Document Design; A Combination of Good Writing and Layout

A document that was designed solely to reach out to the public would succeed with two important criteria, good writing and layout. As any document designer would know, good writing defines the how compelling its content is to the targeted audience (Putnis & Petelin 1996). Good document design contributes in enhancing the flow of communication between the author and reader as well as highlighting the key points in a certain document as to enable readers to understand the document better (Anderson 1987). Using the slides of the ‘Implied Narratives of Medical Practice in Learning-For-Doing Texts: a Simulation Semantics Approach to Rhetorical Analysis’ summary by Todd Oakley as an example, it clearly shows a smooth flow of messages where readers can easily understand its substance without getting confused.

First example,

The text was rather complex, therefore, it was summarised and the key points were included in the slides with a little elaboration as to ensure readers would remained focused because readers would lose interest when one simply glances at a wordy and lengthy slide. Due to the complexity level of the reading, the presenters discussed in-depth as to ensure the ideas for the main points remain the same. This is also to guarantee that no information is loss during the way and the key ideas extracted abides by the written work of the author (Rothman 2005). Having said, these slides can be improved further by reducing complicated terms where it would be difficult for readers to fully grasp these information just by reading through it. Some slides had grammatical errors thus it should be eliminated as to assure professionalism in one’s piece of work.

Second example, Having a good document design helps direct attention to the climax of a document (Reep 2006). According to Schriver (1997), document designers these days have the expertise in one area, either in good writing or layout, hardly in both. A fluent reader would be provoked further if text was enhanced by visual grammar, as the process of communication would be uninterrupted (Kress & van Leeuwen, 1996; Simpson, 2004; Unsworth, 2001). Looking at presentation slides earlier, the background was rather dull and characterless. These characteristics would make readers lose attentiveness. As to ensure this does not happen, some bright colours should be inserted in the background to make the slides more attractive with matching font colours with readable font, something simple and not too complicated. The images used should be clear and decipherable. Instead, the words could not be seen as the background was entirely black. These things should be minimized at all cost as it will certainly bring harm to the document.

An unclear image from the slides (Tiny wordings are not visible),

REFERENCES

1) Putnis, P & Petelin, R 1996, Professional Communication: principles and applications, Prentice Hall, Sydney.

2) Rothman, S 2005, What makes good scientific technical writing, online, viewed 3rd September 2009, www.associatedcontent.com/.../what_makes_good_scientific_and_technical.html

3) Walsh, M. 2006, 'Textual Shift: Examining the reading process with print, visual and mulitimodal texts,' Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, vol 29, no.1, p.24-37.

4) Schriver, K. A 1997, Dynamics in Document Design: creating texts for readers, Wiley Computer Pub, New York.
5) Reep, D. C 2006, Technical Writing:, 6th edn, Pearson/Longman, New York.