Good design for screen genre

Diana Reep, (2006) a well renowned author in technical writing, stated that readers don't read the contents of a document, they also read the semiotic values behind the layout and design of the document. Thus it is vital for us to understand the key elements for a decent visual presentation. 

These 2 slides are the presentation slides of our group presentation on Gunther Kress and Theo Van Leeuven's analysis on newspaper layout. Based on Diana Reep's readings on the principles of document designs (2006), we designed our slides for the following reasons: 

We have ensure our slide designs are under balance, where we take accounts in visual "weight". Here, we present our slides in a very light theme, in order for the readers to digest our information presented easily. A slide too "heavy" with colours makes readers to digested too much information.

Besides, we take account on proportion, where we add the suitable amount of words and pictures in the slides. Here, in the 2 slides presented above, we use 1 picture each with almost the same number of words on the left to compare the layouts of the 2 newspapers. At the same time, we presented consistency in the slides, where we used the same margins and the same fonts in the slides, giving out slides uniformity. 

In conclusion, document designing is essential for readers in order for them to digest the messages effectively. This also helps giving credibility to the readers as it is well prepared and neat. 

Reference: 

Reep, Diana C. 2006, ‘Chp 4: Principles of Document Design,’ in Technical Writing, 6th ed., Pearson Edu, Inc., New York, p.173-190.