Strategic Visual Design: Skills for Communications and Organizing: an On-Demand Virtual Training
In organizing and movement building words are important. The right words can be crucial to building a strong campaign, and the wrong words can be devastating. The same is true of visuals, but too often our visuals fall short of delivering the powerful message we’re organizing around.
Good news: you don’t need to be a graphic designer to make powerful graphics!
Powerful visuals are strategic. They connect to the sensibilities of your target audiences while reflecting best practices. This training will change how you think about what you make, build your internal capacity, and develop your design thinking.
Our three-session, on-demand virtual course with private coaching will teach you how to:
Understand basic design principles
Set strategic goals for visual design
Identify the aesthetics of your audience
Start designing your own powerful images
Overcome creative and technical blocks
Get updated best practices for social media graphics
Take quality photos of members, rallies, or actions
Connect your visual design to content strategy
Communicate design requirements to consultants
There’s a million YouTube videos on how to use Canva. But this training will teach you what to make on Canva—or on simpler design platforms.
JOin us May 2026!
Session 1: May 7, 2-3:30pm ET
Session 2: May 14, 2-3:30pm ET
Session 3: May 28, 2-3:30pm ET
Sessions combine instruction, peer discussion, workshopping and include additional resources and optional readings. Our format helps you internalize what we are teaching so you can apply it to your work right away!
Webinars are recorded in case you are unable to attend, however these seminars are highly interactive, so we encourage you to participate live.
Trainers: New Media Mentors’ Program Director Elana Levin is joined by Senior Design Strategist and visual artist Ange Tran. Tran’s design work spans everything from Occupy Sandy to labor unions to museums.
Eligibility: We work with a broad range of groups fighting to make the world a more equal, fair and just place. On rare occasion we may have a conflict of interest that might prevent us from working together. We also screen applicants to make sure this content is a good match for each student's skill level.
