233 TIPS ON GRAPHICS AND VISUAL DESIGN Use imagery only when it supports the content or makes complex content easier to digest. Doug Belding, SweetRush A key goal of a lesson or topic introduction page or paragraph is to help the student transition from whatever they were doing a minute ago to the lesson ahead. When designing the introduction, use just a single image that represents the lesson or topic well and invokes curiosity, either by itself or from accompanying text. David Jaeger, Florida Gulf Coast University A consistent, strong typography and color scheme is critical to developing a design aesthetic and can help you reduce the clutter of extraneous graphics and images. A bold, unique font or combination of two fonts can often stand on its own as engaging design. Theresa Decker, Samaritan’s Purse Eliminate superfluous words. You do not want or need complete sentences in a graphic. This one simplification concept saves significant graphic space, improves comprehension and attention, and reduces viewer read time. Dave Faldasz, ViaSat When it comes to the visual elements of your training, ask yourself, “How does this help the learner? Why is it critical to this training?” If you cannot come up with a justification, delete it and move on. Raeesa Khan, AOL I always ask myself whether or not a particular image will add anything meaningful to the deliverable. Does it help tell a story or clearly illustrate a concept? Does the image help reinforce the message I’m trying to convey? Does the image distract from important text I have onscreen? If I can’t answer yes to these questions, the image is most likely a decoration or a distraction, and it should be removed or potentially replaced by a more relevant image. Julie Allen, Arizona State University Although I do use graphics quite a lot in my role as a learning developer—in webpages, instructional guides, virtual classroom sessions, etc.—I try to remember to be conscious of accessibility. Accessible documents and webpages should not have irrelevant or superfluous images, only those necessary and relevant—and those should include tag descriptions, header types on text and tables, etc. One thing that is extremely hard to convert to an accessible format is the flow chart. Having attempted to convert these into textual information more than once, I now try to avoid using them at all; and if I do need to use them (for a process, for example), then I start out with a text description first and work from that. Anna-Leiza Barthorpe, British Columbia Provincial Government 44 www.eLearningGuild.com