Visual Design
(VIZH-oo-al DEE-zeyen)
GAS-LIKE
What is Visual Design?
Visual design is the practice of incorporating basic visual design concepts to ensure print and digital materials are engaging and effective.
Resources From The Train Like a Champion Blog
Perfectly balanced Insights from Brian Washburn in What's Your Formula?
- "The element of visual design may be an overlooked, sometimes discarded element because many of us are not natural graphic designers, and we’re busy and just need some slides to accompany our amazingly designed content. If you’re like me and have limited visual design instincts, you may want to try out a tool designed to help generate better slides and graphics. Some of the more popular visual design tools in use today include Canva, Visme, and Slidebean."
- "Do the people in your materials look like everyone who will go through your learning experience? It’s very easy to just grab the first photo that seems to meet your needs, but “the first photo” typically shows a white businessperson. This is one of the most important (and often most overlooked) aspects of visual design. Can everyone see themselves in your materials?"
- "No matter how self-motivated your participants are, ultimately it is their supervisor who can hold them accountable, encourage them to follow through on their goals, or (in the absence of goals) can encourage them to focus their attention elsewhere. For a training program to be effective, you’ll want to find ways to avoid that last scenario. Identifying potential strategies by which you can help supervisors set goals with their direct reports as well as make them aware of the goals participants craft for themselves can make the difference between an interesting training program and an effective training program."
Elements that Bond beautifully with Visual Design
Microsoft Word
Microsoft Word is not a graphic design program, but that doesn’t mean you can’t put in the effort. Yes, some wonky things can happen with the formatting, especially when you try to combine documents, but well-designed, clearly laid out handouts, participant guides, and job aids are more inviting and more likely to be saved and used after a training session ends.
Microsoft PowerPoint
I’m always surprised by how many features are available in PowerPoint. In addition to the more popular features such as font, color, and layout choices, you can do some basic editing of images (removing items from the background, adjusting the color or transparency, and so forth) and basic cleanup of tables and charts to emphasize the data most important to your content and message.
Adult Learning
Keep in mind that adult learning, at its core, is ensuring learners understand the relevance of your content to their lives. Economizing on words, emphasizing key concepts, and making sure any data presented is clearly labeled and reduces the amount of guesswork your learners need to engage in are all ways to bring adult learning theory into your visual design.
Flipchart
When you choose to generate analog visual aids such as posters and flipcharts, be sure to take your time and prepare as much as you can in advance. Flipcharts can be powerful tools to which you and your learners refer all day.
FlipchartRapid Authoring
Rapid authoring tools have made it easy for anyone to generate e-learning modules. Keep in mind that simply because a tool is easy to use doesn’t mean that you have a license to leave the learning materials ugly. Even when you’re under time and budget pressures, taking some time to make sure the visual experience is clean and doesn’t look like someone just used the default settings can make an impact on how your learners perceive the credibility of your course and your content.
Rapid AuthoringOther Sources of Information on Visual Design
Books on Visual Design
