Instructional Media Design
by Nick Cook

The Amiga has won deserved fame as a video tool. However, our favorite
computer is well suited to create graphics for other heavily used, but
decidedly lower tech, presentation aides: transparencies and slides. This
article will discuss some basic design rules for creating those visuals.

The first step is to decide if you want transparencies or slides. Each one
has advantages and disadvantages.

Once you've picked your media, the fun begins!

1. Give Us a KISS

The Prime Directive of any type of instructional media design is KISS (Keep
It Simple, Stupid). Audiences are fickle. They probably won't "appreciate"
all the work put into that highly complex effect, or worse yet, even notice
it all.

Sometimes external forces conspire to cancel your masterpieces. Recently, I
spoke at a national convention. I created my slides employing the Gradient,
Background effect in Art Department Pro. I carefully picked the palette
colors and arranged the "start" positions. The results were gorgeous: gold
lettering over a subtle gradient of pink and blue. Perhaps a little too
smugly, I showed off my results to my coworker fighting with Presentation
Perfect. Alas, the ambient light in the hotel ballroom (to allow the
audience to take notes) completely washed out my beautiful backgrounds.
Keeping it simple may have saved some disappointment.

"The simplest way is the best way" is also good design mantra. Following
the KISS prescription prevents infection by the dreaded:

2. "Look, Ma! No hands!" Syndrome

The Amiga is capable of remarkable graphics, no doubt about it. Sometimes
like kids with a new toy, we just gotta play with it. Just don't show your
playing to us all at once!

Remember when you first bought Print Shop? Posters with borders, 3D ornate
fonts, all plastered on top of tiled graphics? A colleague at work proudly
showed me his first PC- created transparency: graphics (that had little to
do with the topic), print and blocks of color covered virtually every
square. The Helm manual offers good advice: using too many styles can look
sloppy. Remember: Just because you can do something, you don't have to.

A good rule of thumb: use one dominant design element per visual. It could
be a headline or graphic, but this element should grab the viewer's
attention. Be consistent with your designs as well. Stick with the same
type style, layout, and colors throughout. This unifies your presentation.

Remember to select colors, images and fonts to support your presentation,
not supplant it. You've probably seen a wonderful, witty commercial, and
tell a friend about it the next day. But what's the product name's again?
If your audience pays more attention to your messenger instead of your
message, you've failed.

3. You Cannot NOT Communicate

Every element in your presentation communicates. Even seemingly mundane
items such as palettes and backgrounds must be chosen with their
communicative intent in mind. If you don't, you may send mixed messages, or
even create unintentional humor. For example, in one of my instructional
media design classes, a fellow student created a presentation on the Asian
cooking technique Korean barbecue. The  student tracked his production with
country and western music, apparently because of the "barbecue" name. The
juxtaposition of these rather distinct styles had the audience, to use BBS
parlance, ROTFL. Unfortunately, that was not the effect the producer had in
mind!

Some backgrounds (like the Weaves and Bricks in ProFills programs)
communicate a more casual "feel" than others (e.g., Textures). Likewise
with colors: a Magenta palette "says" something completely different from a
gray one. The easiest way to check out the effect of color and background
is to experiment. For example, for a recent speech I presented several
statistics. I cycled through most of ProFills until I settled on one of the
Stucco textures; it gave a more "professional" feel to the slides. Next I
tried out the various palettes, and choose the grays and tans for the same
reason.

4. Watch the Clutter!

According to people who study these things, it is best to present no more
than three new concepts per screen. Moore & Moore provide some suggestions.

Beyond these limits, your audience may become overwhelmed. Not only that,
but the visual clutter up and becomes difficult to read. I attended a
crowded seminar by a person who's "big" in my field. To her audience of at
least 300, she put up a transparency which contained a full page of columns
and numbers. That was bad enough, but she proceeded to say things like "as
you can see with subject 25, his responses across the categories were..."
You could only see if you had binoculars!

For one presentation, I used a batch of statistics to argue my point. These
were displayed as a 3D bar graph in the source material. A 3D bar graph and
the Amiga! A match made in heaven, no? Well, no.

I recreated the graph. From close up, the graph was readable, if a little
crowded. I got up, and stood about six feet back from the screen (by the
way, this is the simplest method to check out your graphic before
production). From that distance, it was too small.

Translating the stats into a pie chart didn't help. I decided to alter my
presentation somewhat. I listed the statistics in order, from largest to
smallest, on three slides. The second statistic ("Other") was critical to
my argument, so I rendered that one in red to contrast against the others,
which were in off-white. During the presentation, I reversed the order of
these slides, and did a "count down" a la Family Feud.

5. Three Coins in a FONTain

There are three factors you'll need to consider when picking a font,
including size, color, and format. Why format? Output methods are different
for transparencies and slides, and the font's format will influence the
visual's quality.

Most transparencies are produced by printing: either directly on the
acetate by a dot matrix or laser printer, or by printing on plain white
stock which is run through a photocopier loaded with transparency film. In
either case, you'll want to output the visual at the highest quality level
possible with your printer to avoid the jaggies. PostScript or Compugraphic
fonts are your best bet. You can print a transparency in portrait or
landscape orientation. I have found, however, that the landscape
orientation is slightly harder to fit on the overhead projector's "stage,"
and there's a greater possibility for chopping off material at either end.

If you're creating slides from bitmap images (e.g., a slide created in
Deluxe Paint), it is best to stick to bitmap fonts. A film recorder puts an
image on a 35mm slide using a grid of 4096x2732 pixels. This is quite a bit
higher than an Amiga high resolution screen of 640x400 pixels!
Consequently, the finished slide will be much sharper than the image you
see on the monitor. I received an unpleasant surprise when my first set of
slides came from the service bureau: the fonts, which I converted from
Compugraphic to bitmap, looked great on a high res screen. However, some
jaggies when the graphic was recorded in the film recorder's high
resolution. After the fact, I discovered that Gold Disk's Outline Fonts
manual contains a table of suggested vertical and horizontal dots per inch
(dpi) when using their conversion program. For high res screens, the manual
suggests 72 dpi for both horizontal and vertical. I didn't repeat my
mistake the next time, though. I dug through my 600 Amiga Fonts disks and
discovered the "Beverly Hills" font in a size appropriate for my visuals.
This time, no jaggies reared their ugly heads on the processed slides.

Select fonts for their clarity. Avoid the fancy ones, no matter how pretty.
I've used "Avant Garde" for one presentation, because it had a "clean"
look, and "Beverly Hills," an elegant font, for another one. Also beware of
"skinny" fonts. They are harder to read on the screen. Last week, I made
some transparencies about an hour before a presentation. I was in a hurry,
so I selected a font, slapped together the layout in PageStream, then
printed them by way of the laser printer. During the talk, I noticed that I
had picked a "skinny" font; the words almost disappeared in the glare of
the overhead projector's light. The font looked fine in the sample book,
but because I was in a hurry, I didn't perform the "step back from the
monitor test."

Also consider the interaction between font and background color. Dark type
on light backgrounds is best for transparencies, whereas light type on dark
backgrounds works for slides. Avoid red type on a blue background or vice
versa, as it is very hard to read.

If the graphic is seen by a large audience, font size is important. Twelve
points is the absolute minimum, with 24 point and up better. "Remember, you
are 'writing' on a 35mm slide, not an 8.5 x 11 piece of paper!" advises Kip
Hammond of Culver City, California's Hammond Photographic Services.

6. Heat and Enjoy!

Follow these basic design rules, and you can create some professional
graphics for your speech. Have fun!


 Previous Article   Table of Contents   Next Article