Restart Recharge Podcast
We’re coaches at Forward Edge, a K-12 technology company in Ohio. We are a team of former educators who now work as instructional coaches across the region. On our podcast, we’ll share lessons, stories, and tips from our network of coaches and special guests. We’re right there with you - on the ground and in schools every day. Hear personal perspectives on the role of a coach, benefit from our experiences, and learn from our mistakes - wherever you are, we’ve been there, we are there, and we want to help! So press the restart button, recharge your coaching batteries, and leave feeling equipped and inspired to coach fearlessly - with the Restart Recharge Podcast: A Tech Coach Collective!
Restart Recharge Podcast
416 Engaging with Graphic Design
In this episode of Restart Recharge, we discuss the role of graphic design for teachers and coaches. Instructional design coach Grace Brown joins us to share her expertise on graphic design best practices, and integrating creative tools like Canva into the K12 classroom. Grace shares her stories of working with teachers to engage students with graphic design and she provides actionable tips and strategies for teachers and coaches. If you're looking to update your PD materials, or if you want to support teachers in their graphic design endeavors, this episode will inspire you to get started!
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Calling all Instructional Coaches, Curriculum Specialists, Teachers on Special Assignment, or whatever they call you. I'm Matthaeus Huelse.
Katie Ritter:And I'm Katie Ritter. As Instructional Coaches, we are often responsible for our own professional learning and can sometimes feel pretty isolated in our role.
Matthaeus Huelse:That's why we're here, bridging the gap with a wealth of tips, tricks, and building a community of coaches.
Katie Ritter:So hit the restart button with us.
Matthaeus Huelse:Recharge your coaching batteries.
Katie Ritter:And hopefully you'll leave feeling just a little bit less on your own coaching island.
Matthaeus Huelse:Welcome back, dear listeners. Welcome back to Restart Recharge. I want to start off with a quick question. Are you the kind of teacher that spends way too much time flipping back and forth between two fonts until you find the right one? Uh, have you looked at the poster and you just thought to yourself, I don't like it, and I don't know why. But you look at graphic design with a different eye. Today we're joined by a former teacher that has joined our team as an instructional design coach, and we're going to learn all kinds of different things that you can include when you think about graphic design, and if you're supporting your teachers with graphic design activities. But before we get started with that, Welcome back to my co host today. everyone. Celine is back. Celine is joining us for another episode. Celine, how's life going?
Celine Thomas:It's going well. We're in the beginning stages of the school year, cruising through, looking for some fun stuff to incorporate. So I'm excited. for our guests that we're going to be talking with today.
Matthaeus Huelse:For sure. Would you like to introduce our guest today?
Celine Thomas:Sure. So our guest today is our very own Grace Brown. She's an instructional design coach here at Ford Edge. She was a 9 12 English teacher for 11 years before transitioning into this role. And during her tenure as a classroom teacher, Grace had the opportunity to lead curriculum development teams and participate in district level development of scope and sequence. Grace also works with Canva as a part of their EdgeU creative content program, developing educational templates for the platform. loves working alongside teachers to develop engaging and rigorous learning materials. And when not at work, Grace enjoys reading. Running and traveling. I love that for her. Reading, running trip. Welcome Grace. Welcome Grace.
Grade Brown:Hi.
Matthaeus Huelse:Grace. Thank you so much for joining us. So, uh, Grace, we wanted to pick your brain a little bit, but graphic design, you are our pro when it comes down to graphic design. And, um, yeah, so we had a couple of questions for you, but you started as a teacher I will, we'd like to know how did you get started? I mean, like you're a teacher, but you got really into graphic design. Were you obsessed with fonts or with shapes, colors? What, what got you into this mess?
Grade Brown:Yeah. Yeah, no, I think, um, it started like really small, being a teacher, like starting in 2012, I experienced a lot of different ways to deliver curriculum, right. I was at schools, like in the very first part of my career, it was. the classic worksheet, passing out, collecting, binder organization. Um, and then, you know, as I'm moving, as things are progressing, my next job, it was more Google Classroom, more digital. And every time that changes, you do rethink about your delivery. You rethink, how am I sharing my lesson materials. At my last job, I basically had a paperless classroom. And as an English teacher, that's like a huge accomplishment. I got many minutes of my life back from the copy machine. But when I made that switch, it then opens, more possibilities for how my lessons could look and how I could deliver. Materials like learning materials. So I actually, it started because I was really frustrated with the formatting tools that in this, with the tools that I was using, like, I just wanted to create a text box or like just needed the table to go in a certain place, but it wouldn't do it, or like trying to put an image in a worksheet and it sends the whole thing flying. And, I had. I follow teachers on Instagram are like using teachers pay teachers. And I'm looking at their materials and like, I want mine to look like that. Like, why can't mine look like that? And that's how I started. I just like made an account with Canva. They have free accounts for educators. So if you're an educator and you don't have a free account, you need to do that today. And it literally started so small in just. Changing worksheets that I already had and elevating those materials and actually then making them look the way that I'd always wanted them to look. So that's really how it started.
, Matthaeus Huelse:Do you, do you consider yourself a visual learner yourself?
Grade Brown:I, yes, I consider myself someone who's, really distracted by poorly designed things. So it, , I definitely think I'm visual in and can kinetic. So I want to. I want to see it. I want to see the model of what you want me to do. And then I maybe even want to watch someone do it or have someone walk through it with me the first time. But, as a teacher, sometimes teachers and PDs, we can be, I know I'll speak for myself. When I was a teacher in a PD session, I was sometimes the worst student. And it was because if, yeah, if the PowerPoint is distracting or the materials are poor, I'm really fixated on that as opposed to. The content that they're trying to teach me. And so, yeah, I think that definitely was motivated. It's just not inspiring. If I'm looking at a worksheet that I made and I'm handing it to my students and it's just like a line of text, a number, a line of text, a number all the way down, the questions may be really great, but no one's excited to work with that material.
Matthaeus Huelse:I agree with that. I, I personally, I, think of myself as a visual learner and whenever I would see something, , that is just not designed well, like again, the questions might be awesome. But the way that it's presented, the way it's even spaced, all that stuff can be distracting. And I think that's a big part for a lot of students that easily can get distracted, right? So, especially if you have an all digital classroom, right? Then you have to design everything, and it needs to be somewhat engaging. What are some of the things you learned along the way? maybe, like, two or three things that you learned along the way that make a better design, then that will not distract, right?
Grade Brown:Mm hmm. I mean, number one, I think less is more, especially like when I started, I discovered that I was a person who would absolutely spend way too much time on like the minute details of a design because I found it really fun. And again, it's like, It's like opening a toy box, right? Like if you've been limited for so long, and then you're given all of these tools and really the possibilities are endless, I'm like, Oh, what does that do? What does that do? Oh, they have this cute little sticker, but that doesn't mean it's better. And there's that fine line, so I think less is more is something I had to learn the hard way, and not just because of time, because that was taking up, I mean, teachers do not have a lot of time. So that was taking up valuable time. That wasn't being spent on like the pedagogical stuff. I was making maybe design choices that weren't aligned pedagogically with what I was doing in the classroom. And so reminding myself of what is the intent of this material? What do I need it to do? And is this thing that I'm spending like 30 minutes looking for the perfect sticker or the perfect like doodle. Is that enhancing that or should I be spending that time elsewhere? So less is more, that was a hard, a hard one to learn. Less is more part two is text on the screen or like text in a presentation, text on a worksheet. This kind of falls into like things that I get distracted by or like things if I'm watching a presentation that I notice now a lot more. I had to learn how to redesign my materials so that they partnered with what I was teaching., and that meant sometimes taking the text away from the screen. So I think that was a, something I learned as well.
Matthaeus Huelse:Oh of like, sometimes there is an overload of information being given to our participants, to our students, either way, right? And I think breaking it down and really just condensing into the most important components. It's not just good design thinking, but it's good pedagogy, right? It's good teaching. It's good conveying of information. Yeah. That's a great point. I also always think that one of the things I see people make mistakes with the most common thing that I also made a mistake with like contrast. Especially from an accessibility standpoint, um, I made that mistake plenty of times myself, right? Where, where I just didn't have good enough contrast and you couldn't read the text. Even if it's designed for you to not read it, it should still be somewhat readable, right? It's a hard, hard lesson to learn, especially if you are so proud of your design.
Grade Brown:You don't want to change it. You're like, Oh, but it's so pretty.
Matthaeus Huelse:looks so good. Yeah, but nobody can read it, Matthaeus. I got that message a couple of times.
Grade Brown:Yeah. I think the accessibility is huge just from how much information is on a screen, and that color contrast. Because Yeah. Yeah. think about like font size, people underestimate how big the font should be for people to read it. We really have to think about ourselves as like sitting in the back of an auditorium or sitting at the back of a conference presentation at the back of the room.. This might help you get less text on the screen because it's probably small so that you can fit everything on there. And it's like, well, it doesn't all need to be on there because if your attendees, let's say you're giving a conference presentation or you're running a PD, or if you're a teacher and you're teaching a classroom full of, 30 students, 30 plus students, they, you know, can't be so focused on trying to decipher what is on the screen or reading what is on the screen that then they lose their attention on you. Even if your contrast is right, even if the design is sleek and is supportive of what you're saying, but you've got a full paragraph up there, one, as a speaker, you're going to be more likely to To just start reading from the screen, which is poor public speaking, and, um, I know that at conferences, attendees want those materials to reference later because you're just getting so much information, you can't process it. But then I think this is also where graphic design or just, Tech can come in handy anyway. Your presentation slides don't have to be the notes that you share with your attendees. You can make a slide deck or a Canva presentation that does have chock full of like text and speaker notes and all of those things that doesn't get shown to your audience, but is then shared on a drive or something like that. So I think making those distinctions is a really important thing.
Matthaeus Huelse:That's a good point. Especially, if someone like- I always feel like I want to get all that info out. And so I do fall sometimes to the category of wanting to put a full paragraph in. Partially because I want people to understand, there's a lot of work in here, right?, but, um, at the same time, I didn't think about this. You could just offer a second version or another, document of sorts that could have all that information. That's the point. That would make me happy because then I feel like I was fully heard.
Grade Brown:exactly.
Celine Thomas:And I know, I feel like I work with a lot of teachers too, just going back to what you were talking about with Teachers Pay Teachers,
Grade Brown:Mm
Celine Thomas:just finding resources that are accessible. And sometimes I know I work with teachers that don't have time to put some of this together, or they're like, you know, if there's any listeners they're like, uh, , I don't even know what they're talking about. Like, how do I fix a contrast? If you were to give someone a why, what would you tell people , how could they incorporate design activities into classrooms? Or why should they go about creating their own resources?
Grade Brown:Yeah, the time thing is so crucial., but I think in terms of accessibility. I think now there are so many more tools that are built in to help because, I don't know. I don't know everything. Yeah. Period. Full stop. Right. Um,
Matthaeus Huelse:It's always a good thing, you know.
Grade Brown:yeah,
Matthaeus Huelse:shows self reflection.
Grade Brown:that out there. it's surprising, right? Surprising to hear. Um, I can't be expected to know the best way to make every single presentation accessible for every single person, right? Canva now has options where you can check your design for accessibility and it will kind of run and it will give you options. I know that other tools have like Chrome has accessibility tools like built in. And so it's not something that then teachers have to stress about like, Oh, I have to go and do research and learn about this. And then, you know, these programs really are. working to make creating accessible designs easier so that more accessible designs are created. I think it's kind of that group effort. I think though, if I'm convincing a teacher, and I just ran a session, so I just, Had this all worked up if I'm convincing a teacher of why should they start rethinking or redesigning materials, maybe materials that they've made or like they've used for a decade, right? When we rethink design, we're also Rethinking how we're engaging with that material. I spoke to this a little bit earlier, but , I'll just use an example from my own classroom. I wanted to do a lesson about the significance of setting in a class. Um, and so students were reading different novels and I wanted them to really think about how is the setting setting can be its own character, its own piece. That's also a standard. So I'm trying to keep myself aligned. I used to have a very straightforward worksheet where it's, numbers one through five, one through 10 questions where the students would have to write in complete sentences, use text for support and hand it in or print it in, you know, there's nothing inherently wrong with that. But as I had freedom to express myself differently, I started to think. Okay, well what if they also had freedom to express themselves differently? And so then that turned into students, when creating their own Canva presentations, using Canva themselves to play with the elements and tools to actually create an image or create a map or create this thing that then reflects better what they understood the setting to be., I had students use a tool called ThingLink and that is a super cool tool. Where they were able to, take a map and then make that map immersive in many ways. And, I even included like a Makerspace option. And a teacher who was willing to work with students and so design in that way, it turned into a project where students had multiple ways to complete the assignment and allowed them to communicate their learning in a way that made sense to them. So it was more engaging and then more fun to grade. I can't be the only one who was tired of grading the same, worksheet over and over again. And this was just, way more fun to do.
Celine Thomas:Yeah, I feel like that would be such an inspirational part to tell any teacher, this is a great way to engage your students and also yourself, , you're creating that connection between outside of the worksheet itself, creating that bond with how that student's thinking just from what you created and allowing them to think through your creation. I love that so much.
Matthaeus Huelse:And you create ownership, right? Because I mean, students then have something that they've created themselves that they are more proud of. I think, especially in times of AI, not to get this in that direction, but in times , where we were talking about, ownership of your, of the materials of the students, what they're producing, that that is something that you can get them easily invested in.
Grade Brown:I think that's the other thing I would to teachers. Another assignment that I did, I adapted, , a literary field guide from Rebecca Odell., it's a great like resource. And it's a vocabulary lesson and students essentially were becoming researchers of a vocabulary word of their own choice. And then they were going to make a field guide page., some students chose to do that. There were many ways they could submit it, but some students chose to do that in Canva. And I know that a lot of times when we talk about design, people get fixated on the like, it's just a way to make things prettier. And for some reason, that feels like not a good enough reason for them to use it. Like, oh, I don't care about if it's pretty or like that doesn't matter for again, the curriculum, the content, the knowledge. This is where I would push back against that. So students who were using Canva, I saw , the level of pride that they were taking in their work, again, because they were now, given this toy box of tools to play with and to hear them be like, Oh my gosh, that's so cool. I can do that. Look at this. They were one showing each other the work that they were creating in class. But then when, on the day that it was due, they would come in and be like, Ms. Brown, Ms. Brown, I can't wait for you to see my literary field guide. Like you're really going to like it. This one's really cool. I'm really proud of it. And so that matters. Like that absolutely matters. And I think can expose students. One to the confidence in their own skills and maybe something they've not explored before. But then there is more alignment with content because let's say a student was researching a word that had a sad connotation. What I heard and saw them do when you have like these infinite resources, right? This kind of, again, I'm going to keep using that word giant toolbox of things to choose from. They're having to make choices that align with the meaning of their word. And so everything from the font, the color, the elements that they were using, the way it was structured on the page, they were taking into consideration readability, one, how did it look for me? Could I read or not? What they were turning in, but then this whole piece was reflective of the word that they had researched. And to me, that is deeper level learning, like that student is going to remember because they spent a lot of time then thinking about what color fits the type of sadness that this word means, like what font reflects the definition here. I think that's deeper, deeper learning.
Matthaeus Huelse:Yeah, I think that that's a really good point for sure. And it reminded me of another activity I saw where , I know, it doesn't seem like. Graphic design or anything like that could be used with things like data, for example, but I saw this really cool activity. think it was, one of the EDU protocols where students would be collecting data first in a, in a shared Excel spreadsheet about a particular topic, and they would just collect all of the, numbers, and some quick little description of it. But then everybody could pull from this to create a,, infographic and I think that the idea of not only finding all of that data, which is really, really important, right, but then interacting with it in a way that is very visual and very much focused on conveying information rather, rather than just, reading it. I, that's, that's another great opportunity. I think just like you said, you get this buy in, you get this, uh, student involvement that is really excited to share what they created., I, that's the best possible outcome.
Grade Brown:Yeah, absolutely.
Celine Thomas:So now we're going to take a commercial break. Thank you so much, Grace, for sharing so far.
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Matthaeus Huelse:Welcome back to Restart Recharge. From our break., we are still here with Grace Brown talking all things designed, figuring out what we can give our coaches to. take back to the districts and how to support them and their students design skills. So let's, let's talk a little bit more specific about like how do I get as a coach other teachers excited to, , incorporate that. Let's give them the easiest tools. Let's give them some ideas, some inspiration. Let's say I'm a teacher that is really excited, that wants to do graphic design with my students, but I just, I don't even know how to start, how to come up with it. Grace, what advice would you give me? How would you get me started as a coach?
Grade Brown:Yeah. As a coach, when I would start, if you don't have a login, I would definitely start there. Um, and again, hitting on that, , free educator account, , educators get access to all of the pro, all of the premium tools. I don't think enough educators know about this. And so I have, um, worked with a couple of teachers who have made a personal account because maybe they, they did, you know, may made an invitation for a birthday or whatever. And then in playing with it, though, they felt limited because they just had the free version. So then they don't see the value of like, Oh, well, this can't do what I want it to do anyway. And I'm like, no, no, no. Get in your educator, use your school account, get into the educator account. And then you're really going to see what it can do for you. you know, If I'm working with the teachers, never used it before., directing them towards templates. One, I think I would identify one area that they want to explore. So is it just engaging presentations? Do we want to start just by elevating your class notes? Maybe they're like me and you want to elevate your worksheets. I mean, you're, you're kind of sick of how they're looking or, you know, you see other teachers and you want to model that a little bit more. Direct them to Canvas template resources or template library. As an EdgeU creator. I am part of that process. I'm part of the building of that template library, but I know how seriously Canva takes, building their resources. It's a lot of times on a template, whether, you know, maybe that's on, you get a template from Etsy or a template somewhere else on Canva that's not education based, you're going to get that really pretty design, but it's going to be , Lorem Lorem Ipsum. Text filler. Like, you've got to put in all the text. Canva for Education is committed to also creating actual content in their templates. Like, when I make a template, I am not allowed to simply be like, you know, title here, intertext here, text filler, da da da. I am creating a lesson that I would use in my classroom. And I'm making it available for everyone for free. These Templars are free. And so you could in a pinch, and I think this is really what they want to help with teachers, especially teachers who are overwhelmed by this design idea or idea of graphic design. You don't have to do it. You can search your subject grade, the type of media that you want. And even sometimes Using those specific keywords to the actual, like, lesson or skill that you're trying to teach, and there, there will be something. There will be something that you could either, hopefully, if we're really lucky, immediately put into your classroom, so saving you a ton of time., or something that you're like, I need to maybe add a slide or change this just a little bit, tweak it here, but still it's ready to go. And you've still saved a ton of time and you've made progress towards that goal of elevating your design. So, I mean, I think a really nervous teacher. I would say rely on the templates because that's also how you learn. That's how I learned too is like observing. We talked about this earlier. When you observe strong graphic design and start to think to yourself, why does, why does this appeal to me? What are the pieces that make this work that make this look polished? And how can I mimic that? in my own work. And so using those templates is a perfect place to start.
Matthaeus Huelse:and I also think it shows you like, the practices, best practices, right? And you will sometimes you look at a design or something like that and I think I don't know why I don't like it, but I don't like it for some reason. And a lot of the times, it's because, you know, color combinations are not the right perfect combo, and the spacing is, just a little bit off here and there, and you might not even see it directly, but it makes it look sort of, um, Uncomfortable, almost, for some reason. And I think a lot of that is, like you said, look at the templates and you'll get this feeling and that eye and you realize, oh, okay, this is very much, like, spaced in a certain way and that makes certain sense., what if I want to go in and I want to have students interact with, let's say, Canva, for example? I know it can be pretty intimidating setting up a classroom. Any advice on that front?
Grade Brown:Yeah, Canva has a lot of resources, , on their website, when walking teachers through that, you can become, a Canva Certified Educator., and one that is going to walk you through very quickly. It's not an intensive process at all, but it is going to walk you through one, some design basics, , but then also like how to use their platform. So I recently did a session with teachers who were interested in like, how do we assign work in Canva? I want my students to, to do this thing in Canva. With your school account, one, you can connect it with your LMS. And so that makes it really easy, but you can also Add your students into a classroom and then a lot of the functionality is going to look like LMS, other learning management systems that you're familiar with, where I can share it as an assignment and then make it so that each student gets their own individual copy. Because I think that's the hard part too, sharing. Like, we've, I've definitely done this. I know. I've worked with other teachers who have done this. You share it and then all of a sudden you have 25 kids on the same document and it's chaos. That's not always what we want. Sometimes we want that, but not always. So the ability to, like, make a copy so that each student has their own, and then on the teacher's side, you see that. You see the folder with the student name, and that's automatically shared with you, and you can see that the work that they've done. And so I would say, just like everything, start small. Um, I try to encourage teachers, to maybe try something low stakes., I think, yeah, at least for me, when I got really excited about a new, curriculum, a new pedagogy thing, a new whatever. I felt the need to like, okay, I'm going to go do this all year. Everything is going to be on this now. And it's like, that's not really how that works. Like what's going to end up happening is you're going to get burnt out. And then it's good. You're not going to try anything new. So if you know if you have like a homeroom or an advisory and you've got a smaller group of kids and like just sending them maybe something that's like a coloring page or like a make your own postcard or design a classroom stamp something that's super low stakes That gets everyone working with the tools. Take so much pressure off the kids and yourself, because anytime we try something new, we know it's going to be stressful that first day. If you are an educator who has access to a coach, reach out to your coach., I've offered this now and I've been able to, to do this now on the day that we're rolling the new thing or trying Canva for the first time, I'm just in the room. I'm just the extra adult in the room that as hands are shooting up and as we're running into tech problems, which, you know, is inevitable with 25 people trying to do something all at the same time. And that makes it more attainable as well. So I think, again, from a coach's perspective, how do we get teachers to try this? obviously being available, demonstrating it for them, and then being willing to be in the mess with them as they're trying it.
Matthaeus Huelse:Being with them in the mess. That's, yeah. I think the beautiful tagline to our job in general.
Grade Brown:Yeah, absolutely.
Celine Thomas:Yeah. So you gave us a lot of great ways to get started. I feel inspired. I don't know about you. Oh, I'm inspired. No, I need to go create something right after this. But for coaches out there, what would be your top three tips when getting their graphic design muscles going?
Grade Brown:Yeah. I said this, I think we had like a bingo card for this. I think, I mean, this would be all the squares on the bingo card, um, is start small. If you are a coach, not only should coaches encourage teachers to start small and teachers should encourage students to start small. If you are a coach, And this is intimidating to you because just because we're coaches again, back to like, I don't know everything, just because we're coaches, it doesn't mean that we're super comfortable with this. Start small and make a goal for yourself. Do I want to elevate my presentations? Do I want to, create better learning materials that are more engaging with my teachers?, what is it that you want this thing to do? And then just start small. Pick one thing just to play around, and then you will see how quickly when you become inspired and how easy it is. Like it takes that intimidation factor away a little bit. So definitely that's, that's one. I think coaches using graphic design , a tip would be to build your kit, build your brand kit. Whether you do this on Pinterest, , I, I have a Pinterest Canva board for, because even though I really am visually engaged, I am not an artist. Um, and so I get inspired when I see other things that I really like. Remember as a kid, I don't know. Well, Matthaeus, I don't know if you ever did this. Celine, I, I have a feeling maybe you did, but when we would like cut collages out of magazines and like, you know, spend, thank you. I don't know. This very maybe specific experience. Um,
Matthaeus Huelse:Pinterest, that's about as far as I, I
Grade Brown:okay. Um, cutting, you know, we're kind of back to those days, right? It's going to make your life better. So much easier in Canva. You can in fact like build that brand kit and then you don't have to, I mean, tell teachers this, you don't have to make those decisions all the time. Like think coaches, certainly teachers experience that decision fatigue. Let's take that away. Let's make our lives just a little bit easier. And then it also creates that continuity between your design. So you're going to look more professional. You're going to look more polished. Um, and I think that leads into the last tip, , which is about creating trust., and the way that as a coach, I think that you create trust In specifically graphic design, if we're, if we're thinking about,, elevating our presentations, it's one, you have to model it., you cannot be giving a PD presentation about the importance of engaging presentations and your presentation is the white basic Google slide with the black basic Google font. And like, that's it. You can't do it. So you need to be, walking the walk there. and then I think creating that trust does come in with that building your kit and starting small, right? I think all of those work towards that bigger thing where the teachers feel safe enough to try it. And then they also see the value in it because they see your materials. They see you using this, , and that it is more than just Making something prettier, but it is changing the way that we think about, content and curriculum delivery. And I think that's how we build trust with teachers, , and really being authentic with what we're trying, what we're working with them in, right? We're back to, to be in the mess with them. You have to be willing to be in the mess with them, um, or they're not going to feel safe to try this new thing.
Matthaeus Huelse:Those are three very well connected points. I think they all really support each other. One after another. That's good. And very good best practices, right? Obviously, you need to be walking the walk and talk. Great. Well, Grace, thank you so much for being with us.
Grade Brown:Yeah,
Matthaeus Huelse:we, I always, I always make it awkward and I ask my guests if they have anything to brag about. If they want to tell us something that's going on. If they, uh, they projects going on. If there's something they're proud of.
Grade Brown:um, I'm proud of the work that I've done on EdgeU Creator on my canvas, so I would say, um, you know, nothing maybe too exciting on the, like, event space, um, although actually that's not entirely true, , I will be at a conference, but it's not until, like, February with one of our other teammates. And so that'll be, and that's all about Canva. So we've got more content, but,, I have an EdgeU creator page. And so, and, uh, um, a teaching Instagram where I share a lot of my designs. And so if people, again, want to find me and ask me more of these questions or if they want, um, to see my, to see my work and start using it. They're like, all right, she said we could use templates. Let's find them. Um, then I definitely would direct people there., and so on, on Canva, it's called my shop shop. You don't pay for anything is called, , teaching with grace. And so that's, that's where I'm at. That's where you can find me.
Matthaeus Huelse:Oh, and the Instagram handle you mentioned?
Grade Brown:Yeah. On Instagram, I am teaching underscore with underscore Ms. Brown, M S and then my last name Brown. Um, I'll text it to you guys so we can put it in the show notes or something. Cause that, that's a lot., but yes, I would love for people to find me there.
Matthaeus Huelse:Awesome. Can I ask you one last question? I know. Sneaking one more in. Biggest graphic design pet peeve?
Grade Brown:Mm. my gosh. I think, I mean, too much text is a big one. It is, it is a big one. But now I think alignment, you talked about the spacing. It's now like the spacing of the element or the spacing of when, uh, someone has like a, let's say we've got like something in the middle and they've got texts like around it, but these two are like this versus like in alignment with each other. I was like. Like, just move it a little bit. Um, so that one is surprising where I'm just like, just like, push it over. Just, you know, that alignment. It's the small details. Really.
Celine Thomas:that's understandable., for
Matthaeus Huelse:sure. I, when I, I got asked to give feedback, and then I always find myself just like doing the slightest little adjustments to the
Grade Brown:uh,
Matthaeus Huelse:and it's like, just line it all up. That's, that's it. And everybody looks at like, what are you doing? Like, this is just gonna make it so much cleaner.
Grade Brown:I've zoomed in the presentation to like, you know, a thousand percent. Just like, like, but it, it makes, it makes a huge difference.
Matthaeus Huelse:Mm. All right, Grace, thank you so much for being with us. Thank you for giving us all these good tips and pieces of advice. And listeners, if you enjoyed this episode, please give us some feedback. Please leave some comments. Um, and yeah, let us, let us know how we're doing. And if you have any other questions, please let us know and reach out to Grace.
Grade Brown:Thanks guys.
Matthaeus Huelse:Thank you, Grace. Thanks for spending time with us today. If you found this episode helpful, please share it with an educator friend.
Katie Ritter:And connect with us on social media at rrcoachcast to let us know what you thought of the episode and what topics you want us to discuss next.
Matthaeus Huelse:New episodes drop every other Tuesday. Be sure to subscribe to Restart Recharge wherever you listen to podcasts.
Katie Ritter:So press the restart button,
Matthaeus Huelse:recharge your coaching batteries, and leave feeling equipped and inspired to coach fearlessly with the Restart Recharge podcast,
Katie Ritter:a Tech Coach Collective.
Matthaeus Huelse:Well, hold on a sec. Ready? Welcome back from break. We are still here with Grace Brown. did I?
Grade Brown:You did a little roll on the break. You were like, welcome back from break. Like
Matthaeus Huelse:I didn't know this thing.
Celine Thomas:Very fancy.
Matthaeus Huelse:Mmm, okay. Do I keep that? know.
Celine Thomas:Ben, if you're watching this, you should start editing.
Matthaeus Huelse:Don't allow him to do that, okay. I thought it was the break between Grace, uh, Brown.
Grade Brown:Yeah.
Matthaeus Huelse:Um,
Grade Brown:I think that sound you just wanted to make, like, I wanted it to be like Grace Brown. Like I wanted that to, you know I want that fancy treatment.
Matthaeus Huelse:uh, Katie's gonna be so happy that we have, uh, or bloopers.
