Blog Posting #2. Designing Documents

Part 1: Chapter 16 entails designing reader centered documents and pages that will help readers understand, locate, and notice highly critical information. The reader centered approach comprising of six important elements: text, graphics, headings and titles, white space, headers and footers, and physical features. These six elements can be arranged in different forms to achieve efficient reader centered communications. The chapter states several guidelines that are critical for overall design of documents. One statement that surprised me was to avoid using italics for more than a sentence at a time. I have always assumed that it can be used to emphasize a particular content, but it can obscure the main lines. I have taken a user interface design class where I had to build a prototype for an application implementing most of the guidelines stated in this chapter. It is critical to have a consistent design elements so that the reader is not confused. The prototype that I build complied to gestalt principles which are used to organize the elements so that readers can perceive complex scenes. Mostly all the guidelines in this chapter can be used in the future. We can use it for designing any professional document. Making the documents intuitive for the reader to understand will increase the efficiency.


Part 2: Out of the 4 designs, I had a hard time deciding which design would work the best. Designs 3 and 4 seemed did not have much differences in terms of the layout and guidelines it followed. I have concluded that design number 3 would work the best and design number 2 would be the worst. In design 3, the graphic designer was very consistent with the font type and alignment of the design elements. The key labels were bold, so that the reader would know what to focus on. The only issue I found with this design was that the label "Caution" wasn't bold or capitalized. That's the section where design 4 excels. For design 3, the designer used laws of proximity and relativity so that the reader can create a visual link between the title and each labels. I have chosen design 2 to be the worst out of all because of the inconsistency in the design. There is an entire section/block dedicated to the registered trade mark sign of the prescription medication. The text informing the reader about other critical information about the med seems less relevant compared to the trade mark sign. Also, design 2 used red color to display the name and other information of the medication. This color can have negative associations in certain cultures.