I recently attended a webinar put on by Association for Talent Development (ATD) titled Visual Learning: A Picture is Worth an Hour of Training.  The presenter was Sheri Weppel of GP Strategies.  Sheri also wrote a blog post that coincides with the webinar and provides a list of great resources for visual learning.  

Below are some of my favorite tools/resources that she mentioned.  

Piktochart - want to make a great infogrpahic? The point and click editor along with all the great templates and images make creating an infographic with Piktochart fun and super easy.  Best of all the Standard account is free!

Xtranormal - makes creating animated videos super easy.  Many years ago I ran across Xtranormal and used it quite frequently for my work.  However they ended up closing down a while ago much to the dismay of many users.  Recently it was acquired by nawmal, ltd and they are working to bring it back.  So keep an eye out for the new release and see just how easy creating an animated video can be. 

Design Seeds - do you have a hard time trying to pick a color scheme?  Well, Design Seeds can help.  Scroll through the posts and see all the different color schemes they have pulled together.  Or use the Palette Search to search for a specific color palette.  

Powtoon - one of my all time favorites.  Powtoons helps you make great animated videos and presentations. It is super easy to use and provides a ton of images, animations and even royalty free music that you can use in your videos or presentations. They have limited free version.  They also have great education pricing for anyone in the world of Education.  

Paletton - is another great tool for picking a color scheme.  Choose the number and location of the colors on the color wheel, pick one color and get a color palette you can use for your next project.  

Be sure to check out Sheri's blog post to see more great tools and resources.  These are just some of my favorites but she lists many others.  

At the Learning Solutions Conference in Orlando, Bianca Woods gave a great session titled "I Know That is Ugly but I Can't Tell Why".  During her hour long presentation she showed examples of "ugly" PowerPoints and gave specific tips on how to make them better.  While doing so she would show before and afters of each slide with tweaking just a few things.  These types or presentations are some of my favorite because they provide practical tips that I can incorporate into my every day work.  

Below are just a few of the tips she covered.  For more information you can go to her website at http://biancawoods.weebly.com/design-basics.html.  Or if you are an eLearning Guild member you can view her recorded session at http://www.elearningguild.com/conference-archive/index.cfm?id=6147. 


1. Get rid of gimmicky fonts such as Jokerman, Mistral, and Chiller.
2.  Be careful with visual effects such as drop shadows, bevels, and 3-D shapes.
3.  Be pickier when choosing images - no screen beans.  
4.  Get rid of anything you really don't need.
5.  Make things bigger.
6.  Put more empty space between things.
7.  Align your content and size evenly.
8.  Use a small number of colors.
9.  Avoid the Frankendeck - inconsistent design that occurs when pulling multiple presentations together.
10.  Find images that relate strongly to your content.
11.  Use visual hierarchy to show how things relate.
12.  Use graphics to explain things faster.