Document design has become ever more important with the use and availability of computers. Modern readers don't just prefer well-designed documents—they expect the design to highlight important ideas and concepts.
Five Principles of Design
People rarely read technical documents word for word, sentence by sentence. Instead, they tend to look over technical documents at various levels, skimming some parts and paying closer attention to others.
Good design creates a sense of order and gives readers obvious "access points" to begin reading and locating the information they need. Good design is not something to be learned in a day. However, you can master some basic principles that will help you make better decisions about how your document should look. Here are five principles that you can follow as you design documents:
Balance—The document looks balanced from left to right and top to bottom.
Alignment—Images and words on the page are aligned to show the document's structure, or hierarchy.
Grouping—Related images and words are placed near each other on the page.
Consistency—Design features in the document are used consistently, so the document looks uniform.
Contrast—Items in the document that are different look significantly different.
These principles are based on theories of Gestalt psychology, which studied how the mind recognizes patterns (Arnheim, 1969; Koffka,1935). Designers of all kinds, including architects, fashion designers, and artists, have used Gestalt principles in a variety of ways (Bernhardt, 1986). You will find these five principles helpful as you learn about designing documents.
Design Principle 1: Balance
Balance is perhaps the most prominent feature of design in technical documents. On a balanced page or screen, the design features should offset each other to create a feeling of stability.
To balance a text, pretend your page or screen is balanced on a point. Each time you add something to the left side of the page, you need to add something to the right side to maintain balance. Similarly, when you add something to the top of the page, you need to add something to the bottom. Figure 10.1, for example, shows an example of a balanced page and an unbalanced page.
Design Principle 2: Alignment (выравнивание)
Items on a page or screen can be aligned vertically and horizontally. By aligning items vertically on the page, you can help readers identify different levels of information in a document. By aligning items horizontally, you can connect them visually so readers view them as a unit.
In Figure 10.10, for example, the page on the left gives no hint about the hierarchy of information, making it difficult for a reader to scan the text. The page on the right, meanwhile, uses alignment to clearly signal the hierarchy of the text.
Alignment takes advantage of readers' natural tendency to search out visual relationships among items on a page. If a picture, for example, is aligned with a block of text on a page, readers will naturally assume that they go together.
Design Principle 3: Grouping
The principle of grouping means that items on a page that are near each other will be seen as one unit. Grouping allows you to break up the information on a page by dividing the text into scannable blocks.
Humans naturally see items that are placed near each other as a whole unit. So, if two items are placed near each other, like a picture and a caption, readers will assume that they belong together.
Using Headings
One way to group information is to use headings. When used properly, headings will help your readers quickly understand the structure of your document and how to use it.
Your computer's word-processing program makes it easy for you to use headings by changing fonts (шрифты) and font sizes. Or you can use your word-processor’s Style feature to create standard headings for your documents.
Different types of headings should signal the various levels of information in the text.
• First-level headings should be sized significantly larger than second-level headings. In some cases, first-level headings might use all capital letters ("all caps") or small capital letters ("small caps") to distinguish them from the font used in the body text.
• Second-level headings should be significantly smaller and different from the first-level headings. Whereas the first-level headings might be in all caps, the second-level headings might use bold lettering.
• Third-level headings might be italicized and a little larger than the body text.
• Fourth-level headings are about as small as you should go. They are usually bolded or italicized and placed on the same line as the body text.
Design Principle 4: Consistency
The principle of consistency suggests that design features should be used consistently throughout a document or website:
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Headings should be predictable.
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Pages should follow the same grid.
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Lists should use consistent bulleting (bullet – маркер списка) or numbering schemes.
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Page numbers should appear in the same place on each page. Design Principle 5: ContrastContrast makes the items on a page more distinct and thus more readable. Contrast makes items look distinct and different, adding energy and sharpening boundaries among the features on the page or screen.
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A good guideline is to "make different things on the page look very different." Contrast, as shown in Figure 10.21, makes design elements lively.
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Your uses of contrast when designing a page should be considered carefully. Word processors offer many tools for adding contrast in ways that capture readers' attention. Sometimes, though, you can accidentally create contrast problems with different colors or shading in the background—or just too much clutter on the page. In this section there are some helpful tips for using contrast in documents and interfaces.
