The main goal of this study is to investigate whether an aesthetically appealing design of a multimedia learning material can induce positive emotions in learners, and whether positive emotions can affect cognitive outcomes (such as experienced cognitive load and learning outcomes), as well as affective outcomes (such as motivation, user satisfaction perceived task difficulty, and perception about learning achievement).We are also interested whether design elements such as color and shape in a multimedia learning material individually induce positive emotions in learners, and how they affect cognitive as well as affective outcomes. By addressing the role of emotion in the design of multimedia learning materials, educational psychologists can develop a more robust scientific theoretical foundation for learning with multimedia and provide better guidance to the designers of such environments. We begin this paper by briefly summarizing relevant issues of emotion and learning in general before we turn to specific studies that investigated emotion in the context of multimedia learning and present the theoretical foundation for this research, the Cognitive-Affective Theory of Learning with Media (Moreno, 2007).