Good Design for Screen Genre

In order to give readers better understanding, most of the time we use images or tables to support it. However, according to Reep, D (2006), there are four important principles to make good document design regardless of topic and audiences.

1. Balance

It is important to have balance in a page of document. Weights of every element are counted. This slide (Slide 3) has heading top of it, two different pictures demonstrate Given and New concept side by side, and at the bottom part are simple explanation about it. This slide has equal space to every corner, and then it shows a balance.

Slide 3

Apart of it, these images are helpful for readers to ‘fill in gaps’. Instead of reading full text of Given and New concept, these images successfully interpret all the concept as the words of a text will never be able to tell everything (Walsh, 2006).

2. Proportion

In this picture (slide 10), size of the picture is big and there is no written text beside it to explain what is the picture about. Therefore, this slide is not proportional.

Slide 10

Basically, images and written are stands side by side for readers to have fully understanding about topics discussed. Walsh (2006) said that images are helping readers to visualize then understand the subject matter better. In this slide, a picture stand alone without any justification, people may not be able to understand what the picture (LRT Map) is unless they are Malaysian.

3. Sequence

The way people read a document will be different as there are factors influenced behind it such as individual background, cultural, etc. Therefore, it is very important for the writer to know the culture of certain area, so they can manage the document well and the readers can absorb it well too.

Slide 7

Normally, readers start reading from top left corner to the bottom right corner and they tend to scan from up to down (Reep, D 2006). This slide provides important information first which is the heading then big size of picture and end with words. It follows readers’ sequence of reading; writer put priority of importance of information delivered from the most important to less important items.

4. Consistency

In presentation documents, we need to have consistency of features, style, and format. For instance, we keep using font size of 30 and font style of Arial for details text and for heading font size used is 42 and font style is Garamond. Then, we used a bullet for every point. It repeatedly done for all slides, therefore, it shows consistency in our text presentation.

Slide 4

Slide 9

Last but not least, in my opinion, a document design should be able to grab readers’ attention and make them understand of issue discussed. Multimodal text is a helpful invention in publication and design world as writer can expressively send the messages to audiences effectively.

References:

Reep, Diana C. 2006, 'Chapter 4: Principles of Document Design," in Technical Writing, 6th ed., Perason Edu, Inc., New York, p. 173-190, viewed 18 April 2010, http://p8080-130.220.165.27.ezlibproxy3.unisa.edu.au/fedora/get/changeme:931547/CONTENT

Walsh, M. 2006," 'Textual shift': Examining the reading process with print, visual and multimodal texts," Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, vol. 29, o. 1, p.24-3, viewed 18 April 2010,http://search.informit.com.au.ezlibproxy.unisa.edu.au/fullText;res=AEIPT;dn=149631