This week, we spoke to Connie Malamed from eLearning Coach on her upcoming webinar for our Fall Webinar Series on October 25 at 12PM CT. The second webinar in the series, “Crash Course in Visual Design,” is meant for anyone who would be designing an eLearning course. However, there will be a definite emphasis on visual design from an instructional designer’s viewpoint.
When talking about why visual design is important for instructional designers to learn, Malamed explained, “most people in our field have not been trained on visual design.” That does not mean it is not an important aspect of what they do. Visual design allows for better learning transfer, meaning visual guides and slide design help the learner focus on what is most important in a course. That being said, “Crash Course in Visual Design,” will be geared toward audiences who have not had previous training on visual design. Connie stresses that, “you don’t need to be an artist to be good at visual design. Everyone can get better at visual design by knowing and understanding the best design practices and principles to use.”
In her many years in instructional design and technology, Malamed has found that visual design has more to offer learning professionals than graphic design. Graphic design tends to focus on branding, identity, logos and advertising. Although these are great principles and overlap with similar principles in visual design, visual design has more principles rooted in a learning context. For example, visual design focuses on user interface design and user experience. This allows for visual design to be more suitable for learning. A lot of instructional materials such as: eLearning, training slides, presentation slides, job aids, web portals, and mobile responsive material all utilize major principles in visual design.
Visual Design Principles
In this upcoming webinar, Connie will be highlighting the most beneficial visual design principles from her book, Visual Design Solutions:
To watch the full recording of Crash Course in Visual Design, use this link.
Interested in learning more from eLearning industry’s thought leaders? Register for the remainder of our Fall Webinar Series.
