Visual design is often a distant afterthought in the process of creating deliverables. But here’s an uncomfortable truth: Learners silently (if you’re lucky) evaluate the credibility of your work based on how it looks. To be sure, a slick PowerPoint deck alone isn’t enough to achieve learning objectives; principles of instructional design are the foundation of your work. In this issue of TD at Work, Brittany Harris reviews six principles of design to help you create and critique visual design for virtually any kind of learning deliverable. Further, she:

• Details visual design stakeholders.

• Examines how masters throughout art history have applied a specific principle and then shows you how to apply that same principle in your work.

• Relays best practices for applying the six principles in an efficient, timely, and effective way.

Tools & Resources in this issue are a Creating and Critiquing Visual Design Checklist and a Design Principles in Practice Worksheet.