Ideas for Making a Graphical Impact in LibGuides

Do you ever take a look at your LibGuides and think, "whoa, that's a lot of text"? One of the things that you will often hear in lists of web design do's and don'ts are to avoid big blocks of text. Here are some ways that I have spiced up our LibGuides using graphic means.

Cartoons 

In 2013, I wrote this College and Research Libraries News article about using cartoons in our LibGuides. This is a free and easy way to break up some of the text on the page into a graphical format. Here is an example of one of the cartoons in our LibGuides.

This cartoon welcomes the student, tells them how to use the guide, and invites them to get help, all in one panel. The software I used is called ToonDoo, and it is free of charge. Read the article at the link above to learn more!

Buttons

I wrote about buttons in my previous posting about the LibGuides template. I have created buttons for students to click on to open most of our tutorials. This gives a graphical style to the page that also breaks up text. I make these in Illustrator, which is a costly product. There are other free products out there that you could use, including GIMP or Inkscape. Here are examples of some buttons.

Another simpler example of buttons can be seen below. This is a colored rectangle with text, and then I added a simple mouse pointer arrow to show that it is clickable.

Animations

Of course, you should always proceed with caution when it comes to animations (blinking and flashing can cause seizures being the first reason). Some animations can be very helpful for instruction. I have created the following animations to teach about truncation. I did this by using the timeline feature in Photoshop. It is saved as a GIF to preserve the animation.

Screenshots

I take a lot of screenshots. I realize that these can be tricky, since the website can change in an instant. I still like to use them to give a graphical indication of what I am explaining. With all of the other time-saving changes we have made to LibGuides with linking to the template guide, it is not a problem to have some items I need to update. Here is an example from my Art LibGuide, where I am showing students how to locate Creative Commons images using Google Image Search.

Creative Commons Images

The last image leads in to my next recommendation. What blog post would not be complete without talking about using images? I recommend to always use images that make sense with the subject matter, and of course, to use Creative Commons images with attribution. Here is an example of an image from my Art LibGuide with attribution and a link back to a succession of photos that show the project being made.

If you have questions about these or any of my other ideas, please reach out! I am happy to give you some pointers.