Resources > Toolkit for Designing Voter Education Materials

Toolkit for Designing Voter Education Materials

Communications

A toolkit for creating engaging, accessible, and action-oriented voter education materials.

Table of Contents

When you think about voter education materials, you might picture a flyer or a social media post. But the most effective voting education answers these questions: What do voters need to know, and how can we make sure they really understand it?

The answer might change depending on your audience, and that’s where this toolkit comes in. It’s designed to help you create impactful and culturally responsive materials that inform voters.

Inside this toolkit, you’ll find simple tools to plan your content, design with impact, and reach voters across different formats, languages, and levels of detail.

The Center for Civic Design created this tool as part of the US Alliance for Election Excellence.

What you’ll need

Time to plan and organize your content
Access to Canva or similar design software
Knowledge of voter information requirements in your area
A download of the How-to Guide: Design impactful voter education materials (PDF)
A download of the bite-snack-meal communication strategy planning (Google Doc) document
Downloads of the 3 starter Canva templates for different levels of information
- Bite (Canva file)
- Snack (Canva file)
- Meal (Canva file)

Getting started

This toolkit is designed to help you create materials that are both impactful and culturally responsive. You’ll find practical tools to design voter education materials that resonate with your audience and help move them to action.

This toolkit supports your success in:

Creating accessible and digestible voter education content
Using information design for effective audience engagement
Building materials that reflect the needs, languages, and experiences of different communities
Encouraging voter participation with the right information at the right time

Using the tool

This toolkit was developed through in-depth research with voters and advocates in Ohio during a time of significant changes to election law. It translates research findings into actionable design methods that can be used to create voter-facing materials that improve clarity, foster trust, and reflect the needs of diverse communities.

This toolkit is divided into 3 main parts:

Canva design templates
The how-to guide
The bite-snack-meal content framework

Section 1: The how-to guide

This section walks you through 13 design recommendations that make voter education materials more engaging, effective, and culturally impactful. From writing inclusive content to choosing colors and images that reflect your audience, each tip is simple to apply, grounded in research, and tested with real voters.

Section 2: The bite-snack-meal content framework

This section introduces a simple model to help you organize content by level of detail so your message lands clearly without overwhelming the voter. You’ll also find a customizable messaging document and a planning worksheet to tailor outreach for different communities.

Section 3: Canva design templates

To make things even easier, we’ve included downloadable templates for bite, snack, and meal formats in English and Spanish. These templates are designed to be flexible, so you can quickly adapt them to reflect your brand, language needs, and local context.

Customizing for your office

Any tips for customizing this resource for my office?

This toolkit was designed to be flexible, so you can make it work no matter your office size, location, or audience. Use the Canva templates to quickly tailor materials for your community. Use the toolkit as a base, then ask community members or partners to review your materials for cultural resonance and clarity.

How do I know if this resource is helping?

Success with this resource might look like:

Voters tell you your materials are clear and helpful
You see more engagement with flyers, emails, or social media posts
You get fewer questions about where, when, and how to vote
Community partners are eager to share and use your materials
Your team feels more confident creating outreach that truly reflects your community

Which Standards of Excellence does this resource support?

Communications

Which Values of Excellence does this resource support? Why?

Values for the U.S. Alliance for Election Excellence define our shared vision for the way election departments across the country can aspire to excellence. These values help us navigate the challenges of delivering successful elections and maintaining our healthy democracy.

Alliance values are nonpartisan and designed by local election officials, designers, technologists and other experts to support local election departments.

You may find this tool especially helpful for this Value:

Voter-centricity. This toolkit was designed with direct input from voters and community partners. It helps election and advocacy teams center the needs and experiences of real voters in the design of every communication.

To learn more about the Values for Election Excellence, and to see the full list, visit the Alliance website.

Sharing Feedback

How was this resource developed?

This resource is based on research conducted by the Center for Civic Design in Ohio during 2023 and 2024. The goal was to answer the question: how can visual design and the use of design elements with cultural relevance make voter education material more effective in engaging and informing voters? Findings from voter interviews, community partner feedback, and usability testing directly shaped the recommendations and tools in this guide.

How do I stay in touch?

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Have a specific idea, piece of feedback, or question? Send an email to support@ElectionExcellence.org