I’ve always felt one of our responsibilities as e-learning designers was to design learning in such a way that learners actually want to take our courses. Keeping our visual designs fresh and a little unpredictable is just one way we can design more enjoyable courses.
Unpredictable? Yes. The more learners know what you’re going to do, say or show, the less incentive they have to actually focus on your course. One way we can connect our visuals to our learners is by using familiar imagery and branding in our elearning courses.
1. Use Your Client’s Logo as the Bullet
It doesn’t matter if your client is Fortune 500 or a two-person consulting firm, everyone likes seeing their courses branded.
Bullets are an easy way to customize a course. Just swap out the default bullets with your client’s logo or other branding elements.
Keep in mind many logos don’t scale well at bullet-sized dimensions. In those cases, it’s a good idea to extract the essential design elements from the logo to create a derivative.
For example, let’s look at the Starbucks logo. Try scaling the logo down to 22×22 pixels. It doesn’t look so hot and we’re probably doing more harm than good at this point.
By examining the logo and isolating design elements we can create new designs that still align with the branding.
And now we have one possibility for incorporating branding into our bullets:
But what about companies with specific policies against using their logos in such ways? No problem! Look to the content to influence the design elements.
Consider a driver safety course. A chapter might be on road distractions with a sub-topic on bicycle distractions.
Yellow caution sign + bicycle illustration = custom bullet opportunity!
So, a pretty simple design tip that usually goes over big with clients.
2. Create Custom Objective Screens
One thing I see a lot of new designers do is treat all content screens the same. They’ll use the same slide template for chapter intros, objectives, activities, scenarios and so on.
If you wanted to make a single design enhancement to your courses, take a look at creating custom objectives screens.
Celebrate your bullets by placing them on a content-inspired slide using a different typeface from the other slides. Handwriting fonts are a great choice for objectives. Why? Objectives are the openers, the icebreakers. They should be friendly, approachable and most of all creative.
Here are a few examples of ways you can mix up your presentation style for course and module objectives.
Extra credit: Create your text using uneven paths for even greater authenticity.
3. Animate Bullets with Style!
Flash-based bullets are another way to add more cowbell to your bullets. They’re fun to create and I’ve seen design teams compete for the most creative animated bullets.
Here are a couple examples. Feel free to download the Flash CS3 files to use as you like.
#4? Animated Hands
While Common Craft’s animated hands are not technically bullets, they’re used similarly to introduce concepts and graphics.
Final Thoughts
I know there are some active conversations around animation and learning. I follow those conversations and agree e-learning designers should understand the research. But I also feel designers should break the rules once in a while and try new approaches.
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