Reading Response #6
After reading chapters 24 and 37, I felt our group did a good job following the principles outlined in the Thompson Handbook. In chapter 24 the book describes that the visual content should give the reader evidence of something that is mentioned in the text. One example of this in our brochure is a picture showing a gentleman handing out food. The photo illustrates the text above it, which describes what kind of volunteers the CFRC needs. The pictures we used also helped to show who our intended audience was. The brochure's purpose is to get volunteers for the Christmas Dinner. Our audience is people who wish to help out those who are less fortunate, especially children. The picture of the children on Santa's lap, and the previously mentioned portray this.
Writing concisely is extremely important when creating a brochure. When someone is reads a brochure they don't want to go through large bodies of text. By using short introductory paragraphs followed by bullet points, our brochure was able to condense a large amount of information. As a result the brochure did not appear to be overwhelmed by text, which kept it's visual appeal. Our brochure also concentrated on varying the sentence structure. Chapter 37 points out that, "A sudden change in rhythm acts as a signal to the reader to sit up and pay attention." The brochure varied the lengths of it's sentences to create interest and keep the attention of the reader.
The brochure follows the four principles of design: proximity, repetition, alignment and contrast. All visual content has text around it to enhance what the brochure is describing. The alignment is clean for most of the brochure but one section is purposely offline to add interest and catch the readers eye. The brochure repeated the color of text for paragraphs throughout the document and repeated the bullet points in a different color. This repetition also created contrast in the brochure. Using a black background with bright text for contact information added contrast and made the information stand out.
Comments
Comments.
I liked how you mentioned that your picture shows who your audience is supposed to be. This is a unique way of letting your audience relate to the brochure and better see themselves helping out. I also think it was good that you know specifically who your audience is. I think you also did a good job of realized the importance of bullets. I think you should make sure that the information included in each bullet is very concise and the bullets all have similar sentence structure (or phrase structure). An example of this would be beginning each bullet with a verb. This will help create parallelism between the points.
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I liked the way how u said that the pictures in the brochure shows who your audience is supposed to be. I think it was good that you know specifically who your audience is. I think you did a great job in using bullets. I think that using bullets is a very good and straight forward way to format a document and it is very easy to read and follow. I liked the way how you used the four principles of design: proximity, repetition, alignment and contrast to make your brochure in a very professional manner. I think you have done a good job.
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I agree when you say that when someone reads a brochure they don't want to go through large bodies of text. In my opinion, this bores the reader (unless they are extremely interested in the topic) since it takes too long for them to read all of the brochure. With more text and less images, the brochure loses attractiveness and this makes it harder for it to grab a reader's attention. I also like that your brochure has text around all visual content since it connects the images directly to the theme of the brochure, which makes it easier for the reader to understand and follow.
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I think you brought up very good points. As mentioned in chapter 24, the visuals should support the idea of composition. Describing the picture by inserting a shot reference above or below the picture is necessary to help readers understand easily. I agree that using bullet points can make the article more concise and easier to read. I think audience is one of the most important parts of brochure. Without clarifying who are supposed to read the brochure and what they are expected to do after reading, the brochure can’t function properly. To make the article to the point and concise, we have to consider the principles of chapter 37. I think chapter 37 is the most informative part among the readings I did in this course.
reading response week 6
I believe that it was good to know that the visuals played an important role in the brochures.