Chapter 11
Designing Information
By Brandis Miller & Cheng Vue
Designing Information
All jobs require some sort of information design, whether electronic, print, or sometimes both. Knowledge is the key to setting you apart from those who have little understanding of information design. Information design deals with how you organize and present information to increase audience comprehension. Information design deals with five categories of elements:
1. Textual elements (letters, numbers, symbols, etc.)
2. Spatial elements (spaces between elements, size & placement of text & graphics, etc.)
3. Graphic elements (punctuation marks, bullets & icons, lines & arrows, tables, graphs, photos, etc.)
4. Color & textual elements (color, saturation, value, brightness, texture, etc.)
5. Dynamic elements (layout, placement of images, and in an electronic document, animation)
Chunking & Labeling Information
Chunking and labeling information involves two factors: logical topical relationships & audience need for the information. Interesting examples of these are given in three sets: undifferentiated text, chunked text, and labeled text. Undifferentiated text gives, in no particular order, information on several topics. Chunked text groups information into various subtopics and separates each one into a different paragraph. Labeled text has bold text in the headings and many are bulleted. Examples of all three are given in Figure 11.1 on page 383.
White space is the part of any page or screen that is blank, without print or visuals. Many times, white space makes the document or page more appealing. It can be used for margins, lines between paragraphs, or space around visuals. Many examples are listed in our text on how to better utilize the white space in our technical documents. Some key examples are margins, text alignment, and leading & line length. The four margins in a paper can be use for chucking. Margins can be wide allowing room for note-taking or narrow to store more information.
Justified alignment gives a neater, more professional look to many documents but can make text harder to read. Unjustified alignment is when all the lines begin at the same left (right) margin and the right (left) margin is ragged. This generally is easier for a reader to read. Many times this depends on the type of document being prepared.
Leading and line length can improve accessibility and legibility while increasing ease and speed of reading. Larger leading length with short lines is frequently found to be easier to read. Examples are given in Figures 11.3 and 11.4 on page 385.
Using headings to label chunked information can be used to label and identify the information about to be given. Headings give the reader a mental and literal break. They also establish a subject for the next section in the document. Headings can be tricky, however. Readers need to be helped, not confused, by headings and subheadings.
Arranging Related Chunks of Verbal and Visual Information
Selecting appropriate grids and careful placement of visuals near related text are two key factors to designing and effective document. When selecting a grid, it is important to keep in mind the type of document you are producing.
- Typically, one column grids are used for correspondence & reports, two column grids are used for manuals & brochures, and three column grids are used for newsletters.
- When dealing with the placement of visuals, it is important to keep in mind that readers do not want to have to turn pages back and forth. A study by NASA found that many readers prefer visuals located within the text rather than in an appendix at the end of the document.
Chart junk, tombstoning, heading placement, and windows & orphans are problems to avoid when arranging information.
- Chart junk is miscellaneous graphic “junk” that does nothing to help people understand the information they are reading. Many documents to not need any fancy extras.
- Tombstoning involves aligning headings so that the readers mistakenly chunk the text when they look at the page.
- Heading placement comes from leaving too few lines after a heading or subheading at the top or bottom of a column or page.
- Windows are left over words (one or two) hanging awkwardly at the last line of a paragraph. Orphans are left over words hanging awkwardly at the beginning of a page break. Examples of all are given in Figures 11.10-11.13 on pages 392 and 393.
Emphasizing Information
Emphasizing portions of text makes information more accessible, comprehensible, and useful. Typeface (font) affects readers’ attitudes and reactions to a print or electronic document as well as their ability to access, comprehend, and use the information easily and quickly. Some basic characteristics include serif or sans serif. Serifs are tiny fine lines usually at the tops or bottoms of letters (i.e. in the letters “R” and “X” as opposed to “R” and “X”). Making the wrong choice about typeface variations can also make it difficult for the reader to read and understand any given document. Too small of a font can be hard to read whereas too large of a font can seem elementary to readers. Keeping in mind many businesses prefer 10-12 point font can be helpful. Of course headings, power points, etc. will need to be larger. Style choices can also be helpful or harmful. CAPITALIZATION, boldface, italics, etc. can be used alone or combined to create emphasis. Make sure, however, your choice of style compliments your document and is appropriately used.
Typographic devises can also be used to create emphasis. Numbered lists, bulleted lists, shading, and color are all great examples. Numbered lists are popular with instructions when the order of the given information is important. Bulleted lists are used when each item listed is equally important. Shading works well to highlight and emphasize information. Although often restricted by cost, color is said to be the most effective way to set important information apart from the rest of your text. It helps to identify a text hierarchy, chunk information, and emphasize key points. If well designed, other visual devices can be as effective as color.
24 comments:
Chapter 11 was a good insight to what everyone including my self has done in the past for power point presentations and essays and such. From experience I know that adding bold text and making information easier to read and find in documents are vital to make things easier to remember. Visual apperience is ussually the first thing people judge things on. Weather it's the size of the text or how organized it may be are two things that makes information easily comprehendable.
Chapter 11 has a lot of helpful information that will help in the future. When I make a power point for class I usually try and make it look interesting. It was helpful though the five categories of elements to remember when making a power point. I know I try to have the same font throughout the power point and the same color scheme to keep it looking well put together. When I have white space on a slide I usually try and think of some picture or design I could add to fill the space. Also Headers for each slide is helpful to the audience so they know what the slide is going to be about.
Chapter 11 really helps people understand it’s the little things in a paper or presentation that can make it. Adding italics or bolding will help certain words really stand out and make the reader realize that the word is very important. This is used in presentations. When I presented my TCR speech, I should have italicized some of the words, that way people knew that it was an important part of the speech. Headers and footers also can be helpful in a paper or presentation. Chapter 11 showed me how now I can use this for future presentations.
This chapter reminds me a lot about the first assignment that we had when we were talking about resumes. When we are making resumes one of the biggest things when looking at trying to get a job is setting yourself out from the next person. When you have many people applying for jobs and you are just words on a piece of paper you need to be able to make you as a person jump out from that piece of paper. Being good at using technical advantages through visual aids can really help you out later on in life when you are finishing college.
This chapter was great for me because I am currently working on my TPR speech and am making a powerpoint to help explain my information. If you have a presentation that is very bland with no design it becomes very hard for the audience to pay attention to it. When I look at a powerpoint and see some cool pictures, italicized/bold fonts, and good backgrounds I become more appealed and follow along better. This chapter highlights a few great ways to 'spice' up a presentation.
This chapter should be read by people who write textbooks. Seriously! There are some textbooks out there that just have page after page, line after line, of just words. It is so hard to concentrate when reading. Bulleted lists or other ways of chunking the material helps to keep my attention a lot. Also, adding ephasis to important text draws your eye to that information and (I think) helps you remember it better. Like the text says, color text is the most effective way of making it 'pop', however it is typically not the cheapest option - trust me, I've bought a lot of color ink cartridges! I think if you follow the guidelines this chapter sets out, you can design you information in a way that is simple and also pleasing to your reader.
Laying out information that is new to somebody is a very important task. Using attention grabbers (bold, italics, underline) shows that something is important.
This is especially true for websites, I know when I go to websites I want things to be laid out nicely and easy to read, if I come across a site that is just a big blob of words I'll skip it, not formating of paragraphs or no real organization.
This chapter was very helpful on how to organize and create my presentation before presenting to my audience. As a technical writer my work should be easily understood, readable and enticing to the reader. By doing in this I my work should have five categories of elements in information design: textual, spatial, graphic, color and dynamic. Before presenting my work, I should ask myself, is my presentation readable, colorful and well organized. If not, then it is not well presented.
Reading chapter helped me a lot as I am planning to do final touch my technical publication response
“Knowledge is the key to setting you apart from those who have little understanding of information design.”
Chapter 11 has great ways to make papers or presentations very organized. When you use different visuals or ways to separate information, it makes things much easier for the audience. Using italics or bold fonts for headings is a tool I use frequently to show that this is a new topic that is important. These tools really help the material to become presentable.
Chapter 11 does a good job of explaining how to make a good presention or document. I have used some of these ideas in the past making power point presentaions for classes. When making a power point it is very useful to only write down key facts and points because nobody wants to read a novel on each slide. When using slides they should all follow a certain order and be easy to read. I also like to use special effects sometimes to emphasis certain facts.
It is really important when creating documents to emphasis things of importance. The best way to do this is changing the font. Making the font bold, italic, or even underlined can be a great way to do so. Also, it is helpful to color things to make it look more important. The reason we need to do these things is that we need to make our documents look credible and presentable. It is important for other people to be able to read it. Also, it makes it easier when people just want to skim it over and get the gist of it.
Chapter 11 is basically stating that make the project a good sight on the eyes makes it easier to read and understand for the audience. By this I mean, using bullets and bold words, along with italicized words. Headers are key and also using pictures that go along with the project to help you understand. When doing a powerpoint, instead of writing everything down on the slide, use headers and key words, and then have notecards to read the rest because it breaks up the points better and gets the main points into the readers head.
Chapter 11 reminded me a lot of Chapter 10, because it talked a little bit about organization, like how to chunk information together to make the document more clean and organized. Organization comes up again when the chapter talks about essentially trimming the dead wood, specifically, extra and unneeded words.
In the field I will enter when I graduate, I will be using some sort of design skills. It may be a print for a product or assembly instructions that tend to use a visual to get the information out. With the program I am in right now the modeling and CAD software could play a big part in my future career. We also tend to used a lot of technical reports or papers to display the information that is being researched or developed. I
This chapter explains the basics of making the reading usable. I have difficulty staying interested in many of the textbooks i read. Blocking the text into organized thoughts helps to get to the point. Adding colored font, and bold fonts helps to see seperate organized thoughts. Reading automotive textbooks i have found that blocking the text into seperate components helps to understand the whole. Showing pictures to go along with text helps to organize your thoughts to the text written.
Chapter 11 concepts were very useful. As I read the material I notice how necessary is to design text information...chunking and labeling info, italics, bold, underline, color etc, are very important when we read, write or give presentations, besides making your paper look better its easier when its read, and I say this because I'm a visual learning person, especially when I read, I like it when it’s all laid out nicely with highlighted phrase so that way I know what’s more important. Later in my career I’m more likely to use these techniques to make up fine articles reports in some sort or for example the article presentation in this class designing it is a big part.
Chapter 11 reminded me of an exam I took in my Visual Tech Comm class. We had to look at a Web site and discuss design elements as they pertained to grouping, emphasis, and font choices. The Web site was for a band. I didn't like the design choise because the name of the band was actually typed very small, which seemed to me like the most important thing to be emphasized. Also, the designer used different font headings all over the page, leaving me confused. It is important to keep things simple for the audience, so they can get the most out of a document.
Designing information is important because how you set something up catches the reader’s eye or interests the reader or not. I think chunking is a form of design that I use because I enjoy having a topic and talking about it rather than talking about many at once. I think visuals are great to use and I couldn’t agree more with the whole flipping back and forth to see the pictures and relate them to the text. I know in power points that teachers use the pictures are right in the information which is helpful. Also I think the way to use emphasis on words or letters is important as the chapter stated. The idea of when to use boldface and underlining is very important to know since the reader wants to know what is important and what is not.
I thought that Chapter 11 was helpful to me because in a few years I will be an English teacher and will need to present items and assignments to my class that are not only informational but visually pleasing to my students. This chapter brought to mind that not only should my presentations be organized but should be correctly spaced and designed so that students do not get confused.
I used to be a layout artist for my high school news paper and a lot of this applied to the layouts I would make. A newspaper is a huge thing for designing information because different stories fit in different areas. An editorial would look funny and generally out of place in the sports section. On the newspaper we were also always paying attention to how much white space was on the page and how to disburse the whitespace so no one area had to much and another had none. We also always justified our stories before we sent the paper to press, this made the paper look neater even if it did make the stories harder to read sometimes. All together I think this chapter is really important to everyone, because at some point in their life everyone will have to make a powerpoint or something for publication.
I liked this chapter because it gave a lot of important information and helpful tips that I have used many of times in my classes. This chapter had a section about emphasizing important information. I liked this section because it reminded me of when I am reading textbooks and they have important terms or information that is bolded or italicized. I find this feature very helpful, especially if I am just browsing through a chapter, it makes it a lot easier because I can see what the book feels is important which probably matches what my professor thinks is important.
A document is usually more likely to be read if the visual appearance is appealing. If you are given a block of all words and sentences, you are more than likely not wanting to read it. This chapter helps us with knowing how to chunk together information that relate to each other so the reader has an easier time reading. Visuals also make it easy to read a document so we can relate the information to the picture.
This chapter did a really good job at describing different ways you can make presentations better and papers easier to read. The tools to make text bold or italiac have always been there, I just never knew when it would be appropriate to use them. Also when giving presentations it really is a lot easier to pay attention when there are some cool pictures involved instead of just using all words. It kinda makes it easier to follow.
I used to work with outlines and storyboards a lot. I took a TV production class at my first college and that was how we showed our professor our progress was in the form of an original written outline and then the visual storyboards. It was a nice way to organize the work and make sure it got done the way it was supposed too.
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