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I'm a Biology teacher also interested in making things look good. I am making a lecture on zoology and decided to set up the key information in cards - so students may take a screenshot and use them for revision. I did my best, but the design still looks crappy for me - especially the bottom half. Here's an example (also an actual slide from presentation): enter image description here

Probably a problem with grouping or font choice - I just can't understand what's wrong and how to fix it. Can you suggest some improvements?

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    I just want to say, WOW. Great job, especially for someone not in graphics design. I'd have loved if teachers had something this cool when I was studying.
    – DRF
    Mar 26, 2020 at 18:31
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    I know this might sound silly, but take a look at card designs for Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh, Magic The Gathering and other monster card games. They're all trying to solve the same problem to some extent!
    – turnip
    Mar 26, 2020 at 20:16

3 Answers 3

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This is a small item, so avoid filling precious whitespace by containing every element into its own separate box.

Instead, break the design down into 2 sections for better separation between the top part (general overview) and bottom part (detailed 'specs'). For instance, you could leave the top against a white background, and only use the yellowish background behind the bottom section.

Also, make the bottom more visual by flowing the 'specs' into a grid and adding some relevant icons (first image).

If you find that difficult or time consuming, go with some more straighforward icons for the grid (second image).

Otherwise, just stick to plain text, but use a center axis for the column alignment :first column right aligned, second column left aligned (third image). DO NOT add lines or fills to this table, just separate by bolding the first column and/or using different shades of black between first and second columns.

The word 'CLASS' needs to be smaller, meaning of equal font size to the word 'FEATURES' (identical font and size).

Avoid using a different font style for everything.

enter image description here

enter image description here

enter image description here

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This is an opinion based answer, and there is no right or wrong here. Generally, I quite like the basic style of it. It's very traditional in a kind of educational establishment way. However in my opinion the main problem here is the way you have listed the various features centred on two lines. I don't think there's anything wrong with the fonts. It's just the the readability of the layout isn't great. Consider having each on one line with a comma, and no centring, and each line separated by more space.

Blank space/separation is very important in layout

Here's a rough example

enter image description here

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    That being said, this design is pushing it a bit on the font size and weight, it's quite hard to read, even though the single line does improve the overall comprehension.
    – Kroltan
    Mar 27, 2020 at 3:52
  • @Kroltan. Maybe so, but then again, we don't know what size the card is in actuality. The OP referred to students taking "screenshots", and so these may be big enough to read comfortably.
    – Billy Kerr
    Mar 27, 2020 at 8:56
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Great thanks to everybody for your replies!

I found it difficult to place all the information under icons, so I ended up with aligning the first column right and the second left, as suggested by Lucian. Made 'CLASS' the same size as features. Also listed the features in one line, separated by commas, as suggested by Billy Kerr, and made their font a bit larger.

Much better now 😄 enter image description here

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    It would be even better if you make ‘CLASS’ the same font as ‘FEATURES’ as well – make them more parallel. A tint (perhaps 80% or so) would probably also work better for both, I think. Personally, I think the green backgrounds are by far the biggest detractor and distractor. What exactly do they even mean? Your original image had an arrow with “Changes indication”, but I can’t figure out what that’s supposed to mean and how left/right cards relate to each other. Have you considered replacing them with something more subtle, like just a green circle before the word in the left column?
    – Janus Bahs Jacquet
    Mar 28, 2020 at 15:25

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