Creating Graphics for Learning and Performance: Lessons in Visual Literacy

by Linda L. Lohr

Creating Graphics for Learning and Performance: Lessons in Visual Literacy will help you create effective visuals - visuals that are clear, communicate well, and help you learn and perform your job more effectively and efficiently.
This book will teach you about the three most intuitive design principles that you can apply immediately to your work: selection, organization, and integration. You will gradually learn these principles as you explore the tools of type, shape, color, depth, and space. In addition, a resource chapter provides you with a quick guide to graphic design tools including hardware, software, books, and Web resources.

Genres: Design, Education

317 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2002

Reviews

[Sarah Beth · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this book as part of a class for my master's program entitled "Technologies to Advance Learning." I was surprised to be spending so much of a class on technology reading about graphics and visuals, but I did find value in this text and see how it would be helpful for teachers, instructional designers, or anyone creating documents or presentations that will be viewed by others.

The underlying goal of this book is to help the reader become more adept at creating visual messages. The idea is that visual images and graphics can help accelerate the learning process, and using highly effective graphics can help contribute to viewers visual literacy and understanding of the message being conveyed. This book covers everything from very basic principles of visual presentations such as font, color, and shape, and more advanced concepts such as Gestalt principle. Some of the ideas covered seemed like basic common sense, and were things I knew going in, however, they gave me a greater understanding for the reason why they seem like common sense.

I did enjoy learning more about graphic design, a topic I know relatively little about. However, I don't know how effective this book will be for me in terms of real life application. Most of the end of the chapter examples target K-12 students, which is not relevant for me. Additionally, much of the emphasis on effective graphics focuses on enhancing learning for beginning students who are not yet dealing with abstract concepts. I think graphics are not quite as relevant or applicable for college level students, and power point style lectures, as emphasized in this text, are less relevant in the classroom today than more collaborative, discussion-based classes.

Although I did learn many things about the theories and reasoning behind effective visual techniques, such as why certain fonts are more readable than others, why alignment helps viewers, etc., this book is only helpful for people who struggle with figuring out these basic, common sense pointers for visuals on their own. Additionally, while I see the value in learning more about this topic, I question how relevant this training is, in a world where hundreds of well-made, professional graphics can be accessed online for free.

[Christian · Rating 2 out of 5]

Lohr's book brings to mind an enthusiastic K-12 teacher who has just learned about a very interesting topic and can't wait to share it with her less-enlightened peers. I suspect some of my disappointment is due to Lohr's intended audience of K-8 teachers, which didn't mesh so well with my own program in corporate and higher education.

Nonetheless, there's still good summaries to be found. It's not a particularly good book, but it's got a broad enough scope that it's still a decent resource.