A Good Document Design

A document design is a form of visual presentation on a document. A good document should able to convey messages effectively to the target audience. According to Rothman (2005), an effective message will lead target audience from different background and knowledge to have a common conclusion on what is the document about. The basic principles layout of good design and layout are:

• simplicity
• symmetry
• consistency
• usability
• readability

According to Anderson, 1987 (cited in Putnis & Petelin, 1996) a good document design:

• helps readers to digest a document effectively.
• enable the readers to point out the important points of the document.
• encourages readers to feel comfortable of a communication.

Apart from that, Reep (2006) assert his different opinions regarding general principles among most designers in all documents are:

• Balance- refers to having comparable visual weight on opposing pages in a longer document.
• Proportion- refers to a size and placement of text, graphic aids, and format elements on the page.
• Sequence- refers to the arrangement of design features so that readers see them in the best order for their use of the document.
• Consistency- refers to presenting similar features in a similar style. To create a good document design, we need to follow a few strategies.

1. Visual Presentation is important.
Slide 1:

Slide 2:

Given the slides above, visual presentation will obviously seem more appealing compared to reading only the printed words on a presentation. With visual presentation will helps people to understand better. Reep (2006), stated that "readers do not only read the printed words on the page, they also read the visual presentation on the text." Hence, this proved that words and visual presentation support each other.

This statement was agreed by Milutinovi (1996) that a good slide will have a graphics and content supporting each other. Prior to that, Shriver (1997) also said that text and images can be complementary for each other to help reader understand a document better.

2. Consistency

1st Presentation:
Slide 1:

Slide 2:

The slides given above is my first presentation that showed inconsistency in terms of the headings. For instance, the capital letters for the headings in Slide 1, 'SIMPLE NON -LINEAR MODELS' compare to Slide 2, the headings was not completely in capital letters, 'Given and New'. In this respect, this has showed inconsistency in a document design.


2nd Presentation
Slide 1:

Slide 2:

In my 2nd presentation slides above, the terms of font, headings and bullet points in my second presentation slides has showed consistency.

3. To create a good writing

Slide 1:

Slide 2:

Putnis and Petelin (1996) alleged that the most effective writing applies to any given situation or readership. This simply means that as long as the readers understand what they are reading, then it automatically implies a good writing.

The slide 1 given above showed a bad writing as it do not provide proper subheadings compare to slide 2. Slide 2 will helps reader to understand better as there are subheadings provided.

References:

Milutinovi, V 1996, "The best method for presentation of research results", IEEE TCCA Newsletter, University of Belgrade, Yugoslavia

Putinis, P & Petelin, R 1996, "Professional communication: principles and applications", Writing to communication, Prentice Hall, Sydney

Reep, Diana C, 2006, ‘Chapter 6: Document Design’ in Technical Writing, 6th edition, Pearson Education, Inc., New York, pp.133-172.

Rothman, S 2005, "What makes Good Scientific and Techinical Writing?" viewed 9 September 2009,
<http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/9447/>

Schriver, K.A. 1997, ‘Chapter 6 : Dynamics in document design : creating texts for readers’, pp. 361-441, Wiley Computer Pub, New York.