Reading Response
After reading Chapter 37 in The Thompson Handbook, I think that our group did a pretty good job of having variety and emphasis in our brochure. We did not use the same sentence lengths the whole time and had some points broken up with bullets. The different lengths provide variety to the reader when they are reading the brochure and the bulleted points emphasis the points that are being made under our headings. I'm sure that if we looked a little closer we might be able to add even more variety to our sentence patterns and word order. We also might be able to incorporate repetition a little better in our brochure to get a certain point across to our reader. We do this a little bit when we use the logo on two separate parts of the brochure.
Being concise and to the point is important when you are writing a brochure because you don't want to lose your reader's interest. I think we do a good job of this by breaking up the sections with headings and sectioning off some parts. We do not have too many long sentences and we try to get to the point in as few of words as possible. The audience that we are looking for is anyone in the community, especially those that are interested in volunteer work. I think the use of our pictures helps draw the attention to this audience, especially when they see the kids with Santa or people serving others. This sort of thing makes a big impact on these volunteers. The design we used is neat and organized which helps the reader follow along the brochure and not be confused by any information. We also use some different colors to mix things up and have pictures that relate to the material. The aspects of our design draw in the reader.
Comments
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It sounds like you guys did a good job with creating your brochure. You also bring up some good points about how to write a better brochure. Keeping your sentences concise and short is a good way to keep the readers interest and it also helps keep your brochure short. I think it’s a good idea to change the sentence lengths and to not bore the reader with every sentence being the same length. It's good to see that you are thinking about making some changes to add some repetition to your brochure. It is important to repeat some of the more critical information to make sure the reader knows how important it is. The bulleted lists not only emphasis your points but also make your brochure look more professional. It seems to me that you have a lot of good ideas on what your brochure could be and even some ways to improve it. I'm betting if you followed your ideas here then you have a good brochure already in the making.
Reply
I also think that the topics in Chapter 37 of The Thompson Handbook were useful in creating our brochures. Variety definitely helps keep the reader’s attention. The idea of paragraphs and bullets is a good one. Our group did some of the same things as yours. Breaking up the information into subtopics is also good. It is much easier to read all the information when it is grouped in smaller sections. The smaller sections will also help younger children read the information. I agree that audience was important when we were writing. The brochures have to be able to be read by all ages. It sounds like you guys are off to a good start.
Comment
Developing a brochure that is to the point is the single most important part of it whether you did the design or the content. It is here where both elements affect one another and work together to attract the attention of people. I think it is a good idea your group broke up the project into sections and allocated them to individuals. By doing this, it allows the same amount of work to be distributed fairly and also lets each person to focus solely on their specific task. This in turn produces a well done brochure that is completed with a lot of thought and time put into it.
Comment
Based on what you said here, it looks like your group to a good approach to this assignment. Ideally you are going to want to keep sentences as simple as possible; we have been hearing this basically since this course began, so it is good that you did this. It is also good you used variety with mixing some of the more complex sentences with the shorter and direct ones. Your target audience is good considering your brochure layout. The pictures used would be good ones to attract people who are looking to volunteer and the color scheme is pleasing to the eye. After reading the text, it is good that you realized it may be beneficial to include more repetition, I'm sure all groups will benefit from reading this, I know ours will.
Group Reply
I agree that repetition is another aspect that our group needs to emphasize more. I had not thought about that until you said it. Repetition helps get a point across. I wonder though what should we emphasize? Volunteering? I am wondering how we should do that, maybe we could put “give a gift to yourself – volunteer” at the bottom of each page. That’s an idea or something along those lines.
Also, I really like our brochure as well. I agree that we could go through it and try and vary our sentence structure some more and attempt to be more concise. I guess that is why we are doing multiple drafts. Those are definitely aspects we should look for when we revise our draft 1.
Group Reply
Being concise is definitely important in keeping the reader's interest. I think that we have done a good job with sentence structure in our brochure that keeps the reader interested in reading the whole document. By using varying sentence length and breaking up the text into sections it is easier for the viewer to read. I like the idea of trying to incorporate repetition more within our brochure in order to the main points across. Also, I agree that our use of pictures in the brochure was effective. I think we were able to use photographs that added meaning to the text and helped reach a wider audience.