Why Visual Design Belongs in Every Instructional Designer’s Toolkit

Your course gets judged before it starts

Ask learners what they hate about company e-learning and ‘it looks unprofessional’ comes up fast. They actually say, “It looks like crap.” But I can’t say that here in the blog.

That’s not just an aesthetic complaint. A course that looks bad signals it wasn’t worth building well, so why would it be worth taking?

Use color with intention

Color does a lot of work in a course. It sets tone, guides attention, and signals whether content belongs together. It doesn’t take a lot of training to use color well. It takes a little awareness. You can learn more about basic color theory.

Here are two books you might like, The Elements of Color & Understanding Color: An Introduction for Designers.  At a minimum, read through Janet Lynn Ford’s site.  She’s put together a pretty good overview of color theory.  And, it’s free.

Start by picking one color from an existing image or logo, then build a simple theme around it. Online color scheming tools make this straightforward. You pick a base color and the tool suggests coordinating options. From there, stick to your palette. Consistency matters more than sophistication.

Avoid using color arbitrarily. Be intentional about what your colors communicate and keep that consistent throughout the course. Smashing Mag has some good instruction on colors for designers.

Build a contemporary look

Design styles change over time. A course built on ten-year-old visual conventions feels dated, even if the content is current.

The best way to develop a feel for what looks current is to look at a lot of current work. Browse design portfolios like Dribbble or Behance, ad agency sites, and template sites. You don’t need to copy anything. You’re building an instinct for what feels fresh and what feels stale. Save images that catch your eye and refer back to them when you start a new course.

I am not a graphic designer so when I find something I like, I try to replicate it to see what I can build and how I’d do. That teaches me production tips and gives me ideas that I can apply to my courses and imagery.

If design skills are scarce, a freelance designer can build a course template for you quickly. You get professional-looking boxes, icons, and buttons you can reuse across projects.

Keep the look consistent

The fastest way to make a course look unprofessional is inconsistency. Five different fonts. Clip art from three different visual styles. Images that vary wildly in quality and size.

Pick a font pair and use it throughout. Choose one style of graphics and stick to it. If you’re using photos, keep them consistent in tone and quality. And never scale an image up from a small original. A blurry, pixelated image signals carelessness more than any other single design mistake.

Google Fonts is a great resource for free fonts and a place to build font pairs.

Consistency doesn’t require perfection. It just requires that everything in the course feels like it belongs together.

Key takeaways

Pick one area to fix on your next course: color, contemporary style, or visual consistency. Start there. No color theme yet? Use a free color tool and build one around an existing brand asset. If your visual style feels dated, spend an hour looking at design portfolios before you build. Small, focused improvements add up fast. Your learners will notice, even if they can’t say exactly why.