Good design for screen genre

A good design is very crucial for a document. According to Reep (2006 p. 134), readers do not only read the printed words but they also "reads" the visual presentation of a document. Therefore, there are some basic design principles that should be take note of in the process of designing a document (Reep, 2006 p.135), such as balance, proportion, sequence and consistency.

Whereas Bernhardt's (1986) laws of gestalt is also important in document design and it is somehow similar to Reep's basic design principles, which emphasises on balance and equilibrium, good continuation, clousure and similarty (Bernhardt, 1986). We can see that both principles are very concern about the importance of balance in a document.

First Slide (Front Cover)

The picture above shows the cover page of my group presentation. It is simple and clear enough to brief the audience what topic we have chosen and the list of presenters tells the audience who is going to present. The pictures and color used are quite relevant and appropriate to the topic.

Second Slide

The second pictures shows an example of a bad designed document. The slides if fully packed with words and no pictures are shown to help in explaining the points. According to Nielson (1997), users do not read words by words on the web page, but rather scan through and pick out the points that they think are important. This slides is surely not a good choice for the readers as there are too many words and seems confusing. Furthermore, the last three words are out of margin, and is not readable by the readers because the of the colour of the words and the background is too close.

Third Slide

Fourth Slide

The third and fourth pictures shows nicely designed slides of the document. The sentences in the third slide are short and are clearly listed out. Just as Reynolds (2005) mentioned,the idea of simplicity is an crucial precept that is worth following because the best visuals are often ones designed with an eye toward simplicity (Reynolds, 2005). The design of the third slide is considered as simple yet understandable. As for the fourth slide, the sentences are short and straight to the point. The important keywords are bolded or highlighted, the points are shown in bullted list, and it is half the word count of the conventional writing (Nielson, 1997). Moreover, the design of the fourth slide is considered a formal balance (Reep, 2006 p.135). Hence, this is a simple slide which enables the reader to understand and remember the points easily.


References:

1. Bernhardt, SA 1986, 'Seeing the Text', College Composition and Communication, vol. 37, no. 1, pp. 66 - 78.


2. Nielsen, J 1997, How Users Read on the Web, useit.com, viewed 19 April 2010, http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9710a.html


3. Reep, DC 2006, 'Chapter 6: Document design', Technical writing, 6th edn, Pearson/Longman, New York.


4. Reynolds, G 2005, What is good PowerPoint design?, Presentation Zen, viewed 19 April 2010, http://presentationzen.blogs.com/presentationzen/2005/09/whats_good_powe.html