Design – The Missing Skill
If there’s one thing that wasn’t taught to me in teacher college, it’s visual design. How hard is it to look at the assignments and handouts we give?
This year, I’ve taken over Moodle courses from a departing teacher. Her resources are excellent, but the screen is a mess — so many horizontal bars and varying colors. There’s nothing predictable or consistent about the page that makes finding information easier. It took me almost an hour to get rid of all these distractions and eye-sores — how long did it take to create them?
To be honest, my design skills are awful. So I offer these tips quite humbly:
- Be predictable — Use consistent backgrounds, titles, and fonts
- Run to the Right – Serif fonts
- Draw the eye down the paper — Indented sections are better than horizontal lines
- Don’t do more than you need to — Any one of bold, italics, or underlines will be sufficient
A great deal of discussion is devoted to the clarity of language and expectations. Does anyone have any resources related to visually designing an assignment?
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If you’ve never considered design, here are some links to get started:
- Give power to designers – Utko on Ted
- Steve Jobs on beautiful typography (about four minutes in)
- “How Not to Use Power Point” – Of course
- Dy/Dan’s design entries
