Design in Educational Materials: Key Tips

Creating productive learning resources involves a whole range of work: a study of the target audience, developing a script, engaging experts, and testing. The design of educational materials is as important as its content or the choice of learning method. The design creates the absolute integrity of the educational materials, visually represents the learning content, and helps work toward personal goals.

The quality of design determines the success of individual educational material and the learning resource as a whole. Therefore, keeping track of new products and trends in educational materials design is essential. And only experts with well-developed design skills will do this job well.

Why Do Design Is Needed in Educational Materials?

Designing educational material means bringing the script (theory, illustrations, tests, exercises, animation descriptions) into a visual-friendly form. In other words, without design, the educational material will turn into a boring presentation, often unrelated to daily work. And it's not about color pictures.

The sophisticated design of educational material solves three problems at once:

• It focuses the user's attention on the essentials
• It increases interest in learning
• It makes it easier to remember information

You must be imaginative with your learning resources to make training exciting. It is as crucial as during the creation of customer education campaigns.

Design Concept Development is Mandatory

The design begins with developing a concept, a prototype that shows how the constructive learning resource will look on the output. The concept consists of an idea description, an outline of the slides, the cover, and the main character (if any). It guides further work and allows you to design educational materials in a single style.

The design concept shows the user's tasks (e.g., taking a quiz, moving slides, watching video lectures) and the main benefit of using learning resources. It also shows how the feedback is set up. You can design the educational materials when the concept is ready and agreed upon. Now let's talk about what should be in a good design of effective learning resources.

1. Unified Style

Educational materials should be designed similarly to concentrate the user's attention. For this purpose, the design elements are selected: fonts, colors, headings size, picture format, textures, and others. Here are some styles of educational materials visualization:

• Realistic. Photos of real people and locations are used.
• Comics. Storytelling in pictures.
• Minimalistic. Simple icons, arrows, and buttons without adding extra effects.
• Animated. A movie or cartoon character as the main learning resource character.
• 3D-style. Creation of three-dimensional models for greater involvement in the learning process. This can be done using a 3D modeling software like SelfCAD. SelfCAD is  one of the easiest 3D designing software that you can learn easily and be able to create both simple and complex designs without having to take a lot of time in the learning process.

A learning resource needs a brand book to correspond to a corporate identity. All the design elements that distinguish the company are taken from it: color palette, fonts, logo options, textures, and corporate communication.

2. Composition

Composition in design is the correct and easy-to-perceive arrangement of elements. In simple terms, it is the connection of individual parts into a whole picture. By building a composition, you can control the user's attention. There are a lot of rules of composition. We will consider those that relate to designing effective learning resources.

3. Rule of Thirds

Artists, photographers, and videographers widely use this rule. The image is conventionally divided into three equal parts by horizontal and vertical lines. The main elements should be placed along or at the intersection of these lines, where the person's attention is focused. If only one object is in the picture, it should be placed to the left based on a developed reading habit. If there are several objects, the dominant one should be placed near the lower right point.

4. Maintaining Balance

Balance is about contrasting different elements to produce a harmonious image. Balance gives comfort and keeps the user-focused. Types of balance:

• Symmetrical. It is an even arrangement of elements relative to the vertical or horizontal axis.
• Radial. All elements line up relative to the central point.
• Asymmetric. Objects with different visual weights (how much the object attracts attention) are located on different sides of the axis. In this case, the dominant is balanced by several less important ones.
• Mosaic. It has no fulcrums, and all elements are equally important.

Using minimalist tools will make the educational materials graphically simple, which will help employees not be distracted by design during training. The less detail a space has, the more effective it will look and the less distracting it will be.

5. Rule of Complementary Pictures

The illustrations should complement each other. That's why pictures in a single format suit effective learning resources. We mean, for example, pictures of the same photo session or vector drawings in the same color scheme.

6. Text

Every person has limited time, so the text must be clear and informative. Otherwise, it will simply be skimmed over. Here are the basic editing rules:

• Long sentences are better broken up into several shorter ones.
• Complex terms should be explained in simple words. The user has no opportunity to ask clarifying questions.
• Examples from real life better support abstract formulations.
• Delete the introductory structures and clericalisms which are difficult to understand.
• Check the text for typos and spelling errors.

Texts are no less critical for educational materials than design.

7. Font

The right font improves the readability of text, emphasizes style, and increases interest in learning. It is impossible to answer unambiguously about which font to choose. It all depends on the concrete task. For example, in a flipped learning resource where images play a significant role, the text should not attract too much attention. For the readability of electronic text from a computer or phone, fonts without serifs are suitable - Arial, Verdana, and Trebuchet. The optimum font size is 12 to 16 pixels.

You should not use more than 3 fonts on one slide. Otherwise, you get a visual overload. In addition, adding an ornate font is a bad idea because it will complicate the reading of information.

Highlighting in bold or italics is well-suited for essential points in the text. The underlining looks like a hyperlink, so it is better to abandon it altogether.

8. Alignment

It is an excellent way to bring order to your design. The text should be aligned to the left edge, as one is more comfortable reading from left to right. Leave gaps between design elements. The same applies to indentation from the edges of the slide to the text. This promotes effective learning. The more empty space on the screen, the more attention will be given to the remaining elements.

9. Clear Structure

All information should be divided into meaningful blocks. Different formatting methods will help bold, italics, numbered, and bulleted lists, dividing into paragraphs, and highlighting important passages. Studocu has millions of learning documents showing how effective educational materials are structured.

Each paragraph contains a complete idea of the author. The optimal length of a paragraph is up to 100 characters. Comparative characteristics are better for making a table. Instead of a bland description of something, you can add a graph or a scheme.

10. Color

Color adds expression. According to psychologists, each color evokes certain associations. For example, red is associated with fire, force, and threat. It is suitable for highlighting important instructions, warnings, and facts. Blue, on the contrary, evokes confidence and a sense of security. It is ideal for corporate documents and creates a relaxed learning environment.

The most famous example of a color interface is traffic lights. Everyone knows that green allows traffic and red do not. This principle also applies to the design of the learning resource when the user is required to perform specific actions. For example, while taking a test or filling out a form.

To keep the learning resource from turning into a rainbow, use no more than 3 colors, adhering to the rule of 60-30-10. You should divide all the colors into parts: 60 %, 30%, and 10 %. Highlight one color-related element: rubrics, subheadings, and definitions.

11. Color Combination

The color makes the company stand out against the competitors and corresponds to the field of activity. For example, for a learning resource from a cleaning organization, green is the right color. If the target audience of the learning resource is business representatives, then restrained tones are appropriate.

You can select the palette with the help of color circles:

• Monochrome. The scheme is based on one main color and several shades of it.
• Analog. It combines the colors located next to each other.
• Complimentary. Two opposite colors are combined, creating a contrasting image. For example, yellow and purple.

You can also use automatic color combination services. It's enough to upload your picture, and the service will select a color palette for your design.

12. Contrast

Contrast can highlight an important element on a slide or combine dissimilar content pieces. If you use a photo as the background, placing a semi-transparent backing underneath the caption is better. This way, the photo, and text won't conflict. You can change the transparency of the background to prevent eye fatigue when reading the text from the screen.

13. Craft Effective Resources to Enhance Learning Experiences

The goals of learning largely depend on the quality of the educational materials design. Thanks to the design, boring presentations and lectures are transformed into a clear and easy-to-understand format. Now you know how to design an effective learning resource. Design is as important as content to ensure students are concentrated and engaged. There are many nuances when designing educational materials, so you should be competent in this field.

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