Throughout this week’s readings, I’ve gathered a number of new composition methods to utilize, and guidelines to follow, to produce more clear and effective documents. I found The Thompson Handbook to be a real asset in covering this material, as it is rich with effective design.
The “Instructor Blog #5: Design” article offers some useful tips to consider throughout the design process, i.e. “design is product” and “good design guides the eye,” as well as general methods for improving document design. An interesting line from this piece was the instructors’ reference to Apple, Inc: “whether you love or hate Apple, you have to admit that they are financially successful and culturally significant.” This caught my eye because (1) I am an Apply fanboy and (2) it is an interesting truth; no company is tied more to the design of their products that Apple, Inc. Another interesting part was the bear design example, where the revision is obviously clearer, more effective, and, overall, considerably better than the first.
Chapter 24 from The Thompson Handbook reviews how to effectively integrate visual content and design to inform and persuade. This chapter outlines layout patterns, color schemas, graphics, alignment, and many other design characteristics to consider when drafting documents. One of the aspects that seemed to be stressed in chapter 24, without really being mentioned at all, is how easy and often documents are laced with design flaws. It seems “correction and prevention,” at least regarding design, is the essence of this chapter. However, there are some obvious attributes here, i.e. all of the tables that outline proper applications of the various design aspects. I anticipate that I will reference this chapter often, more specifically the tables demonstrating proper application, throughout project 2.
Chapter 25 primarily covers how to apply design methods through real world application. This chapter shows the different types of documents we may interface with throughout our careers and how to be efficient and professional in composing all of them. Many sample applications were presented in this chapter but the two that most appealed to me were the poster board and brochure design. These methods of communication are common in my line of work and chapter 25 goes into thorough detail of how to properly compose these pieces, including layout, alignment, format, color schemas, and much more. Aside from these, there are four primary design principles covered in chapter 25: proximity, alignment, repetition, and contrast. Each of these is imperative to consider in composing any display document and I will be certain to integrate these, as well as ample other techniques covered in this week’s readings, into my project.
Writing Reading Responses
While this is a strong and concise summary of the readings for this week, there is little in terms of application. As the "Principles of Reading Responses" indicates, these reading responses are not supposed to be summaries. Take these opportunities to make specific and concrete connections between the readings and work you are doing. For instance, start a reading response with the assertion "I anticipate that I will reference this chapter often, more specifically the tables demonstrating proper application, throughout project 2." You can then develop the reading response discussing specific ways you will incorporate or apply the readings.
You can also connect the readings with the readings from another week or to a previous experience. You are to use these reading responses to produce knowledge for yourself rather than only summarize the knowledge of others.
design!!!!!!!
Before reading these chapters I had no idea just how much research has gone into the creation of effective instructions. I just did not know that there were so many different ways to make instructions appealing to the reader’s eye. I like that you listed the 4 design principles because they are so important to consider when structuring the perfect et of instructions. I also liked that you mentioned the possibility of including tables, because I know that in instructions I look first and the tables and pictures before I actually look at the text.
Importance
To say that design is important is somewhat of an understatement. Each element of design has its own aspects that it brings to the table. Graphic color palettes invoke certain feelings (or something to that effect), layout provides readability and document flow, fonts to do, and white space-very under rated-guides the reader to the good parts. I've said it before:the overarching theme of this course is audience analysis and this has to do with what people place importance on. Since you're a mac use, I would suspect that you find that looks of a computer and operating system are important rather than performance; of course either side will never be able to convince the other that they are wrong, but this is what Apple is counting on.