Graphic Design & Coaching: Small Changes to Level Up Your Impact

by Grace Brown

I have a confession. 

For most of my teaching career, I suffered from major teacher envy. 

Searching through TPT, scrolling through Instagram, or even sitting in faculty meetings, I saw presentations, worksheets, and activities that were vibrant, engaging, and consistently branded. How did they do that?? As a self-professed type B teacher, I longed for the creativity, time, and attention to detail that would yield those kinds of results. 

Then, I found Canva. I finally had the tools to make my creative dreams come true! Before you change the channel in fear of an impending infomercial, let me assure you that I’m not here to sell you a specific program or product. My journey with understanding the importance of design happened to start with Canva, but there are a lot of great tools out there for you to explore. Once I found the right tool for me, it unlocked a new world of possibilities in content creation, presentation, and audience engagement.

Why Design Matters

Like the right evidence pulled from research, the right design elements can make materials more persuasive, more engaging, and more accessible. Paying attention to design principles can challenge us to rethink the way we present material and re-evaluate how we want an audience to interact with that material. 

It’s more than just picking pretty colors & choosing fun fonts.

As a Coach, I use these same ideas to generate cohesive, engaging, and professional content. I use design elements to build credibility with my audience and to model good practices. 

I can’t get up in front of a room full of teachers to talk about tools that increase student engagement when my own presentation is a snooze fest. Tailoring my content to my audience requires me to think through the graphic design elements in order to maximize the effectiveness of my content. 

How to Fix a Bad Design

For instance, let’s take a look at this slide. Imagine projecting this on a giant screen in a room full of 30 plus teachers. The content is important, and it might even have been requested by the audience, but there’s a clear lack of attention to design details. In the instance of font size and amount of text, the design impedes the audience from even taking in the information.

Let’s take that exact same material and infuse it with engaging design elements. 

Font

• Stick to two style choices. The style should fit the occasion and it should be easy to read from the back of a room. Some fonts may be cute, but that doesn’t mean they’re the right choice. 
• Make sure it’s readable. Similar to style, think about how your audience is viewing the material. We don’t want a lot of text on the screen, so increasing font size not only makes it more visible, but it also prevents us from adding too much to a slide. 
• Consider accessibility for all. The color of the font should have a high contrast to the background color. Avoid red/green font color combos to improve accessibility for people with colorblindness. 

Icons and Elements

• Keep it consistent. All additional elements (arrows, stickers, icons) should match the color palette and occasion of the content. 
• Less is more! Pick a handful of elements that coordinate and sprinkle them throughout. Think of fun elements and icons as chili powder in a recipe. We add a little to give it a kick, and a little goes a long way. 

Spacing

• Create a clear hierarchy of information. An audience should be able to quickly glance at the layout of text and images and know where to start reading and how to move through the information.
• Use the built-in alignment and spacing tools. Most graphic design programs and platforms have built-in guidelines to assist with alignment and spacing. Turn on margin guidelines and the ruler to help keep spacing of elements consistent and within the frame. 
• Avoid too much negative space. Think of where you want your focal grounding point to be and then work your way out from that point, keeping in mind the previous guidelines. CAUTION: Do not read that as “fill all the space with text and elements.” 

Let’s look at our redesigned slide. The text is clear, and an audience knows exactly what they are meant to pay attention to. Instead of getting lost in all the text that was there, audience members can see the highlights and then listen to the speaker. The design elements including fonts, icons, and text boxes are all working to engage the audience, and really…it just looks better!

Used appropriately, graphic design can build engagement, increase credibility, and boost learning. You don’t have to be an artist to create engaging, professional visuals. Take notice of designs that catch your eye and try to mimic those layouts in your own work. Start small and create go-to brand elements to make future creations even easier. Rely on basic graphic design principles to level-up your impact as a coach!

The blog is looking for guest submissions! Are you an experienced coach with wisdom to share? We’d love to hear how you encourage collaboration, work with veteran teachers, or plan for engaging PD.

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