is that they’re virtually indestructible, meaning you never have to remember to save anything. Your Stickies are automatically stored and restored each time you quit and restart the application. That feature alone makes Stickies a wonderful resource for storing and saving inspiration for an upcoming presentation; information you save on a sticky note always will be there, barring complete annihilation of your computer’s hard drive, or an apocalypse of some kind.
The next best thing about Stickies is that it’s free. And it comes preloaded on your computer, if you’re using an Apple device. If you’re not, you should be, but in the meantime, you can also download Stickies for a PC here.
Another thing we really love about Stickies is how minimalistic the interface is. It’s essentially a skeuomorph of Post-it notes. But you can’t accidentally throw your Stickies in the trash or forget which purse you put them in, because they’re all right there, perpetually stored on your computer until you need them again.
Stickies has Evernote-like functions that we love, but unlike Evernote, there’s no learning curve associated with Stickies whatsoever (granted, the learning curve with Evernote is pretty minimal). Like most everything designed by Apple, it’s an incredibly intuitive application.
If you see a quote that you want to use in your next presentation, simply select the text on the website and press Command-Shift-Y to create a sticky note with the selected text. If you want to save a photo you came across on Tumblr to use in a future presentation, simply drag it into the body of a sticky note, and there it will stay until you intentionally delete it. You can also Search within a sticky note by pressing Command-F, so everything you save is easy to reference back to when needed.
Taking notes in Stickies is another great way to use it for presentation design. You can make a sticky note float above all windows by pressing Command-Option-F, or you can make a note translucent by pressing Command-Option-T. Those features come in handy when you’re taking notes on a presentation, or when you have one screen and need to reference your notes while working in another application.
Do you use Stickies, and love it as much as we do? How do you use your sticky notes?
