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The Ideal Lesson Graphic

May 10th, 2007

Posted in ChinesePod

18 Responses to “The Ideal Lesson Graphic”

1. Brian Says:
   May 10th, 2007 at 11:50 am

   * How important is a relevant image to the users?
   Not incredibly. For example, the second one, featuring just 蚊子, is fine by me. A giant mosquito isn’t necessary.

   * Do users like colorful graphics?
   I don’t think the graphics have to be all AMAZING; after all, if you’re pumping out one a day it will be hard to make them all unique it style and still follow some coherent guidelines. The Glory of Labor one is pretty awesome though, in my opinion.

   * How prominent or subtle should the Chinese characters be?
   Very prominent. Is there any 汉字 in the first picture?

   * Should we include pinyin in the graphic? (If so, then just for Newbie and Elementary?)
   Yes, as mentioned it seems warranted mostly at the lower levels.

   * Do you like to learn from the lesson graphics, or are they best used mainly as decoration?
   I haven’t learned from them yet, so I can’t say. I’d rather have more energy put into the lesson expansions/exercises then a nifty graphic.

2. Helen Says:
   May 10th, 2007 at 1:25 pm

   • How important is a relevant image to the users?
   To me, it’s very important. I’m a visual person. I like to see the relevant images goes with the lessons. But I do agree, plain stock photo doesn’t do the job.

   Of the 8 images, the first 3 don’t work for me. My favorite are 小笼包 and Color Song.

   • Do users like colorful graphics?
   Only if it’s revelant to the lesson and fits the mood. Color by itself doesn’t mean much.

   • How prominent or subtle should the Chinese characters be?
   It shouldn’t be the main element. I like how it’s used in The Glory of Labor.

   • Should we include pinyin in the graphic? (If so, then just for Newbie and Elementary?)
   Not necessarily. The Color Song images wouldn’t look good if you insist on incluing pinyin.

   • Do you like to learn from the lesson graphics, or are they best used mainly as decoration?
   No. It’s not a learning tool. But it’s more than just mere decoration either. It gives us a sneak preview, a glimpse of what the lesson is about. And it illustrates what might be hard to describe in words. 小笼包 image is be a perfect example of the latter.

3. Helen Says:
   May 10th, 2007 at 1:29 pm

   Doh! My Chinese characters didn’t come through. They are supposed to be Xiaolong Bao.

   Didn’t have any problem with v2 though. Any tips on how to make them show up?

4. Michael Butler Says:
   May 10th, 2007 at 2:28 pm

   I think the choice boils down to whether to use a picture that is more or less evocative or more or less representative. The issue of color would be a sub-set of this.

5. 海宁 / Henning Says:
   May 10th, 2007 at 2:52 pm

   The “Newbie - Mosquitoes” and - even better - the “Media - 盗款买彩” example carry that certain Chinese feel, look professional, and contain a few prominent characters. I like them best. For me no pinyin required in the upper levels (Intermediate and above) - that takes a bit of the fun.

6. goulnik (郭力毅) Says:
   May 10th, 2007 at 7:53 pm

   Probably of limited effect on memorization, but being an extremely visual person it certainly is a nice touch.

   I love the 劳动最光荣 one, but I’d vote for variety over consistency.

   How about getting ‘the big brain’ to contribute visuals? You could have a list of upcoming themes, even tentative, and get your designers to paste the specific 汉子 over. Just an idea.

7. pharmine Says:
   May 11th, 2007 at 2:24 am

   I like “Chinese Onomatopoeia” and “The Glory of Labor”, where the hanzi are naturally integrated into the graphics. But that’s just my preference; other ones are fine as well.

   More importantly, it would be better if the hanzi in the graphics were covered in the “Supplementary Vocabulary” section (with the pinyin included) when they are not used in the dialogue. (e.g. in a recent “Capital Punishment” lesson)

8. Lantian Says:
   May 11th, 2007 at 11:12 am

   STYLE - I think at the end-of-the day, a certain consistency is necessary. Look back at your old V2 images, they were very very good in this way. One could say that at times your graphics person maybe got a little too proficient with her/his Photoshop layers and simply plugged in a stock image after running it thru a red filter, adding a simple fade, and then the hanzi. But hey, there’s something to be said for efficiency and doing over 400 images. (J)

   If you look at the major newspapers, you’ll notice that they have built a style also into their images. The Wall Street Journal uses it’s own artists and a unique line drawing technique with an emphasis on portraits. This adds to the paper’s emphasis on content rather than buzz. In the LA Times, about 5 years ago they responded to the growth in images overall by re-designing their front page to include a much more prominent front image. Their images now also tend to span across a complete page. At times their images are almost National Geographic’esque. (E)

   With this said, I think Cpod, as a ‘daily’, can really utilize this image for both 1. Branding and 2. As a learning tool. For branding, you need to determine what makes an image somewhat ‘Chinese’like. (N)

   In the past, this was evoked thru the simple use of red and hanzi. You’ll notice in your water image there are no visual ‘Chinese’ markers. The other’s vary in terms of the images being a little to expected “Glory of Labor” to being too non-image like “mosquitos”. Obviously going from images of Chinese people to no Chinese people was very Central Casting like.(N)

   Part of what made the older images so interesting was that the graphic artist was a bit detached from the actual dialogues. I guess this because he/she often picked hanzi that were not really predominantly, if at all, emphasized in the podcast. The hanzi WAS related though, from a Chinese person’s lexicon point of view. This made it interesting to me. I talk more about creating a ‘context’ and ‘question’ within the image below. (Y)

   So anyway, in terms of imagery, when V3 or Cpod finds a stylebook or decides on some marker’s, ie. colors, style, etc., for it’s branding, then the images will move towards that. Right now your predominant visuals include red, black and orange. If your images contain at least two of those colors, or color complements, it will help to tie it to the overall look. (P)

   In terms of as a learning tool, I think a visual separation of the hanzi and pinyin works best. As in http://chinesepod.com/learnchi.....discussion

   Having the hanzi and pinyin right next to each other just makes the pinyin too easy to read and forget. If you can also find images of actual text, that will certainly give learners a flavor of the variety of fonts and variations in hanzi in real life. (H)

   I would also suggest sometimes not going with the most ‘likely’ of hanzi from each lesson. Maybe instead pick hanzi, phrases, etc., from the lesson that might be more visually interesting, high-frequency, or low frequency, something that isn’t always immediately obvious. In other words, create some need to connect, interact with the image. (O)

   DON’T make the images flashcards! (T)

   For example, in the first image, the most likely hanzi might be that for ‘water’, but instead, how about using the hanzi for the sound of ‘drip drip drip’. In the mosquito image, instead of ‘wenzi’ why not the hanzi for ‘bite’. The Advice for a Broken Heart image works well in this way, we think ‘why is he looking that way’, ohh he’s sad, what’s that hanzi, shi lian, oh he’s disheartened, yah… (O)

   Looking at the series of images you presented, they reflect a brighter, bolder, and more graphic style. V3 in general is going that way. You’ve also probably paid a pretty penny for those stock images. Some of them are good, but being a bit pickier will add value. I’d say remove most of the generic ‘people’ photos or crop them so as to create a story within the frame, like the 失恋 image. (S)

   To be more ‘graphic’ either zoom in on the key image or fade out far back to create a lyrical composition. The standard everything-in-focus, at-home-snapshot style is boring because, well we all have thousands of those at home ourselves. Example of those include Waking Up, Head Shoulders Toes(P)

   If you guys really want to ‘add value’ then there’s lots that can be done to build the learning chain. The image could be an addition to the mp3. The stock Cpod logo is good for my first look, but does nothing for the repeat customer day in and day out.(L)

   The image also is online, which means your website, which means another reason for one to visit the website. If you add something, aka like Connie’s vocab as a note to your summary, say the hanzi and automatic popup, maybe even a sentence or two about the hanzi, well hey…stick it in premium. (Z)

   If by some magical trickery you actually relate say every ten hanzi to some theme, or pedagogy, you might trick us into learning the 500 most frequent hanzi in Chinese. You might slip it by us that you introduced 10 characters all with the water radical, and one day have a podcast that makes us go ‘Exploring’ back to find them all in those images. You could slip in every third hanzi the secret code to Da Vinci. (THX)

   If you go back and re-read my post and look for letters in ( ) there is a message. (开玩笑啊！) Thanks for reading!

9. Henning Says:
   May 11th, 2007 at 3:25 pm

   Lantian, maybe you should include an abstract in your posts for low-attention-span-situations (;

   Anyways: If you read through the comments above, it turns out opinions could hardly become more diverse. Only the water picture was obviously unwanted - and rightly so.

   But I did appreaciate that you reused the Media-盗款买彩-style in the
   current 80后-希望还是迷失-lesson. Good decision! I think this way you regain a distinctive Chinese style while keeping Hanzi. You would by the way meet all those requirements put forward by Lantian.

   Although I did not get that with those letters in Lantians posts.

10. Rich Says:
    May 11th, 2007 at 5:19 pm

    * How important is a relevant image to the users?

    It is relevent to me. I even download the picture (right click, save, etc.) and name it the same as the file name. This makes it easy to know what lesson teaches what in my phone, since the file names don’t have descriptions.

    * Do users like colorful graphics?

    I do. I am not liking the just-hanzi pictures, as in my Study Plan, the two or three I Got in there now look the same…

    * How prominent or subtle should the Chinese characters be?

    …So, I think that there should be characters, but very subtle. The characters are just to give it a ChinesePod-feel, so it is unique in all other podcasts, IMHO.

    * Should we include pinyin in the graphic? (If so, then just for Newbie and Elementary?)

    No no no. I don’t think we are learning from the pictures, not word pronunication anyway. The picture should be an icon to represent the topic, not the word(s) being taught.

    * Do you like to learn from the lesson graphics, or are they best used mainly as decoration?

    I don’t think I “learn” from them, nor are they merely decoration. They are icons and something which, when we see them again later, a lot of the lesson will come back into our mind, just from a picture (worth 一千个words ya know!
    I use them as the first thing I look at when I am on a lesson page (if I forgot which lesson I opened, especially when just clicking away in my Google Reader to read the actual posts). Pictures make a world of difference, and in this case an icon. An Icon is not just decoration or a nice photo, it is just the shell that covers an even greater unseen masterpiece (which you guys do have!) from something as simple as file, to a whole huge computer program, or in this case, a lesson that helps us increase our Chinese in that topical area.

    Chinese characters are very much icons themselves… they too are icons of such a bigger wider meaning that a character holds, so much mor than an romanize word… that makes the pictures/icons are even more important at ChinesePod, we need to be thinking in icons anyway!

    Hope my insights help in picking a good way to represent a lesson that can quickly be seen on a phone or when first glancing at the discussion page. 加油！

    孟

11. mei Says:
    May 11th, 2007 at 8:20 pm

    Firstly, I think it’s great that you’re asking this question. It might seem like a small thing, but attention to detail is very important when it comes to language learning.

    1. How important is a relevant image to the users?
    Very important.
    Frankly the wen zi image is boring and comes across as lazy. It is relevant to language learning and it tells me what the lesson is going to be about (if I happen to be able to read and understand the characters) but the font is not at all interesting. Same goes for the media one, although the font in this one is good.
    On the otherhand, the glass of water is interesting but is not really relevant in terms of language - all we learn is what a glass of water looks like. Add yi1 bei1 shui3 一杯水 and it would be better. More on this in question 3.
    The onomatopoeia one is good - it is colourful and simple. But the font isn’t really suitable for the style. A more comic-ish font would have made it a killer imho.
    The xiao long bao one is great. It tells me exactly what the lesson is going to be about. Even if i don’t know what 小龙包 is, i can tell from the picture that it’s some sort of dumpling.
    The colour song one is interesting. Maybe an extra step would be to have the characters for the colours in their actual colours?
    The 失恋 one is perfect for that lesson. Very emo =p even better if he had a tear rolling down his face

    2. Do users like colorful graphics?
    only if it’s appropriate for the lesson. The colour song one imho has good use of colour, but it could’ve gotten away with more colour seeing as the lesson is about colours.

    3. How prominent or subtle should the Chinese characters be?
    prominent enough so that they are noticed. i think you’ve got a good balance of chinese characters and graphic in all but the first three. The wen zi and media ones are essentially characters with no significant image. If you can’t read the hanzi then the graphic really means very little.

    4. Should we include pinyin in the graphic? (If so, then just for Newbie and Elementary?)
    I think pinyin for all levels would be acceptable. maybe use progressively smaller font pinyin for the highter levels.

    5. Do you like to learn from the lesson graphics, or are they best used mainly as decoration?
    I don’t think we can really learn that much from the lesson graphics. To me their purpose is to tell me what the lesson is about and grab my interest. I suppose they could also be a pneumonic of sorts. Language learning is very visual for a lot of (most?) people. It is much easier to associate a new word or phrase with a picture rather than letters/characters. On that note, the PDFs could use a few pictures to illustrate the setting and the vocab words.

    Keep up the good work! =)

12. Joyce Says:
    May 11th, 2007 at 10:01 pm

    I love your graphics, and (speaking as a Newbie), they definitely help with the learning process.
    Although visually I may like some of the others better, I think for learning, the Xiaolongbao graphic is the clear winner. Not only does it give you a sense of what the word means, but it shows you what the actual dumplings look like. As someone else suggested, a great graphic for the colours would be to have the pinyin under each colour.
    I’m travelling to China for the first time soon and really appreciate some “reality shots” - like those great little videos in the street you guys did. Boy, are they helpful!
    Incidentally, thank you to everyone at ChinesePod - I’m actually speaking Mandarin to people here in Toronto and (after they stop laughing and correcting my tones) they really respond and actually understand what I’ve said!

13. Mike in Jubei Says:
    May 12th, 2007 at 12:28 pm

    I think the examples you showed almost hit the mark. I do use the graphic with the hazi as a learning aid. I think the question for me is do you want them to be simple and clean like V3 or occasionally noisy as China graphics are. This would be especially true for the upper intermediate and media. Living in Taiwan and having been back to the US a few times recently as well as to Germany it does seem to me that in Asia we are overwhelmed with graphics.

    So although it is not always sophisticated and slick occasionally I like the noisy graphic here. It could be a graffitti poster or banner from some protest. This also helps us get used to the different type sets as well.

    I also agree with everyone above who mentioned the Hanzi does not necessary have to be the key word of the lesson but something associated with the lesson.

    The actual photo is the least important part to me. It is the Hanzi I search out and try to see how it fits to the lesson.

    Mike in Jubei (for only a few weeks more)

14. Helena Says:
    May 13th, 2007 at 3:01 am

    “How important is a relevant image to the users? ”
    I find this quite important. I like there to be something to concentrate on while I’m listening; something relevant helps to remember the vocabulary.
    “Do users like colorful graphics? ”
    Yes!! ^_^ But not always. For example, that broken hearted son one isn’t colourful, but it’s very good. The main thing is that it’s an interesting graphic.
    “How prominent or subtle should the Chinese characters be? ”
    I don’t mind too much. It could vary and I wouldn’t really mind. But maybe the Chinese onomatopeia one is a little too character centric.
    “Should we include pinyin in the graphic? (If so, then just for Newbie and Elementary?) ”
    Seeing as I’m only newbie/elementary, I’m not sure. I sure find it useful so far. But the characters are of course much prettyfuller…
    “Do you like to learn from the lesson graphics, or are they best used mainly as decoration? ”
    I think the learning available from the graphic is always going to be fairly limited compared the possibilities in the pod itself. So there isn’t a need for it to be intensely educational - but a bit now and then wouldn’t hurt.

    thanks for reading. =] hope this feedback is useful.

15. 敦禮 Says:
    May 13th, 2007 at 4:18 pm

    I cant really add anything more to the conversation, you all added a lot of valuable suggestions and thoughts. Lantian again hit a good triple if not a home run. This discussion helps me look forward to some possible helpful changes.

16. excuter Says:
    May 13th, 2007 at 9:49 pm

    Hi,
    since so much has been written here I try to say what I think in some short sentences 8-).
    1. I liked the colorssonggraphic best.

    2. The 小笼包 was as I think the graphics should be like. Because in it
    are some interresting and related caracters and you see what´s meant
    with one glimps.

    3. The 文字 (I don´t know whi the wenzi never becomes that one I need)
    was good for learning the characters, but boring at the same time,
    because there were only the characters on a grey ground
    (freesingshake in mind ;-)).

    I hope it this what I wrote leaded to somewhere…;-)

    excuter

17. matt Says:
    February 19th, 2008 at 1:07 pm

    i like the pinyin and characters and a picture so i can store it all in my mind like a polaroid photo. thanks, i’ve learned so much from y’all.

18. wenzi capital partners Says:
    May 20th, 2008 at 4:09 pm

    [...] that one I need was good for learning … Praxis Language partners with NOCFL to Develop Online …http://blog.praxislanguage.com/2007/05/10/the-ideal-lesson-graphic/KyoshiiPosted by wenzi on 11 Jul 2007 Tagged as: Uncategorizedt. If you spend most of your time on a [...]

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