English 421Y: Technical Writing Online

I think it's funny that three out of four of us chose to use a dark blue color in our thumbnail drafts! I really liked your thumbnail overall. It's clean and you've got good gutter space between the sidebar and text. I would like to incorporate your table that showcases the particular router's information (speed, coverage, security, firewall, etc.) that you have in the lefthand corner. I think that sort of break-out information will be a great quick reference tool for readers. And I like that you've shaded the background on it to help it stand out from the rest of the text. I think we should use a shade of the same blue color that we decided on as the background here.

That’s weird. I almost chose blue myself. For the sidebar, I think the fact that the line is the same width as the header makes it seem kind of out of place, especially since they don’t align. I also like the shading within the table. You managed to use two shades of blue without having the text blend. Well done. The one other thing that stands out to me is the heading. The way that the rest of the text is indented makes it seems misaligned column-wise. Overall, I think this setup does a good job of guiding the readers eye but the two column setup that Joe has would probably work better. But we should definitely use the font/style of the table.

I also like the fonts used in this thumbnail, as well as the table of information for each router. I think we should consider including an individual table of information for each product, and then create a master table so that the audience can compare them side by side. The only thing that throws my eyes off in this thumbnail is the alignment of the heading and the subheading. To keep the reader focused, I think we should try to align them consistently. Again, I like the blue color (which 3 out of 4 of us used), and I think we should consider using black body text too.