Helping Students Improve Their Graphic Design Skills
A Guest Blog Post by Jennifer Scott
Students can create in Google Slides, but this does not mean the presentation looks good. All too often the presentation has too much writing, the content looks randomly placed, and the colors and fonts choices make the text hard to read. Still, we smile with pride because our students worked so hard. But, BOY do they need help with graphic design skills!
Teach Mini Graphic Design Lessons
As my students work on their projects, I make sure to teach mini graphic design lessons. Students learn to customize bulleted lists with emojis for fun and to keep their presentation writing short. Students add an image, content, and color choice before they use the Explore Tool to view multiple layout options.
Try Google Slides
Google Slides is a very basic graphic design platform with its ruler, arrange options and guides. The website SlidesCarnival.com offers free, quality templates that indirectly teach graphic design principles such as contrast and font choice.
One major focus is how to effectively use fonts and choose color combinations. Students LOVE to use hard-to-read Display fonts. These fonts are fun, different and creative! I teach students to pair Display fonts with an easy-to-read font. Students then customize color combinations to set the mood and make the text readable.
The results are not immediate but given the tools, mini-lessons, and time for creativity, students can create presentations like this:
Google Please Create a Graphic Design Platform
One of my dreams is that Google launch a separate graphic design platform app the combines Google Slides with Google Photos Photo Book. The new app would be a publishing program for books, posters, and, yes, even yearbooks. Help me by retweeting this message to Google:
Jennifer Scott
Jennifer is an English and history teacher with Bakersfield City School District, as well as a Google Innovator. SlidesYearbook is her #Mex16 #Googleei project.
1 thought on “Graphic Design in Google Slides by @jentechnology”
This is GREAT! I teach both digital media and art to middle-school aged students and want to try this with both classes. I also love your idea of Google combining Slides with Photos and I will retweet your message. Thanks for sharing!!