Adding Visual Appeal to Your Training Materials on a Budget

 

#1 Use Pictures: do it tastefully and with relevance.

If you’re going to use pictures for your training materials, make sure the pic is relevant to the topic. If the picture doesn’t have to do with the topic, two things are possible:

• You could count yourself lucky if your reader just kept reading, not thinking twice about the picture, OR
• Your reader looked at the picture, tried to figure out how it fits into the training, and had to start the paragraph over because they got lost looking for relevance in the picture.

 

Moral of the story: Use a relevant pic and give your reader a visual separator that doesn’t break communication with the topic.

Note: At Miranda Park Learning, we’re big fans of Pexels and Pixabay for using free, royalty-free pics. Although not necessary, we always acknowledge the artist at the bottom of our blog.

 

#2 Use Charts: they’re not boring if they’re on topic!

Charts can be so helpful for your learner! Especially if they portray the information in a way that’s clean and informational. If you’re conveying percentages, a pie chart is one of the best visuals out there. Especially the ones that split the pie in different colors.

But beware! There’s definitely that document out there that goes on and on with charts. Use them as you need to break up the text and keep your learners engaged. But overuse them and you may cause the opposite effect.

 

#3 Use Spacing: an oldie but a goodie.

Words are still the coolest form of communication, so don’t disregard their power. But the space between the words can be just as powerful for impact. If you don’t have time to insert graphs or a pic, use your negative space wisely. Here are a few examples:

• Don’t be afraid to use that enter button twice between paragraphs. It will give your readers room to breathe if all you have is text.
• Definitely use your bullet points. Whether you use a space in between each point will have to do with the length of your line item.
• Center important points. Why not use this tool to center one sentence and call your reader’s attention to it?

 

In Conclusion

If your training materials are needing some breaking up, use the three recommendations above to make them pop. No need for anything super fancy. You can use the tools in your preferred word processor (and some free pics) to give your learners breathing room in between paragraphs.

 

Who Are We?

We are Miranda Park Learning, your instructional design experts. When you need training materials that give your reader room to breathe, contact us. We’ll help you set up the correct training systems for your team.