Visual Language for Designers: Principles for creating graphics that people understand, by Connie Malamed

Producing e-Learning is an inherentlycreative activity, and one that could make great use of visual communications –graphics, photography, and typography. For many reasons, though, e-Learningconsistently falls short in the visual department. Heavy use of text and audionarration, clip art, and page-oriented layouts that seem to rely on the worstexamples from the world of textbooks are too often typical.

Atleast part of this visual impoverishment is due to a lack of graphic designskills and knowledge among instructional designers, and among those who useauthoring software. It is also due to a lack of knowledge among graphicdesigners about the particular requirements and constraints involved ine-Learning.

Itis not that these problems are new, or that they have never been solved. Medicalillustrators and technical illustrators, all the way back to the great Leonardoda Vinci, have long since worked out the principles and conventions that bestsupport explanation, insight, understanding, and learning. What has beenlacking, until now, has been a systematic presentation of those principles,matched to the requirements of the digital medium.

ConnieMalamed, author of last week’s feature in Learning Solutions (“Gestalt YourGraphics: Improving Instructional Graphics”) has done a tremendous job ofbringing these worlds together in her new book. Visual Language for Designers: Principles for creating graphics thatpeople understand is a rare combination of science andaesthetics.

Thereare not many resources on visual information that are based on solid researchand that are intended for e-Learning practitioners. Until now, the best knownhas probably been Clark and Lyons’ Graphicsfor Learning (2004), which does an excellent job of explaininghow to usevisuals, but does not offer much help on how to create those visuals in the first place.

ConnieMalamed’s book takes care of the explaining, and the showing. Her book will notturn you (or your graphics person) into a Leonardo or a Michelangelo, but itwill go a long way toward showing you what is possible, what works, and mostimportantly, how to make graphics that achieve quick and effectivecommunication. She presents ways to design for the strengths of human mentalcapacities and to compensate for cognitive failures.

Visual language isthe interface between a graphic and a viewer. Malamed’s clear explanations andexcellent organization will help instructional designers, subject matterexperts, and technical specialists understand that there is a hidden languagein every picture that carries a message – even if the message was unintended.At the same time, her examples will show designers and illustrators more waysto use visual language to inform with accuracy and power. The result is boundto be better communication between technical members of an e-Learningdevelopment team and graphic artists.

This is abeautiful book. One of my frustrations in writing this review is that I am notgoing to be able to show you just how well the illustrations support the text.The text is very brief. The book makes its points by drawing on the very bestwork of some of today’s very best artists, photographers, graphic designers,and illustrators. Of the 240 pages, over 200 contain one or more graphics infull, luscious color.

Given this, it isimportant to repeat that the entire book is based on actual research, as wellas on design theory. Disciplines represented in the content include visualcommunication and graphic design, learning theory and instructional design,cognitive psychology and neuroscience, and information visualization.

The contentcomprises two sections. The first section provides an overview of how humanbeings perceive, understand, and acquire visual information. It includesconsideration of cognitive load in visual information, an issue sometimesoverlooked by designers and artists. This section starts with the basics: theanatomy of the eye, the function of the brain, memory, and the humaninformation processing system, all as they relate to visual information.

It is in thesecond (and longer) section where Malamed’s book really adds value, as itpresents principles for creating graphics that accommodate and engage the humanmind and emotions. The fact that the author specifically addresses thechallenges of hooking the emotions of the learner is, to me, one of her mostimportant contributions. People do not learn about things they do not careabout. (And “care about” can include emotions other than the positive ones.) Ifyou, the designer, do not make learners care about the topic of the e-Learning,your design and your product will fail.

The second sectionis a guide, not a rulebook, to doing six key things with and through graphics:

• Organizing graphics for quick perception
• Directing the eyes to essential information
• Using visual shorthand for efficientcommunication (reducing realism)
• Making the abstract concrete
• Clarifying complexity
• Charging a graphic with energy and emotion

Malamed devotes achapter to each of these purposes, and organizes each chapter in the same way.Her simple and effective approach is to:

• Present the concept(s), principles, and sciencesupporting the outcome,
• Explain how to apply the concepts, principles,and science, and
• Present the various techniques that support theapplication.

So, for example,in presenting the techniques required to organize for quick perception, some ofthe techniques she explains include texture segregation, graphing, and “popout.” For charging a graphic with energy and emotion, she explains the uses ofemotional salience, narratives, visual metaphors, and novelty and humor.

Connie Malamedtold me, “I washoping to write a classic. … I always had instructional designers in mind as Iwas writing it. It’s heavy on the information graphics, which very much relateto e-Learning and training. It took around 10 years to think about, and thenaround a year to seriously research and write. (Plus work as an e-Learningconsultant and Web designer.) And it turned out completely different than I’dthought it would.” I’d say it was ten years well spent, and the result iscompletely successful.

Bibliographic details

Malamed, Connie. (2009) VisualLanguage for Designers: Principles for creating graphics that peopleunderstand. Beverly, Massachusetts: Rockport Publishers. Hardcover,240 pages. ISBN-13: 978-1-59253-515-6. List price $40.00, Amazon price $26.00.