Entry Details

About the Entry

Category: 
Design > Print Article Design > 12 or More Issues per Year > Mid Atlantic

Title of entry: 
"Understanding the Distracted Brain" | TD Magazine | November 2023

Issue or Publication date:
November 2023

Publication name: 
TD Magazine

Publishing/parent company: 
Association for Talent Development

View Website home page:
www.td.org/td-magazine

Description of the enterprising work that went into this entry and its significance or impact on readers:

Because employees are often distracted with tasks and alerts throughout the day, the feature article “Understanding the Distracted Brain” is about how workplace trainers can optimize training participants’ focus and learning in the digital age.

The designer wanted to create a visual story with the artwork, starting off on the first two spreads with a lot of distractions, interruptions, and chaos, and then moving through to the final spread, which is much calmer, with distraction-free areas and only a few alerts to break the monotony.

The designer chose an artist who uses a layered and busy style. To create a busy, distracting effect, the design pulls many components from the artist’s illustration. The layout displays a good mix of online elements as well as people interrupting. Also note physical representations of lost focus such as the spilled cups. To further drill down the distraction theme, the designer broke up the headline with the deck, and placed the word “Brain” at a different angle as if it was distracted.

On the subsequent spreads, the opening sentence and pull quotes are likewise broken up using art and type treatment to depict what the article is explaining to readers as well as to fit the overall theme of disarray. For instance, one pull quote is about a shift in attention causing stress, and coffee is spilling through the words after it shifts to a different line.

The sidebar on the final spread is about a distraction-free zone, so the table and surrounding space are completely clear of any distraction. Placement of the sidebar on the final spread, where there are fewer alerts in the design, is intentional; the objective is to convey the calmer, productive learning environment the article recommends.

TD magazine is the flagship publication of the Association for Talent Development (ATD), the world’s largest professional membership organization supporting those who develop employees’ knowledge and skills, improve performance, and help to achieve results for the companies they serve. TD magazine includes a wide range of content covering the scope of workplace training and talent development.

The magazine’s goals are to provide useful, how-to information on current best practices through case studies; share new technologies and their applications; report emerging trends; and address relevant and pivotal issues to the field. The readership comprises professionals worldwide working in all aspects of training and development, including trainers, instructional designers, performance consultants, frontline managers, and workplace learning professionals.

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