Has anyone worked with a Graphic Designer for a company's new e-learning template?
November 15, 2012 12:00 AM
My company is considering hiring a graphic designer to help with the initial design of our internal e-learning template (splash page, navigation buttons, exam start/end, etc)
Curious about a few things:
1) What do you typically expect graphic design services to cost?
2) What questions should I ask the graphic designer?
3) What samples/ideas should I provide to the graphic designer? Should I try to be more specific, and make sure that the graphics and things work well with the company brand, or should I provide less guidance, and leave it open to his/her creativity?
Thanks very much.
Discussion (4)
You are really going to the extent of having a Graphic Designer for an E-Learning template.
I tell you what.
You send me a copy of company logo, website (if you have one), 3 primary company colors, and what your Company does.
I will send you 3 Template samples that you can purchase ONLY IF YOU LIKE THEM.
and I can guarantee it will be 10 times cheaper than a Graphic Designer.
Hi,
here's a little sample template that we put together today ;)
Link: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/3nkn1s2gpyj2ch5/jnCp82Un1t
Regarding your initial questions:
1) Cost. I think that a decent template requires 20 to 40 hours of work. Of course, this will depend on the amount of types of slides you want etc etc.
2) What questions... "Have you done e-learning courses and specifically elearning templates before? Can you show?" I'm sure you can name 10 reasons how e-learning design is different from webdesign. The graphic designer should be aware of that. Some of those:
- the actual courses will be built/designed by non-graphics designers, sometimes non-professionals.. Will they be able to work with the template? Will they need to use Photoshop to prepare images, change every photo coloration etc to match the template style?
- custom fonts and other special effects - can they be done in the authoring tool? Can they be viewed on all learner PCs?
- highly variable amounts of texts (especially when courses are translated) -- did the designer take it into account? Or will you have to open Photoshop to adjust graphics for every text bubble?
3) I believe that there should be a strong connection between company brand and e-learning design (among all smart reasons, there's one silly but important reason -- it's easier to sell to the top level management, because someone already sold them their brand design). However, I hate when the company logo is plastered on every slide of every course, because it's annoying. Learners perfectly know what company they work for and who made the course for them :)
I'd love to chat on Skype (if you have time), show/tell you more about us and help you with the template stuff. You can reach me directly at ss@intea.lv or find "ssneg_" in Skype :)
I'm in an interface person--I designed software interfaces at my last job.
Graphical designers will give you something pretty. What you want is something usable.
A good starting point in learning about usability would be the works of Jakob Nielsen and Don Norman (partners in a consulting firm, with which I have no connection).
There is no doubt that a professional graphic designer will create an attractive e-learning template but to get that job done, it would take more time and money than to use an online graphic design tool to create your e-learning template. Furthermore, these graphic design tools serve an incredible variety of pre-defined templates for each and every category; all you have to do is customize those templates using their editor, and your e-learning template will be ready in a matter of minutes.