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Essentials of Effective Visual Design

Patrick Hofmann

Patrick Hofmann

designPH & Google Australia

Length: 90 minutes

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This is the introduction to visual design that you’ve been after! Whether looking to add to your team’s foundation or to add a few things to your own toolbox, this seminar is for you.

Does your team effectively utilize visual design to get the best design? Do you take advantage of a visual hierarchy, so the most important info jumps out of the design first? Are your graphics working hard for your design, or are they distracting your users and sending a confusing message?

This is the introduction to visual design that you’ve been after! Whether looking to add to your team’s foundation or to add a few things to your own toolbox, this seminar is for you.

What You’ll Learn

  • Checkmark How the best information designs help us scan, read, and absorb information, and what happens when they don’t
  • Checkmark How to judge contrast, repetition, alignment, and proximity in our designs
  • Checkmark How the simplest of tweaks, like adjusting the mere text sizes or line weights in your information, can dramatically improve your product’s usability
  • Checkmark How to ensure the images you use are as effective as the words that go along with them.

Why do so many information products fail us? Why can’t we easily find the next bus on the bus-stop schedule? Why can’t we finalize booking our flight online? Why can’t we find the balance we currently owe on our credit card statements – either online or on paper?

A surprising majority of the time, it’s not the textual content provided that fails: it's the poor visual design that frames and presents that content. Too much visual traffic; too little contrast; too little alignment; too little chunking – all of these problems must be avoided to make your products easier to use.

In this entertaining 90-minute presentation, Patrick Hofmann will help you make your products easier to use by applying surprising, memorable design techniques. Patrick, an expert in visual instruction and wordless communication, has worked with usability professionals like you to improve the design of digital, online, and hard copy information.

Learn the latest rules to live by:

For our users young and old, what is the best line spacing and text size to use in body text, notes, flowcharts and diagrams? Unlike traditional design books, it's not one size fits all!

Learn about the rule of thirds, and why it is intuitive to users, and helpful in laying out pages, both online and on paper.

Why Patrick Hofmann?

For over 13 years, Patrick Hofmann has worked as a technical illustrator, visual interaction designer and usability consultant. He specializes in visualizing information - to make products easier to use, and to satisfy global audiences. As well as building interactive prototypes, and coordinating and conducting usability tests, Patrick helps organizations practice appropriate user-centered design and evaluation methodologies, and has helped a variety of worldwide clients across a spectrum of industries. An expert in visual instruction and wordless communication, he currently works for Google in Australia.


Purchase Recording $149

Get Lifetime Access
for your entire
organization!

The UIE Virtual Seminars I’ve viewed have been great. Accessible format, informal delivery and excellent content. I’ve always liked UIE’s approach to and delivery of user experience research.

Glenn S.

Here's a small sample of what you'll see:

For a majority of users, if one piece of visual information fails them, they disrespect and distrust all of the visuals. This applies to everything from flowcharts to concept diagrams, and icons to visual instructions.

Why don't we build our visual images with style sheets and layout guidlines?

In this example, invisible lines provide visual connections between elements and overall balance to a page or screen.

Additional Resources
Another Seminar from Patrick
Effective Use of Icons & Images
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