233 TIPS ON GRAPHICS AND VISUAL DESIGN Use simple images with clean lines, one or two fonts, and complementary colors. You want to enhance the content, not distract from it. Jennifer Gifford, Vidant Health Learn about typography and how you can use it as a graphical element in your designs. You can now take advantage of fonts on the server side, which allows you to embed numerous fonts to create the best look and feel for your viewers without having to worry about installing the fonts on their device. If you are new to fonts, you can check out an online class, read a great overview article, or learn more about Google Fonts. Nick Floro, Sealworks Interactive Studios You don’t need full sentences, but you do want visual support for attention in text; white space (indenting, bullets) and highlighting (bold, italics, color, etc.), when done elegantly, support cognitive processing. Clark Quinn, Quinnovation If your visuals are similar in layout from screen to screen, “duplicate” to create a new screen rather than starting over and guessing at item locations. Even a single pixel shift from one screen to the next can be a distraction and annoyance for some of your audience. Do a rapid flip-through to identify and correct where visual shifts are happening. Dave Faldasz, ViaSat Use Illustrator and vector graphics when possible. They can be exported out with transparency and scaled smaller or larger depending on graphic needs. Lawrence Kevin, Ruckus Wireless Use high-resolution images (3,000-plus pixels) that enhance context as backgrounds. Alexander Salas, StyleLearn I am tired of seeing presentations where each slide has three to five bullet points and a clip art graphic to the side that does not add value and is just there to fill white space. Those bullet points should be your talking points. PowerPoint presentations can be creative! Here’s an idea on how to segue into a new topic when sharing a PowerPoint presentation: Have the entire slide be a picture between different topics. The picture should tell a story related to the next area of focus in the presentation. Ask the audience leading questions about what they see in it, and use it as your new topic introduction. No one needs to see your outline if they are already familiar with the learning objectives. Katie Delgado, Association of Washington Cities 36 www.eLearningGuild.com