Let the Knuffle Bunny Help You Combine Photos and Illustrations in E-Learning #312

Mixing Photos and Illustrations in E-Learning #312: Challenge | Recap

 “Aggle flaggle klabble!”

If you're familiar with the Knuffle Bunny series, you'll know the anxiety Trixie felt when she realized she'd lost her favorite stuffed animal.  For course designers, coming up with a new design style for an important client can be equally frustrating.

The good news for Trixie is she gets her favorite toy back. But the even better news for e-learning designers is they can pull a page from this creative children's series to design a custom look and feel for their course. 

The Knuffle Bunny Visual Design Style

The book's visual style answers age-old questions in e-learning, such as: "Can I mix different types of images in my course?" and "Should my character styles match my background graphics?"

Short answer: When designed with intentionality, this mixed medium approach works well. 

Consider how the book's visual theme uses real-life scenery with hand-drawn illustrated characters. This is a fantastic example of how bitmap and vector graphics can be combined to tell a story.

The author uses photos he took around New York City. Great idea for shooting your custom e-learning graphics.

The images are then digitally modified to reduce their color and contrast to create dull, monochromatic images with varying shades of brown. The characters are drawn in bright colors and make an interesting focal point when layered above the photos.

We may be too old for the Knuffle Bunny, but the unique mix of black-and-white photos and custom illustrations create a timeless design style. And that's what this week's challenge is all about!

Challenge of the Week

This week, your challenge is to share an example that mixes photographs and illustrations. You don’t have to follow the Knuffle Bunny design style strictly. Just be intentional about your design choices and show how your theme carries across multiple content slides.

Knuffle Bunny Book Series

You don’t need to buy a book for this week’s challenge. If you search for phrases like “knuffle bunny images” you’ll find enough inspiration to kickstart your design ideas. For those of you who are interested in the series, you can find the books below.

• Knuffle Bunny: A Cautionary Tale (original)
• Knuffle Bunny Too: A Case of Mistaken Identity
• Knuffle Bunny Free: An Unexpected Diversion

Related Challenges

We’ve hosted a few challenges that tie in nicely with this week’s topic. Feel free to cross-post your entry if you incorporate one or more of the following challenge elements into this week’s demos.

• Shoot Your Own E-Learning Background Graphics #10
• E-Learning Noir: Using Only Black and White in Course Design #172
• Using the Paper Cutout Effect to Design E-Learning Graphics #235

Share Your E-Learning Work

• Comments: Use the comments section below to share a link to your published example and blog post.
• Forums: Start  your own thread and share a link to your published example..
• Personal blog:  If you have a blog, please consider writing about your challenges. We’ll link back to your posts so the great work you’re sharing gets even more exposure.
• Social Media: If you share your demos on Twitter or LinkedIn, try using #ELHChallenge so your tweeps can track your e-learning coolness.

Last Week’s Challenge:

Before you dive into this week's challenge, check out the creative ways interactive sliders can be used to let learners choose their e-learning characters:

Using Sliders with E-Learning Characters #311: Challenge | Recap

New to the E-Learning Challenges?

The weekly e-learning challenges are ongoing opportunities to learn, share, and build your e-learning portfolios. You can jump into any or all of the previous challenges anytime you want. I’ll update the recap posts to include your demos.