Dynamics in Document Design : Creating Text for Readers

by Karen A. Schriver

• ISBN13: 9780471306368
• ISBN10: 0471306363
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1997-01-01
• Publisher: Wiley

Summary

From an international leader in document design, research-based insights about writing and visualizing documents that people can use . . . This book is for writers and graphic designers who create the many types of documents people use every day at home or school, in business or government. From high-tech instruction manuals and textbooks to health communications and information graphics, to online information and World Wide Web pages, this book offers one of the first research-based portraits of what readers need from documents and of how document designers can take those needs into account. Drawing on research about how people interpret words and pictures, this book presents a new and more complete image of the reader--a person who is not only trying to understand prose and graphics but who is responding to them aesthetically and emotionally. Written by document design expert Karen A. Schriver, Dynamics in Document Design features: * Case studies of documents before and after revision, showing how people think and feel about them * Analyses of the interplay of text and pictures, revealing how words, space, visuals, and typography can work together * A fascinating and informative timeline of the international evolution of document design from 1900 to the present

Author Biography

KAREN A. SCHRIVER, PhD, is an internationally recognized expert in document design. Her positions have included the Belle van Zuylen Professor of Language and Communication at the University of Utrecht in Holland, Research Director of the prizewinning Communications Design Center at Carnegie Mellon University, and Research Associate for the National Center for the Study of Writing and Literacy at Carnegie Mellon and the University of California at Berkeley.

Table of Contents

SITUATING DOCUMENT DESIGN.

What is Document Design?

Evolution of the Field: Contextual Dynamics.

OBSERVING READERS IN ACTION.

How Documents Engage Readers' Thinking and Feeling.

The Impact of Poor Design: Thinking about Ourselves as Users of Texts and Technology.

Seeing the Text: The Role of Typography and Space.

The Interplay of Words and Pictures.

RESPONDING TO READERS' NEEDS.

What Document Designers Can Learn from Readers.

Appendices.

Bibliography.

Indexes.

Colophon.