Jackie Van Nice

E-Learning Goodness by Jackie Van Nice

Typography

Making Text Work with Images

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This week’s ELH challenge is to create an example of using text with images. Woo-hoo!

The Idea

My plan was to finally go through some of my Death to Stock photos, select one I like, and add some text so it looks appealingly cool. I felt good about this.

The Original Image

The Original Image

The Colorful Title

The Colorful Title

The Design

I put it together in Storyline.

The Image

It didn’t take long to choose one. This photo of colorful spools of thread on carefully hand-labeled shelves was too good to pass up.

Title Text

The image made me think of artisans, craftspeople, and the maker movement. So “Makers” became my title.

Using the eyedropper tool I started pulling those vibrant colors out of the threads and applying them to the title letters so that each one sort of echoed the look and feel of the individual spools. I looooooved the result, and that the title could sit right on the middle shelf in the picture.

Body Text

I found a quote from Mark Hatch, a maker movement guy, and placed it on the shelf just below the title. To make it a bit easier to read I added a semi-transparent dark shadow just behind the text. Because the edges of the shadow follow visual breaks in the image, it’s nearly invisible.

I expanded both title and body text to make it more visually pleasing and a bit easier to read. After that I added some entrance animations and called it good!

Make it Work!

Ready to see how it turned out? You can view it right here.

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Digital Magazine: Can You Give a Better Speech Than a 12-Year-Old?

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This week’s Articulate challenge is to create a demo of a digital learning magazine.

Inspiration

For approach, look, and feel I used Forma Magazine as my inspiration, using Charles Hamper’s suggestion to check out digital magazine samples at ReadyMag.

Content

I decided on the topic of presentations when I found this post by speech coach George Torok who was comparing his experience judging 12-year-olds in a speech contest versus high-level sales and marketing executives giving their own talks. For this demo I wanted simple-yet-interesting content that was easy to explore and browse, so this worked. To make it easier to compare the adults versus children, I organized it into six steps and compared their performance for each one.

Since digital magazines tend to make the most of stunning photography, I found large images that would render well at MorgueFile.

Jump-to-Screen Navigation

Jump-to-Screen Navigation

Navigation Options

I included two types of navigation to imitate Forma’s:
Screen-to-Screen: I used their approach of having on-screen right and left arrow icons. I also added hotspots on top of the arrows to make them easier to tap if you’re on a tablet. You could just add a trigger to the arrow image, rather than use a hotspot, but the target area would be too small to work well.
Jump-To: I might have been able to create a fabulous slider to imitate Forma’s jump-to navigation, but settled for the speedier option of a slide layer with thumbnails of each screen. It gives you an overview of the content, plus lets you jump around. You can access it via the menu icon in the upper right.

Check it Out!

Find out if a 12-year-old’s speech stands a chance against a high-level marketing executive’s right here!

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10 Treats (and Tricks!) I Hear as an Instructional Designer

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This week’s Articulate challenge is to list 10 things instructional designers don’t like to hear.

IDs with jobs will always have issues to resolve – (let’s hear it for gainful employment!) – and I’m grateful every day that I get to do this work.

Yummy ID Goodness

But there’s very little that comes my way that I don’t like to hear, and most of it is completely positive and makes me giddily happy. So I wrapped up some of the tastiest treats I hear (along with a couple of minor tricks) just in time for Halloween. I also put them into a quick interaction in Storyline that you can see here.

Scarily True

Each of these is real, all of them have come from my clients, and every one of them is completely sincere. I’ve also added some comments below under each one.

What Tasty Treats Have You Heard?

I know I’m not the only ID who gets to hear great things like this. If you feel like sharing, I’d love to hear from you in the comments below!

Treat: I can use unlimited creativity? Count me in!

Treat: I can use unlimited creativity? Count me in!

Treat: A sincere statement. The outcome is at #9.

Treat: A sincere statement. The outcome is #9.

Treat: Flexibility plue they'll wait to work with me!

Treat: Flexibility plus they’ll wait to work with me!

Trick: They said this, but it all worked out just fine.

Trick: They said this, but it all worked out just fine.

Treat: Score! Working on this project right now.

Treat: Score! Working on this project right now.

Trick: They can ask, but they know I don't do LMS stuff.

Trick: They can ask, but they know I don’t do LMS stuff.

Treat: One of my favorites. Good characters work!

Treat: One of my favorites. Good characters work!

Treat: Love this. A SME on video conveying great stuff.

Treat: Love this. A SME on video conveying great stuff.

Treat: Continuation of #2. She absolutely was the best.

Treat: Continuation of #2. She absolutely was the best.

Treat: There's no better phrase than this. More work!

Treat: There’s no happier phrase than this. More work!