Dynamics in Document Design: Creating Text for Readers

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