If you create educational products, you’ll know how important it is for them to engage children whilst assuring the teachers, parents and educators of the quality of your product.
I’ll share 5 ways you can achieve that & make them stand out from the eyes of a graphic designer.
1. Use a consistent style
If you don’t want your products to look ‘homemade’, and add to the professional credibility of your brand, you need to be consistent with style.
You can do this by creating a mood board before you start any design work. This board should detail what colours, fonts, image styles and other visual details you’ll use throughout.
Here are a couple of very close examples of what that could look like. These are “brandboards” which include the brand’s logo, colour palette and typography that should be used to keep the brand’s designs consistent. These are designed after a careful consultation and research process, where I discover the brand’s story, what it means to the founder and what message they want to put out into the world.
By creating a similar kind of board before you design your educational products, you will be able to give your buyers a consistent ‘feel’ that they will become used to as they use more from you. This adds to the professionalism and credibility of your brand.
2. Make it an experience
Make your visuals experiential rather than literal. Ok, what does that even mean?
Basically, don’t just include pictures of horses because your topic is horses. Instead, try inviting your little reader/user into a world through the design of your product.
Make it feel like they’re inside the barn, or at a riverside. This will require some imagination on your part, but it will instantly elevate everything.
Here’s an example of a curriculum I designed around the theme of water. The experience we designed invited the little reader into an ocean as a diver, and I designed little details throughout the pages that really brought it to life.
3. Use quality fonts
Typically, the majority of your educational resource contains text. This is why your font choice matters so much – if it’s poor, it will have a negative effect on the whole experience.
Fonts should be chosen for their character, easy readability and cohesiveness. This is where you refer back to your mood board to determine what styles to choose.
Also consider the age group and purpose of your resource.
4. Follow the rules of spacing & alignment
See the difference? This one can’t be stressed enough. If you had all the others on point except this, it’ll really mess everything up. It’s one of the first things you subconsciously notice in a professional publication.
The spacing of the items in your design needs to be consistent and in accordance with how your product will be used (ring binding? don’t forget to leave space to the left of your pages so things don’t get cut off).
And use alignment to have a consistent structure in your design.
5. Be different, duh!
Just because it hasn’t been done before, doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t do it!
Being a pioneer is a surefire way to make your educational products stand out and steal the show.
If you enjoyed this post, you can connect with me on Instagram @okwowcreative for more or simply add this blog to your favourites, and check it every now and then.
I’m a graphics designer that can help you bring your educational products to life with colourful & modern design – click here to view my design services.