Chapter 11 Review - Designing Information
Rob Michals & Aaron Isakson
“Information design is concerned with the ways in which you organize and present information to increase audience comprehension” (Burnett p.378) The design of text is a important factor in getting your audiences attention. Burnett explains in this chapter five key ideas to visually organize your text. Textual, spatial, graphic, color, and dynamic elements each play their own roll in any kind of media. It is used in web development, electronic documents, and hard media. Space is another important factor in catching the reader’s eye. Organizing the information in an appropriate manner means you will have to use blank space and chunking the information together to make it understandable. Leaving space in the margin and in between the lines makes reading it easier. Line length and alignment can help the reader comprehend what they are reading. Keeping sentences short and “ragged right” helps the reader understand the information more than the “fully justified” text setting.
When using design elements, there are two main practices used: appropriate grid selection and the placement of visuals near related text. By breaking a page up into sections (called grids) document designers can place illustrations in correct places within a given document.
Prints and online documents require some additional practices in order to catch the readers attention. Writers of online documents must avoid these 4 problems: chartjunk, heading placement, tombstoning, and windows and orphans. Chartjunk is the temptation to add unnecessary visuals, these will draw the readers attention away from the desired information. Tombstoning is when a writer places headings in odd places, thus creating an unclear direction of reading. (Burnett pg. 392 has a great visual of Tombstoning.) The next problem is heading placement, this involves adding at least 3 lines of text before the placement of a heading. Next are windows and orphans, these both describe little pieces of leftover text. Windows are leftover text within a given paragraph while orphans refer to bits of text leftover in the next column or page.
The next portion of the chapter describes Typefaces (fonts). The font, font size and font style of the text will alter the way a reader perceives the information. For example, bold text grabs your attention, as does CAPITALIZATION. Font sizes should range from 10-12 point font, however headings may use larger font. Burnett page 398 has a great illustrative example. Also affecting readers are the uses of typographic devices, a fancy word for use of bulletpoints, numbered lists, italics, underlining, box and shading, and color usage. Bulletpoints are used to order and prioritize text, however they do not stress the total count of items. Color will draw attention to a certain area of text or heading, as will added boxes around the text. For example Book Titles should look different than www.webpages.com .
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13 comments:
This chapter makes alot of sense when it comes to explaining how the style and format of text can ultimately decide how people interpret the information or more simply how much of their attention is paid toward it. Aaron and Rob did a good job of providing examples of bold text and capitalization within their summary as well.
Chapter 11 discusses design and its effectiveness. I agree with Burnett's five points of design. where I work we are constantly explaining to the client that even though they have purchased 15 inches of space, it doesn't mean they have to fill it up with text. It is amazing how much easier you can make things to read by increasing the leading and providing natural breaks in text.
Design has always occupied a large area of my life. So, this chapter was actually fun to read! When I am making a document, visual, or oral presentation I always try to organize it in such a way that everyone will be able to follow everything. I tend to agree with the statement that "less is more". When designing I keep decorations very minimal. So the use or negative space for me is essential. I also find myself using grids a lot. Precision, repetition, and organization are what I enjoy including into my daily life.
Chapter 11 talks about designing information. The five categories of information design are textual elements, spatial elements, graphic elements, color and textural elements, and dynamic elements. There are three strategies of information design. The first one is to chunk and label information. The second one is to arrange related visual and verbal chunks. The last one is to emphasize information.
This chapter defines the impact of style and format of text people use. The main thing that pops in my head about this in today's world is online chatting, texting on telephones and many other ways that are used today. The way how you type things define how or what you are saying, it is very interesting to read about this.
I agree with everybody. This was a good summary and the way you write defines what you say. I think it is important to incorporate a variety of different textual elements at their appropriate times respectively. I used design elements alot during my time in newspaper.when formatting articles to fit with images onto a page. Design is as important as what you say because it is how you say it.
Organization and orientation in a document are very important when writing and can change how people view and understand the information presented. Spacing of visuals and text, and proper use of the space that is available is important to convey a bold and dynamic message or a cluttered unclear message. Using a good design strategy will aid in easier to read and better presented information and overall increased understanding by an audience.
also no biggy, but typo windows should be changed in this summary to widows and orphans. Does anyone else wonder why they choose to relate a design element to seperated family members? A choicy call on syntax maybe. A good example though is if this was the line break and sentence carried
___________________________________
onto the next page.
This chapter rigns a lot of bells in my mind. Although I rarley think of the actual design of my documents it has shown to really maked a difference. The easier a piece is to read and understand the more efficient it is going to be.
I had not thought of my presentation ever in terms of a design. Not coming from a very artsy/creative background it was interesting to read this chapter and think about how the audience can be directed in certain ways based on the way one tweaks a document. I understand more how formatting and style are important.
I enjoy reading about design elements, so this chapter was easy to read. I mostly use design concepts when creating webpages. Some websites are really great (as far as design goes) and some you can tell they had no idea about design concepts. Design comes into play in my courses, of course, too. Being somewhat of a perfectionist, I rely heavily (sometimes too much so) on how my information look.
This chapter really brought to my attention how important the design of a document is in relation to both comprehension and attention. I thought that they fiver ways to organize the text were important to read, it was a little reminder of things to think about when creating your design.
One thing that I completely agree with is having space in your document so it gains the readers attention. I feel that if a document doesn’t have enough “white space” that it is far more difficult to read and understand.
There were some new terms in this chapter that I wasn’t aware about before reading. These terms had to deal with the problem areas that should be avoided for online documents. One term that was completely new for me was “cartjunk”. I knew what the definition was, but I didn’t connect it to the term. I think that “cartjunk” is something that everyone should take into consideration. Too many visuals to a document can be distracting and lead to a lack of comprehension.
The principles of design help the aesthetics of a document a lot. Burnett talks about separating things out in grids and whatnot. When I use InDesign, I often use these same principles the book talks about. I use what's called guides to make my documents grid. It gives it a lot better readability, and organization, and just really looks a lot better.
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