Visual design: learning from the professionals

Clearly, you do not need to be a naturally gifted artist to perform effectively as a designer of learning experiences. Graphic design and instructional design are quite separate, but they are related. The way content is designed visually is going to make a big impact on how easy that content is to use, how clearly it communicates, how easily it engages, and how credible it comes across to the learner.

While it takes many years of immersion and practice to develop a real sensitivity to the nuances of visual communication and to have a really wide range of possibilities on which to draw, many of the essentials of graphic design (and possibly instructional design as well) can be communicated as simple rules and basic principles. These won't earn you a living as a graphic designer, but they will make your work stand out head and shoulders above your peers in the world of digital learning content.

Perhaps the best way of illustrating the importance of visual communication to learning design is to list the names of those designers whose blogs everyone wants to read: Tom Kuhlman, Cathy Moore, Connie Malamed, Julie Dirksen. Each of these can not only communicate in words; they can also put together high quality examples without calling on a professional artist.

Why am I going on about this? It's because I've just finished reading a great new book on visual design. It's called White Space is not Your Enemy and it's by Kim Golombisky and Rebecca Hagen (Focal Press 2010). As you would expect, this is a lavishly illustrated book, so it won't read well on a Kindle (but might do on the new, hi-res iPad). Written for the beginner, the book covers all aspects of graphic design, from print to web. While it doesn't directly deal with e-learning (although there is a chapter on multimedia), this should not put you off, because you will have no trouble in transferring the ideas.

So, looking to improve your art skills or just searching for inspiration? This book will do the job.