Digital Design Tips and Tricks for eLearning

Colors, fonts, images, shapes, white space, and so much more. Our work as instructional designers requires a significant understanding of digital visual design. Even if you're "just an instructional designer" and hand your work over to a "developer", there are still many basics of digital design that make us all better at the work we do.

As we've learned from past episodes on topics such as translations and accessibility, how you design the instruction impacts how you will design the visual elements. Some written languages take up more line space than others, so how you write and how much you write has an impact on the visuals. And how you write scenarios can also impact design elements for accessibility.

Thankfully, Mark Lassoff joined us to discuss some of the basic elements of digital design. He has been teaching digital design for many years and understands the areas where instructional designers fall short. His recent articles on font selection and usage are particularly useful for those new to designing instructional content.

Join us for a fantastic IDIODC discovering the joys of visual design as instructional designers.

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As promised, here are all the links Mark mentioned during the episode:

Colors:

1. Adobe Color: https://color.adobe.com/
2. Coolors: https://coolors.co/
3. Material Design: https://material.io/design/color/
4. "Interaction of Color" by Josef Albers: https://www.amazon.com/Interaction-Color-50th-Anniversary-Josef/dp/0300179359
5. Smashing Magazine: https://www.smashingmagazine.com/category/colors/
6. Creative Bloq: https://www.creativebloq.com/tag/colour/
7. A List Apart: https://alistapart.com/articles/color-accessibility-workflows/

Fonts:

1. Google Fonts: https://fonts.google.com/
2. TypeWolf: https://www.typewolf.com/
3. Typekit: https://fonts.adobe.com/typekit
4. Typ.io: https://typ.io/

Images:

1. Unsplash: https://unsplash.com/
2. Pexels: https://www.pexels.com/
3. Pixabay: https://pixabay.com/
4. StockSnap: https://stocksnap.io/
5. Videvo: https://www.videvo.net/

Diverse Stock:

1. Nappy: https://www.nappy.co/
2. Diversity Photos: https://www.diversityphotos.com/
3. ColorJoy Stock: https://www.colorjoystock.com/
4. CreateHER Stock: https://createherstock.com/
5. TONL: https://tonl.co/

Be sure to sign up for Mark's LinkedIn Newsletter - bit.ly/idc_newsletter

Check out Mark's Free Photoshop Course + Design Goodies: https://instructionalmedia.co/goodies

Contact mark directly: mark@instructionalmedia.co
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To see all the comments from the chat, check out the full session right here.  

And to ask more questions, or participate in extended conversations about this episode, please join us in the IDIODC LinkedIn Group.  

About Mark Lassoff

Over two million people have learned coding and design from Mark Lassoff.

Mark and his company, Framework Tech Media, have taught people web and mobile development online, in the corporate classroom, and in secondary schools across the country.

Framework produces world-class learning content that focuses on digital skills such as web and mobile development.  Previous to founding Framework, Mark started several companies in the Austin, Texas area.  He is an in-demand speaker and has traveled the world to teach programming techniques and technologies.  Mark has authored eight books on programming.  He was named to the 40 under 40 in both Austin, Texas, and Hartford, CT.  In 2017, Mark was awarded the prestigious Learning Guild Guildmaster Award.

Mark, and Framework, are based in Bridgeport, Connecticut.

About IDIODC

Instructional Designers in Offices Drinking Coffee (affectionately known as IDIODC) is a weekly live videocast and podcast that helps instructional designers with pain points and provides best practices and industry insight.  

Every Wednesday morning at 10am ET hosts Brent Schlenker and Chris Van Wingerden guide us through an upbeat and candid conversation with their guests from the elearning and training world. The live cast session encourages peers to participate in the chat and share their own personal insight! After airing live, you can catch the learning podcast on all major streams such as Spotify, Apple and Google Play podcasts, as well as on YouTube.

IDIODC is a Top 40 Hit!

We could have been #1 but chair dancing was not a judged element. But no matter, we’re just happy to be selected. Check out this amazingly short press release: “IDIODC was selected as one of the Top 40 Learning and Development Podcasts on the web.”

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