2. Chapter 6 Designing Documents Design Importance
Designs and Conventions
Levels of Design
Document Design Guidelines
Designing Brochures
Designing Infographics
Testing for Usability
Chapter 6. Designing Documents

3. Chapter 6 Learning Objectives
LO 6-1 What document design is important and how to incorporate it into the writing process
LO 6-2 The four levels of document design, and how they can help you critique documents
LO 6-3 Guidelines for document design
LO 6-4 How to design brochures
LO 6-5 How to design infographics
LO 6-6 How to design web pages
LO 6-7 How to do basic usability testing on your documents

4. Why Design Matters Saves time and money Reduces legal problems
Builds goodwill
Looks inviting, friendly, easy to read
Enhances credibility of writer
Good document design saves time and money, reduces legal problems, and builds goodwill. Effective design groups ideas visually, making the structure of the document more obvious so the document is easier to read. Easy-to-read documents enhance your credibility and build an image of you as professional, competent person.

5. Design: Part of Writing
Think about design at each step
As you plan, think about audience
Skilled and/or busy?
Read straight through or skip around?
As you write, use lists, headings; use visuals to convey numerical data clearly
Get feedback from your audience
As you revise, check the design guidelines that follow
Design isn’t something to tack on when you’ve finished writing. The best documents, slides, and screens are created when you think about design at each stage of your writing process.

6. Design and Conventions
Vary widely by audience, geographic area, industry, or department
Change over time
Violating is risky
Presents incorrect interpretations
Signals author is unreliable or unknowledgeable
Like all aspects of communication, effective design relies heavily on conventions. Conventions may vary by audience, geographic area, industry, company, or even department. Some conventions work well with some audiences but not with others, so careful audience analysis is necessary. Conventions also change over time. For example, we rarely use Courier typeface and we italicize magazine titles rather than underlining them. Violating conventions is risky because they may not be interpreted correctly or signal that the author or designer is unreliable or unknowledgeable.

7. Levels of Design Intra—individual letters and words
Inter—blocks of text
Extra—graphics that go with the text
Supra—entire document
Levels of design give you an organized way to think about the design choices you can make in your own documents, presentations, and visuals. They’re also useful when you analyze the documents you encounter in a professional setting. One of the best ways to get ideas for your own document designs is to analyze the design elements in successful documents.

8. Document Design Guidelines
Use white space
Use headings
Limit words set in all capital letters
Use no more than two fonts per document
Use these guidelines to create visually attractive and effective documents. Each will be explained in more detail in the following slides.

9. Document Design Guidelines, continued…
Justify margins selectively
Put key items at top left or bottom right
Use a grid for unity
Use highlighting, decorative devices, and color in moderation
More document design guidelines.

10. Use White Space White Space—empty space on the page
Makes material easier to read
To create white space, use
Headings
Mix of paragraph lengths
Lists of parallel items (same form)
Bullets when order is not important or numbers when order is exact
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White space —the empty space on the page—makes material easier to read by emphasizing the material that it separates from the rest of the text.

11. Use Headings Headings—words, phrases, or short sentences
Group points; divide document
Show organization
Help audience; save audience’s time
Make page look interesting
Headings are words, short phrases, or short sentences that group points and divide your document into sections. Headings enable your reader to see at a glance how the document is organized, to turn quickly to sections of special interest, and to compare and contrast points more easily. Headings also break up the page, making it look less formidable and more interesting.

12. Use Headings To create headings Make each specific Keep parallel
Make sure they cover all material until next heading
Use these guidelines for creating headings in your documents.

13. Limit Words in All Capital Letters
Words in all capitals
Lose their unique shapes
Have same rectangular shape
Lack ascenders and descenders
Causes reader to slow down
Causes more reading errors
We recognize words partly by their shapes. In capitals, all words are rectangular; letters lose the descenders and ascenders that make reading faster and more accurate. 10 In addition, many people interpret text in full capitals as “shouting,” especially when that text appears in online documents. In those cases, full capitals might elicit a negative response from your audience. Use full capitals sparingly, if at all.
people
PEOPLE

14. Use No More Than Two Fonts
Fonts—unified styles of type
Serif font – letters have feet
Easy to read; used for paragraphs
Ex: New Courier, Times Roman
Sans serif font – letters lack feet
Harder to read; used for headings, tables
Ex: Arial, Tahoma, Univers
Fonts are unified styles of type. Most business documents use no more than two fonts. Serif fonts have little extensions, called serifs, from the main strokes. Helvetica, Arial, Geneva, and Technical are sans serif fonts since they lack serifs (sans is French for without ). Sans serif fonts are good for titles and tables. You should choose the fonts you use carefully, because they shape reader response just as font size does. Research suggests that people respond positively to fonts that fit the genre and purpose of the document.

15. Use No More Than Two Fonts, continued…
Most documents use just one font
Create emphasis by using
Bold
Italics
Varied sizes
Font size
12-point ideal for most business documents
Headings may be larger
Twelve-point type is usually ideal for letters, memos, s, and reports. Smaller type is harder to read, especially for older readers. You can create emphasis and levels of headings by using bold, italics, and different sizes. Bold is easier to read than italics, so use bolding if you need only one method to emphasize text. In a complex document, use bigger type for main headings and slightly smaller type for subheadings and text.

16. Justify Margins Selectively
Full justification—text even at left and right margin
Want formal look
Want to use fewest pages
Ragged right margin—text even on left, uneven on right
Want informal look
Use very short lines
Want to revise selected pages
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XXXXXXXXXXXX
Word-processing programs allow you to use full justification so that type lines up evenly on both the right and left margins. Margins justified only on the left, sometimes called ragged right margins, have lines ending in different places.
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XXXXXXXXXXXX
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XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
XXXXXXXXXX

17. Put Key Items at Top Left and Lower Right Quadrants
Reader’s eye moves in Z pattern
Starts at upper left corner of page
Reads to the right and down
Quadrants in order of importance
Top left
Bottom right
Bottom left
Top right 1 2
Readers of English are accustomed to reading pages of text from left to right, developing this habit over a lifetime. Effective document designers tap into our habit. They know that we start in the upper left-hand corner of the page, read to the right, move down, and then to the right again. Actually, the eye moves in a Z pattern. Therefore, the four quadrants of the page carry different visual weights. The top left quadrant, where the eye starts, is the most important; the bottom right quadrant, where the eye ends, is next most important.

18. Use a Grid for Graphic Unity
Grid—2 or 3 imaginary columns on page; may be subdivided
All elements lined up in columns
Creates pleasing symmetry
Unifies long documents
Many document designers use a grid system to design pages. In its simplest form, a grid imposes two or three imaginary columns on the page. In more complex grids, these columns can be further subdivided. Then all the graphic elements—text indentations, headings, visuals, and so on—are lined up within the columns. The resulting symmetry creates a more pleasing page and unifies long documents.

19. Use Decorative Devices in Moderation
Use decorative devices sparingly
Add interest/emphasis with dingbats, clip art     
Use color for main headings, not details
In North America, red usually means danger
Many word-processing programs have arrows, pointing fingers, and a host of other dingbats that you can insert. Clip art packages and presentation software allow you to insert more and larger images into your text. Used in moderation, highlighting and decorative devices make pages more interesting. However, don’t overdo them. A page or screen that uses every possible decorating device just looks busy and hard to read. Color works well to highlight points. Use color for overviews and main headings, not for small points.

20. Designing Brochures Analyze your rhetorical situation Draft the text
Use this process to create effective brochures
Analyze your rhetorical situation
Identify central selling point
Identify any objections and ways to handle them
Consider how the audience will get the brochure and where they will use it
Draft the text
Designing a good brochure incorporates all elements of document design. To create an effective brochure, you must analyze your rhetorical situation and draft the text.

21. Designing Brochures, continued…
Select appropriate visuals
Choose visuals that tell a story
Make sure visuals work for audience
You will also need to select appropriate visuals to include in the brochure to attract audience interest.

22. Designing Brochures, continued…
Create the design
Use proportional fonts
Use two fonts for visual variety
Avoid italic type and underlining
Use color effectively
Repeat design elements
Create contrast
Include plenty of white space
Print the brochure
Once you have finished creating the design of your brochure, you’ll need to print your final product.

23. Designing Infographics
Use this process to create effective infographics
Analyze your rhetorical situation
Research your topic
Find or create visuals
Draft the text
Put it all together
Infographics, as the combined words imply, are information graphics. They inform and educate an audience about a specific topic using a mixture of statistics, text, color, and visuals. They often present the complex findings from both qualitative and quantitative research studies in an easily digestible format. Infographics thrive in the digital age because they are so easy to share, forward, post, and tweet.
Like creating a brochure, designing infographics incorporates all elements of document design. To create an effective infographic, you must analyze your rhetorical situation, research your topic, find visuals, draft the text, and put it all together.

24. Designing Web Pages Attract and maintain attention
Create a usable homepage
Provide an introductory statement that orients audience
Make completing tasks easy
Offer an overview of site’s content
Provide navigation bars
Make it clear what audience will get if they click a link
Like effective brochures and infographics, web pages also incorporate principles of rhetorical analysis and document design. To create effective
web pages, you must attract and maintain the audience’s attention and create a usable home page.

25. Designing Web Pages, continued…
Provide easy navigation
Should be intuitive and make accessing information easy
If audience has to work too hard, they’ll leave
Increase accessibility
Your web page should also provide easy navigation and increase accessibility.
Visit Xenogene, a Web design company. Thumbnails show sample Web page designs

26. Designing Web Pages, continued…
Follow conventions
Use a white or light background for scanning
Keep graphics small
Provide visual variety in text
Unify multiple pages with graphic elements
Use alternative (ALT) text
Provide a link to homepage on each page
Keep animation to a minimum
Allow users the option to turn off music or sound effects
Lastly, your web page should follow conventions the audience expects.

27. Testing for Usability Watch someone use document to perform a task
Ask user to think aloud during task
Interrupt at key points to find out what user thinks
Ask user to describe thought process afterwards
Ask user to put + and - signs in margins to show likes and dislikes
Usability testing , or assessing your documents with real audiences, is an important step in document design. A document that looks pretty may or may not work for the audience. To know whether your design is functional, test it with your audience.