Creating page layouts that are clear, easy to follow, and visually appealing requires both design skills and a keen eye for detail. 

While I continuously refine my ability to craft modern, attractive layouts, I adhere to Clark and Mayer’s e-learning design principles, such as contiguity, coherence, and signaling, alongside Gestalt principles of composition to ensure clarity and learner engagement.

An essential part of layout design is the thoughtful use of white space and balance, which helps guide attention and reduce cognitive load.

Typography adds another layer of creativity: it’s a world of innovation, subtle messaging, and visual harmony. I enjoy experimenting with fonts and pairing them to create designs that are both functional and aesthetically pleasing.

Many companies provide libraries of images and icons for instructional designers to use. However, the ability to customize these elements to fit specific content needs and to combine them into clear, informative infographics is invaluable. 

Below are examples of how I used Adobe Illustrator to repurpose existing icons and create visuals that enhance learning materials in various projects.

My experience has shown that job aids work best when they are easily editable. Surprisingly, PowerPoint has proven to be an optimal tool for job aid design. It offers flexibility for arranging objects on the page — similar to professional design tools like InDesign — while providing a built-in library of shapes and icons that streamline the process. Most importantly, when a job aid created by an instructional designer is shared with other teams, PowerPoint makes it simple for colleagues without graphic design software licenses to update the content as needed.