by Patti Shank
Expanding on last month’s column about alignment of graphics, here are the first two of four overarching principles of visual design. Try them – they make a real difference in the appearance and effectiveness of your content!
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by Patti Shank
How can you tell a professional’s screen design from a rookie design? The professional makes sure all the elements on the screen align with each other. This is an important point, and it is easy to do. Patti shows you how.
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by Stephen Haskin
Upgrades just became a little more interesting and possibly a little more complicated, at least where Adobe’s Creative Suite is concerned. Here’s a quick look at CS5.5, and some guidelines to help you decide whether you need to buy the upgrade, rent it, or just wait for the next major upgrade.
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by Patti Shank
Clip art presents designers with some important challenges. On the one hand, it’s convenient and generally free. On the other hand, it is obviously clip art and it often doesn’t fit the other graphic design elements in the content. This month’s column shows you how to get rid of clip art backgrounds that don’t quite work for your design.
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by Mike Dickinson, Don Bair
Text-to-speech (TTS) software has been available for many years, as a substitute for human narrators. Until recently, however, instructional designers and learners alike tended to reject TTS because of the “mechanical” quality of the resulting narration. Has anything changed? Here’s a look at one small department’s study of today’s TTS.
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by Don Bair, Mike Dickinson
Whether to narrate eLearning content, how much to narrate, and choosing the person or "voice" to narrate are among questions that come up constantly for eLearning designers. Unfortunately, the research and the guidance from experts is not necessarily consistent or easy to apply. Here is what one team learned from their own study of the questions, and the guidelines they adopted.
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by Stephen Haskin
DSLRs are wonderfully capable cameras, but they have their limitations when it comes to shooting video. If you understand the limitations, though, DSLRs can offer benefits for eLearning production. Steve explains how.
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by Patti Shank
Clip art has a bad image, if you will pardon the pun, among instructional designers and those who review their products. Yet it is possible to use clip art in ways that are consistent with a professional approach. Begin by matching image types and by recoloring images to match your color scheme. This month's column shows you how easy this is to do!
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by Judy Unrein
Does your choice of authoring software forever determine the quality of the e-Learning you create? Must rapid tools produce only cookie-cutter content? What makes the real difference in quality? The answer is — you, the designer. Here is the way to change your design habits.
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by Patti Shank
Is clip art always a terrible thing to use in e-Learning? Not if you use it the right way. It all depends on selection, style, placement, and scale. Here are pointers on each of these factors.
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