The Challenge
As part of my professional development, I enrolled in the University of Maryland’s Global Campus course: Instructional Design and Technology: Learning Theories taught through Edx. One of the assignments was to design an infographic for the adult learning theory of Andragogy. The assignment required us to cover Knowles’ 6 principles, our thoughts on the strengths and weaknesses of this theory and its implications for instructional design.
The assignment’s parameters meant that this infographic would require more text than I would have normally preferred for an infographic. I knew that the layout would be key to creating an informative and yet aesthetically pleasing product.
The Design Process.
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Tool: For this project, I used the online web tool Canva. While I took inspiration from many of the available templates, I built the layout for this project from scratch. I organized the sections around the 4 topics required for the assignment: principles, strengths, weaknesses and implications for instructional designers.
Color: I wanted to experiment with a dark mode design and chose a dark background to act as my canvas. This allowed me to choose bright, almost neon colors for the graphics that contrasted nicely with the dark background without overwhelming the viewer with colors. Since this was a learning theory related to adults, I wanted a bold and modern feel. I limited my elements color palette to 3 colors but chose to keep the main text white to maintain readability.
Graphics: The vector graphics I chose came from Canva’s available elements library. I chose individual icons with a consistent design and adjusted the colors to match my color scheme. Since space is limited in an infographic, I chose icons that supported the concepts and ideas I was trying to convey. I customized and combined icons in the Principles section to accomplish this goal. I used stars for the bullet points and also used them as embellishments to help balance out the overall visual design.
Knowledge: The real challenge for this project came from consolidating all of the information available regarding Andragogy down to fit within the confines of my layout. Focusing on Knowles’ 6 principles helped to give this design the structure that it needed. I spent a lot of time adjusting the text and layout to strike a balance between form and function.
