“A thing of beauty is a joy forever…” said John Keats in the eighteenth century. In the twenty-first century, it has become much more relevant. We humans are naturally attracted to beauty in everything, be it a natural landscape, a painting, a sculpture, or even learning content!

Visual Design In eLearning

Yes, it’s true. Learning content can also be beautiful—and visual designers are the people we should thank.

Why Is Visual Design Important In The Learning Industry, And Especially In eLearning?

A very important factor for learning to happen is the motivation of learners. According to Keller’s ACRS principle of motivational learning, the first element that motivates learners is attention. What grabs attention more than a piece of great visual design? The same content can come to life if it is designed in a visually immaculate way rather than as plain, simple content. While learning still happens at the core through content, visual design plays one of the most significant roles in keeping learners hooked on a course.

The eLearning sector distinguishes itself from traditional learning content in its visual and interactive design. So, the role of a visual designer becomes even more important for an eLearning service provider. Visual designers play a key role in eLearning content in several ways:

• Presentation of content
  The importance of presenting attractive content cannot be reiterated enough in words. Visual design is arguably one of the primary drivers ensuring the effectiveness of learning. Visual designers make courses presentable and learning effective. There is a reason people say that a picture is worth a thousand words. It is the duty of visual designers to make it a reality.
• Aid learning
  It is a well-known fact that a major chunk of learners are visual learners. This means they learn best when content is presented visually. The role of visual designers becomes even more important in this respect. The effectiveness of learning content is manifold when it is aided by great visual design. A good visual designer always thinks about the user’s perspective and designs the content in such a way that learners can feel a personal connection. This ultimately helps with learner engagement and better learning outcomes.
• Leverage creativity
  No doubt visual designers are one of the most creative people out there. Visual designers can actively contribute to the Instructional Design in order to design great courses that create the maximum learning impact.

Visual Design And Learning Experience

We have moved into an era where learning is not seen as an isolated, mandatory activity. Learning nowadays is seen as a part of life and a lifelong process. Learning is now being treated as a life experience. No wonder Learning Experience Design is the future of the learning domain. When we talk about the learning experience, a prime component of it is visual design:

• Design that inspires learning
• Design that leaves a lasting impact
• A learning experience that is not only intellectually enriching but also emotionally appealing

None of these are even remotely possible without the help of visual designers. It is rightly said that visual design has the capability to make or break a great learning experience. As eLearning is a visual medium of instruction, any learning experience without great visual design is bound to be ineffective, if not fail. eLearning courses must leverage the true potential of visual design, and the onus lies with none other than the visual designer.

Visual Design And The Psychology Of Instruction

In addition to the innate ability to gain attention, visual design also plays a critical role in enhancing learning elements in several ways. Some these include, but are not limited to:

• An appropriate visual layout for learning content and User Interface
• Suitable graphical cues
• Intuitive navigation and minimization of wordy slides
• Use of media to aid multi-channel learning

The principles of Prägnanz, as formulated by the great learning psychologists of Gestalt, emphasize the role of visual perception, which can be utilized to enhance learning. Gestalt’s principles are widely used to enhance the effectiveness of learning through the use of visual elements.

A Word Of Caution

With so many advantages, visual designers run the risk of going overboard with a visual strategy that suppresses the actual learning content. It is critical to remember that the ultimate goal of learning and visual design should enhance learning content rather than suppress it.

Conclusion

There is no doubt that visual design plays a critical role in eLearning development. This makes it even more important for visual designers to take responsibility and create a great learning experience.

In Hindi, there is an idiom, “Jo dikhta hai, wahi bikta hai”… This means only those things sell which have a great visual appeal. It is the visual design that catches the first impression. An effective marketing strategy starts with a visual design that can appeal to the target audience.

Experts from India’s top graphic design companies opine that visual design plays one of the most significant role in making business successful. With rapidly changing social dynamics and evolving taste of the public in general, it is critical to keep improving on visual design skills to remain competitive in the market.

So how do you improve your visual design skills?

Experts from the top graphic design companies in India have shared many tips to improve visual design skills. Some of these are as follows:

Study Design Theory: This may seem old school; but studying design theory sets the foundation platform for you to enhance your visual design skills.

Whiling learning by doing is the best way, and there are plenty of ways to leverage your creativity; however,  a solid understanding of the fundamentals of the discipline is an absolute must, You should study concepts like typography; grid theory, colour theory, and all important the golden ratio. This knowledge comes handy when creating beautiful designs.

Get Constant Feedback: As a designer, getting know what others think and how they perceive things plays a critical role in creating appealing designs. It’s absolutely indispensable if you’re to pick up your design skills. Look for positive feedback to get yourself motivated.

However, it is the critical negative feedback that will shape your learning curve and will help you get better than your current version, and this all that matters. So, don’t get disheartened when you face negative feedback, it is actually a road map for your own success. Learn from the feedback and move ahead to keep improving yourself.

Keep Doing Side Projects:  Creating the same or similar designs over and over again in your routine job is sure to lead your skills getting out of date and your enthusiasm weakening. It is critical to keep up your enthusiasm to learn new things by starting your own side projects. You may or may not get monetary benefit out of it, but learning a new design skill is always accomplished if you necessitate it to create a precise item, predominantly if that’s a touch personal to you. So start a passion project that requires you to learn new skills you’d never even thought of.

Experiment: In the world of web start ups, there’s a saying: Fail fast. This essentially means In other words, only by trying out lots of experimental design ideas and putting them into practice, you can learn what works best and what you’re good at.

It’s a way graphic designers can become skilled at from when it comes to experimenting with new media, skills and techniques. So, stop always using the same fonts, colours, layouts or software; try  mixing things up a bit and try something new, fresh and innovative.

Socialize: No, No. Socialize does not mean spending days and nights in Facebook and Twitter meme sharing. It is one of the most excellent ways to develop as a designer is to interact with a other designers having good and variety of skills. There are a lot of effortless ways to get out there and chat with other creatives.

Visit creative meet-ups, events and design conferences. Connect with people up on social media. Join forums. Make good friends from the industry. Talk about design. Discuss and solve problems, challenges, questions. Collaborate on a project with a wide variety of people.  Communicate with a designer you admire, request them to be your mentor.

Read a Book: Learning has no end. Even if you have a degree, keep reading relevant and latest books. ‘Education is for life’, and never ever stop learning. Utilise your journey time in reading quality books, magazines, whitepaper etc. make a habit of reading books, be it traditional paperback or online e-books. Nothing matches knowledge gathering as books do.

In short, you need to be as creative about your learning as you are about your design and products. There is no short cut to success and enhancing your design skills is a prime example of the same. Keep trying in the right way and success will be in your way.

I’ve recently come across an interview with Tim Slade – a speaker, author, and award-winning E-Learning designer. He stated:

“When used properly, animation can bring your content to life and engage your learners. When combined with powerful visuals and audio narration, animation can be used to explain complex ideas, processes, or concepts by creating a multi-sensory learning experience. Even after the learning has long ended, the types of multi-sensory learning experiences help to make the content “stick” in the learner’s mind.”

This pretty much sums up the importance of animations in the E-Learning industry. To be honest, the most part of E-Learning will be reduced to mere E-Books and websites if we take out the animation. So, what is animation and what are its benefits?

Types of Animation:

In layman’s terms, an animation is nothing but a series of images infused to give the appearance of a moving image or object. Animation can take various forms:

• 2D animation: As the name suggests, 2D animations are vector image based animations created using the Apart from vectors, 2D animations can be created using text and photographs also. Most of the animations we see are some form of 2D animation. 2D animation services are comparatively cheaper. Many E-Learning companies in India offer 2D animation. Some expert from E-Learning industry also leverages dedicated animation companies for creating high-end animations and then integrating into E-Learning module.
• 3D animation: As the name suggests, 3D animations utilize 3D objects with different viewing angles. 3D animations are livelier and are a treat to the eye. Although a little costlier, many E-Learning service providers offer state-of-the-art 3D animation services.
• Whiteboard animation: Whiteboard animations are a special class of animations that tell a story utilizing icons, objects, texts, and images depicted on a whiteboard background usually shown as being drawn by a cutout hand (usually a real image of a hand). They create a unique viewing experience with compelling storytelling capability.
• Motion graphics: Motion graphics are a form of animation created using images and text, most popular being logo animations, product animations, etc.
• HTML animation: HTML animations becoming popular day-by-day due to easy accessibility using mobile devices. HTML animations are created using a combination HTML, CSS and JavaScript codes.

Benefits of Animation:

According to ACRS model, the very first component to create an effective learning intervention is grabbing the attention of the learning. And who can do this better than animation? Well, that’s only a beginning; animations offer a plethora of benefit for the E-Learning industry.

• Engaging: Animations are way better than static text and images to help you keep your learners engaged in the content.
• Entertaining: Animation gives you the scope of adding comic relief and entertain the learners to reduce the load of serious learning.
• Breathes life into content: Animations definitely make the learning livelier. Learners have reported animation much more engaging to absorb content rather than dry texts and images.
• Memorable: viewing an image is more memorable than reading the text. Viewing an animation is even more memory-friendly as it creates a lasting impression.
• Powerful learning mechanism: With animations, you can leverage multi-sensory experience of learning including images, visuals, texts, character narratives and much more. This definitely makes it easier for the learners to grasp the subject easily. In addition, it allows you to leverage storytelling techniques of teaching in the most compelling way.
• Demonstrating the subject visually: One of the key benefits of animation in E-Learning is its ability to visually demonstrate the subject. Just imagine you are reading about blood circulation in the body and watching an animation of blood flow. Which would be more effective learning? The answer is obvious. Similarly, 3D models can be used to teach about machines, body parts, designs, etc.
• Simplifying complex information: Owing to its visual nature, animations can be utilized to simplify complex concepts.
• Attitude toward future training: When your learners experience an engaging content, definitely they’ll be more motivated to take future modules to learn new concepts.

Conclusion

Many objectives of the teaching/learning process could be easily achieved with proper use of well-prepared animations. Increased use of animations in education can result in deeper and better retention of understanding of the concept, mastery of a skill or strategy or acquisition of knowledge.

Someone truly said that Pictures speak louder than words. The best use of pictures we can imagine is done in education. Right from the days of kindergarten, recognizing a tree by its picture to the days of high-school solving geometrical algorithms picture or graphics play a huge role in the learning process. In more advanced scenario like E-Learning we make use of the term graphics. When 10 words cannot convey something to a learner, a graphical representation of the fact or an interactive graphical approach would make the whole process so easier.

Basically, in E-Learning, graphic design improves the understanding and grasping capacity of the learner. Also, graphics break down a lesson structure which evades the monotony and evokes the interest in learning to a great extent. Monotonous learning is worse and is not fruitful.

In this post we will take a look at the existing graphic design trends in the E-Learning industry and the. We will have a brief discussion on how these trends can be utilized by top E-Learning companies in India to increase their tool’s productivity.

Various Graphics Design Trends in E-Learning Industry

There are various graphic design trends followed all around. We will discuss them briefly one-by-one.

White Space

Also known as negative space design, it is that untouched portion in a web page, the space between graphics, text etc. In most cases it’s white but that’s not mandatory. It maybe colored as well. It enables a sense of simplicity. In E-Learning it helps to maintain the stable flow of learning process. This flow will help in building focus.

It also showcases the efficiency and understanding of the designer. One may be an ace web designer for the best graphic design company in India, but the material you are designing will be used by a learner who is a total newbie. Here is where simplicity and focus in understanding will matter. It should not be overdone but is should be done as such which maintains the ambience of the page and also fulfils the purpose of E-Learning.

A simple example of use of white space in graphic design is homepage of Google or Answer box on the Quora website. It is simple yet efficient.

Text over Image

Though graphical representation is important, it should have a textual representation in equal proportion as well. The colour of the image and the colour of the text/sentence/phrase should balance with each other. Too much brightening or darkening the will affect the whole learning material as well as the learner. Th placement of the text also matters a lot. You cannot simply put a phrase over an image. In pretext of graphical representation, we cannot have a learner miss out on the textual or written parts of a E-Learning material.

Designers should look for that vantage point on the page which will convey both the text and picture to the learner. Instead of overlapping the text on image, the designer should place it in an overlooking manner, where it incorporates a balancing visibility. Here sizing also matters. The size of image and text should go should have a subtle balance.

Last but not the least the choice of image is quite important as well. We all know images invoke emotions and expressions. In the E-Learning material whatever emotions or thoughts an image may represent, the corresponding text should express it out. It should not be too noisy but simply to the point and conceivable.

Gradient Overlays

Gradient overlays are very similar to colour overlays, but this technique uses gradients typically from one side of the colour spectrum to another. Not only does the gradient overlay give the photo a refreshing look, but it can also set the mood based on the chosen colours. Depending on the level of transparency, this type of filter will make the photo less prominent, allowing the text to be clearly legible.

Using of Stock Images

Though modern computer graphics has taken the graphical representation to a higher level, still best E-Learning companies in India make use of stock images. These image are not created artificially and comprise of live people and locations. This induces a sense of reality when the E-Learning process is actually virtual. These have no copyright issues and an E-Learning company can use it by licensing and paying a small royalty to the original creator of the image.

These images can further be used by almost anyone and everyone obviously iven that that contexts of its use are not similar.

Flat Info graphics

This is usually used in mathematical and statistical E-Learning tools. It makes use of various kinds of charts to present data and information. We can consider the multiple data chart as an example. Again Map marker and Map animations also come under flat infographics. It mainly follows expressive design architecture. They generally occupy less space and present the data in a single chart or animation.

So, that’s about it. Graphics is an inseparable entity when it comes to E-Learning. All these factors we overlooked are equally responsible in providing a stable, efficient and interactive E-Learning course material. These are some of the important graphic design trends that E-Learning companies in India should follow while churning out their e-learning materials. Also, if you’re an e-learner then what factor of graphics in an E-Learning tool exactly interests you..? Do share your views with us.

Custom Illustrations

This is an absolute no brainer that being able to customize your own designs always gives you an upper hand when you are trying to sell your product. Having its own design in the course materials actually makes an E-Learning company stand out from the rest. It brings in uniqueness in the visual aspects while keeping the approach simpler and straight forward.

Modern Retro Design

It bridges together the old designing practices with the modern trends of visualization. A good example of the same can be pixelated illustrations, linear interface elements and slower-yet-funny animations. Also, there can be use of basic geometrical shapes. In terms of colour, neon and yellow are mostly used.

Animations

The E-Learning companies can make use of animations, GIF images which further simplifies the learning process.

If the course material is targeting the small children, then animations will work wonders. It will in fact invoke creativity among the learner. The learning process should have brief storytelling, animated examples which will make the course material for interesting.

Video

This is one of the most basic requirements of E-Learning. The top E-Learning companies who incorporate the best graphic design trends should first and foremost make use of videos. Designers should create the video player plug-ins that will showcase the learning content in a interactive manner. It should not be repetitive though.

A best example of this can be, when a new learner takes up an E-Learning course, there should be small video which will give him a brief overview of his course details like duration, modules, exam structure, fee structure etc.

3D Graphics

This is not some new topic in graphic design. 3D graphics has been used by best graphic design of India and everywhere else. Even when we look at E-Learning domain, some of the top E-Learning providers in India actively make use of the 3D graphics.

Usually the use of 3D graphics is mostly done when designing a course material for subjects such as Mathematics, Geometry, Civil engineering, Statistics etc. IT helps in breaking down the algorithms, complex calculations and incorporates an ease of understanding.