Document design

Reep (2006, pp 3) made known that Document design refers to the physical appearance of a document. Because the written text and its presentation work together to provide readers with the information they need. The document design that I will be evaluating on will be the power point presentation that my group has done a few weeks back based on "How prose and graphics interact- Making words and pictures work together"(Schriver, 1997).  

The first suggestion of improvement would be the written information. Certain points in the power point had more information than others as seen in comparison below in Figure 1 and 2. This is considered to be improperly balanced. Bernhardt S (1986, pp 72) made clear that the most relevant law is that of equilibrium suggests that items in a visual field strive for balance with other items in the field. Some explanations made in the slides were short while some were long winded. 

This suggestion of change can also relate to the distribution of graphic aids. Some points provided one graphic aid as example while others provided several graphics aids. The suggestion is to provide more than enough but less than too many examples for effective reading and balance the weight of information provided. Reep (2006, pp 4) suggest that page balance refers to having comparable visual "weight".

The final change would be to improve the visual consistency in the slides. Putnis, Peter & Petelin, Roslyn (1996, pp 34) states that consistency is crucial in all elements of your document and that there should be a stylistic consistency which is to maintain your style of presentation of the document. Figure 2 and 3 below show the lack of stylistic consistency and similarity because there is no uniformity with the point bulleting. Some display dashes and numbering while other slides display a circular bullet. This does not provide the readers easy flow of reading.

Figure 1

Figure 2

Figure 3

Reference

Bernhardt, S A 1986 ‘Seeing the text’, National Council of Teachers of English, Vol. 37, No. 1, pp. 66-78.

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

Reep, DC 2006, Technical writing: document design, Pearson/Longman, New York .

Russell, W n. d, 10 Tips for creating successful business presentations, About.com guide, viewed 8 April 2011, <http://presentationsoft.about.com/od/powerpointinbusiness/tp/bus_pres_tips.ht>

Schriver, KA 1997, Dynamics in document design: creating texts for readers, Wiley Computer Pub, New York.