Chapter Eighteen

In the reading of chapter eighteen, it went over understanding design principles.  The design decisions you make will play a critical role in how your readers understand, react, and work with your document.  Design opportunities ranging from the font chosen all the way up to the charts chosen and tables chosen for your document, can have powerful effects on how you shape and present your ideas.  Before you begin formatting text and illustrations, consider how the document design principles of balance, emphasis, placement, repetition, and consistency can help accomplish your goals.  Balance is both the vertical and horizontal alignment of elements.  Emphasis is the placement and formatting of elements, such as headings and subheadings.  You want to be able to catch your readers' attention when doing so.  Placement is the location of elements.  Repetition is the use of elements, such as headers, footers, and page numbers in your document.  Consistency is the extent to which you format and place text and illustrations throughout your document.  When going about writing your paper, you want to be sure to define for a purpose in a sense.  A well designed document presents information, ideas, and arguments in a manner that helps you reach your purpose.  Your readers should be able to understand the organization, locate information, and recognize the function of parts in your document.  As said before, shoot for "catching their eye."  How may you design elements you may ask?  Use fonts, line spacing, alignment.  Page layout strategies may include, color, shading, borders, and rules.  Most importantly, the use of illustrations contributes quite a bit towards your document.