Simple Design Can Catch the Attention of Your Students and Teachers

I am a creative sort; I admit it. I love design. Perhaps it's the songwriter/photographer in me, but I always make an effort to make my signs and forms pop. We all know know that people do not usually read signs, but when you make an effort to use simple, eye-catching designs, you have a better chance that your audience will notice. To illustrate this, I've done a few before and after for three different signs in my media center.

This is a simple sign to show students the URL of the media center's webpage.

I added a thick red stripe, our school mascot and a few sentences.  Notice that the fonts are easy to read. No need for fancy lettering.

There is a lot wrong with the sign to the left. First of all, the font comic sans was used. (See my posting "comic sans criminal") The text is not totally centered, and clip art from Microsoft was used. (Microsoft has photo images which are not too bad)

This is the sign I made, using one black and white photo and a second color. Eye-catching, wouldn't you say?

Another simple sign with basic clip art. Ordinary, right? Let's see what adding a photo and little bold text can do to change the sign:

I took the photo and enlarged it to cover the width of the paper and added some bold text with a drop shadow.