Chapter 10, Designing Proposals

Design:

• Importance


• gestalt theory


• four principles for crafting effective page layouts


• five-step process for inventing, revising and editing pages

Good design gives easy access points where you an enter the text from a variety of place for a variety of reasons. Scan executive summary, read the introduction, scan each major section

Four principles of Design - Gestalt theory, humans instinctively look for relationship among objects, visualize larger relationships

Balance - weight on a page

heavier

• on right than left
• top than bottom
• big weigh more than small
• pictures than text
• graphics than text
• color than b&w
• with borders
• irregular shapes

Use grips to balance a page layout

Use pullouts, margin comments, sidebars to enhance body of text with supplemental information

Alignment

Use of vertical white space to identify various levels of information

Grouping

Break down the text into smaller parts more comprehendible for scanning

Use headings, font size, horizontal/vertical, borders

Consistency

4 techniques

• headers and footers
• typefaces - conservative versus modern
• labeling - tables, charts, pictures, graphs
• lists - sequential and nonsequential lists (use different styles for each)

Creating effective layouts -

• Consider the rhetorical situation - characteristics of readers, traditional or progressive
• Thumbnail a few example pages - possible designs
• Create a design style sheet - line, paragraph, page, graphics, document levels
• Develop a few generic pages - create a template as a basic pattern
• Edit the design - revise and edit