Visual Communication with Erin - A Multimedia & Technology Major

The Visual Communication Podcast features special guest Erin Thurgood, who discusses the importance of visual communication in various aspects of life, including education and social media. Erin emphasizes the need for visually appealing and engaging content to capture and maintain attention in today's fast-paced world. She also highlights the use of tools like Canva for creating visuals and suggests leveraging resources and technology to inspire learning and critical thinking. The podcast concludes with gratitude for the discussion and encourages listeners to incorporate visual communication into their own lives. You're listening to the Visual Communication Podcast, your home for visual interaction, communication, teaching, and inspiration. Welcome to the Visual Communication Podcast, this time with special guest Erin Thurgood. Erin, say hello. Hello. Tell them where we're at and why we're hiding. Oh, we're just hiding away from our four little rambunctious, never-ending, crazy kids, hiding in your truck in the parking lot. Would it be possible to do a podcast in our house and have five minutes of quiet? Literally impossible. Could never happen in one million years. I completely agree. Erin has a unique background. I'm not just interviewing her because she's my incredible better half, but she has a degree in business multimedia and has leveraged visual communication not only in that degree, but also as a teacher in elementary school and has a passion, similar to me, about making things pretty and visual and inspiring and beyond the boring. We're excited to have Erin, and thank you very much for being here. Will you tell us about your degree and your background, particularly as it relates to visual communication? My degree is in business multimedia technology, and a big part of that is just imagery. Everything that you see, presentations, visuals, anything that I would do, it had to instantly catch your eye and be beautiful from the get-go. I did a report last semester using a prior research, and the title of the research was Business Documents Don't Have to be Boring. What is your thoughts on that? Absolutely. No one, I don't feel like you'll get much attention these days. People have such a quick... Attention span? Yes. Particularly students. Yes. It's got to be quick. It's got to be visually appealing. It's got to be to the point, or you're not going to catch their attention. Did you leverage visual aids and your passion for that as an elementary teacher? Yes. Definitely. I feel like most elementary students are visual learners, and any and all imagery I used was 100% enhanced. The lesson, the concept I was trying to teach, it was everything, pictures, videos, it meant a lot. Is it safe to say you were trying to inspire them by the addition of digestible documents and digestible PowerPoints and things that would aid in their learning? Yes. Absolutely. It just sparked their interest. Any kind of visual that was catching or caught their eye, that's what got us going and got us learning. Is there anybody's social media that their visuals are impressive, whether they're trying to sell something, just how they set up their brand, their account, their name, their videos? Whose social media visual communication is impressive to you with the background you have? I don't know if I can think of any right off the top of my head specific people, but I'm pretty particular when it comes to social media and who I follow. If their feed isn't up to my par and visually appealing in my eyes, I let them go. Does it have to flow? It has to flow. It has to be pretty. It has to be appealing. I sent you some image previews. I pay for an image preview service based on the amount of clicks, and it's a monthly charge based on how many people clicked my image previews. But it will turn any link, anything you want to send to anybody, it'll allow you to create a catchy image preview. I've sent you a few of those with the interactive scriptures and podcasts that you were nice to listen to, probably because you're married to me. How did those enhance your willingness to click on and dive in, and what did you like about the imagery and the interactive scriptures and the bubble icons that kind of pop out at you? They're interactive, and they're colorful, and everyone leads to a new picture or a new quick video embed. What was your experience with that, and do you have any advice on that? Did you appreciate it? How did that sit with you? I think it's absolutely where this world is going, where it needs to go. It's beautiful. It's fun. It's quick. You're quick to learn on those links, on those words that are highlighted. It keeps your mind rolling. It's just fun. It's a lot of fun to just go through all those different things and learn and have different videos and links and articles to read. It just keeps your attention. Okay, closing segment. Final segment, we're going to do a fire round of questions. Maybe we should have started with it, but we're going to end with it. You are incredibly good at using visuals when you're teaching our kids. Often I try to just explain things to them, but you get them out pictures that they can color or pictures you've colored or things that will help demonstrate what you're trying to show them, or you'll pull up a video. Why and what has inspired that? I don't know how a child learns a concept without some kind of visual. I feel like it needs a visual, anything you're trying to teach. It inspires and helps them remember whatever it is you're teaching better. I don't know. I've just always felt like visuals, whether it's them drawing it and coming up with it on their own or me presenting something to them, it just helps it stick in their mind. How did you live before, maybe this is rhetorical, but hopefully you'll add to it. How did you live before Canva was created? I don't know. Canva's great. Canva's everything. What do you create on it? Last question, what do you create on it and what do you suggest people use it for? Or at least a similar service. I only use it for things that are relevant to my life right now, which is just simply teaching my kids different church concepts or different educational things. I use it for solely that, sometimes like creative purposes for like things to hang in my kids' rooms or whatever, but I use it for things that I'm interested in that are relevant in my life right now. One more last one. We read a book this semester by a guy named Neil Postman and he was hating on how television, which was big in his time, he was from the 80s, at least the book was, diminished everyone's attention span and their ability to critically think because now they were just digesting information that was more entertainment. It was based on sound bites and something funny or something visually appealing and he said, our critical thinking has gone down. I did a critique somewhat against it and just said, yes, attention spans have gone down and he would die if he saw that our attention spans are now eight seconds thanks to TikTok and YouTube and Instagram and every other thing that we're somewhat talking about and promoting, but there's so much to be said about how we can inspire young men and young women by engaging them in a learning process that is often aided by visuals, by media, by interaction, by polls, by so many other things that help them dive in just beyond reading and writing. It truly engages them. You can leverage social media. You can leverage Poll Everywhere. You can leverage ThingLink, Prezi, InDesign, like so many other things. What are your thoughts on that? Even though we have short attention spans, what are your thoughts on using those to inspire instead of just hating on them? Well, if we have such great resources, why not use them to, you know, every ounce of their ability? Yeah, our attention spans are short, but our way of thinking and just people's progression and learning, I feel like, is just elevated because of all the things we have at our fingertips and all the resources that are available. Thank you. Thank you for, this is what you do as a graduate student the night before Father's Day on a date night as you interview your wife, who is a visual expert when you have two jobs and four kids and a calling and everything else. Thank you very much. We will move on to something. We'll go to a store or something. See you. See you. Thank you for listening to our podcast with special guest Aaron Thurgood. We hope you learned a lot and are looking forward to implementing visual communication more in your life.