Instructional Designers (training professionals who focus on designing and developing effective learning) wear many different hats in order to create the end product. One of those hats is “materials designer.” As instructional designers we need to make sure the materials that the trainer and participants will be using are well-designed — organized, readable, usable, and inviting.
There’s a lot of thought that needs to go into creating training materials, including:
- What font to use
- How large to make the text
- Where to place the text
- What graphic images and visuals to include
- Where to place the images and visuals
- What colors to use
- How much text (and how little text) to place on a page
- …and so on…
The decision-making process is probably more “art” than “science,” but there are some solid ground rules to follow when creating materials. I came across an article written for the e-learning community that touches on six of these rules AND can easily apply to electronic and paper-based materials. To read the article, go to: e-Learning Coach.
Use the e-Learning Coach’s suggestions as a place to start, and allow your creativity and your sense of artistry to inform your final decisions.
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Those tips and insights are helpful, especially those demonstrated within the article. You can really see how it’s much easier to read things depending on the background. Thanks!
Knowing the importance of these guidelines for designing text-based information is one thing, knowing how to convey them to a client who has different ideas is quite another. It’s great to have these concrete examples. Thanks, Paul!