Author: Daniel Libertz

While it’s easy to jump towards the idea that there is a big difference when it comes to print based documents and web based documents, they are far more alike than different. In general, when it comes to designing a document, there are a few major ideas that the writer should adhere to. Park mentions a few including an intuitive reading process, emphasis on the most important areas, consistency, and focus. For both digital and print texts, the design of the paper can play just as large of a role as the material within it. This seems like a backwards policy, but it’s very similar to the idea of politics. If a president running for office was always well put together, and spoke in a way that that captured and held the listeners attention, one would be much more willing to look past some flaws in the candidate’s ideals than if the candidate did the opposite. The same goes for digital and printed texts. When I open a website or a book looking for information, if the design is boring or hard to read I will often try another site or, in the case of a printed text, I would just google it. While they may differ on specific things because of their general functionality, digital and printed texts need to be aware of the same general design guidelines.

The idea of accessibility, while it may be very similar to proper design, has a few aspects that make it a standalone issue that every writer needs to address. For most writing, these concepts go hand in hand. A properly designed text, for example, should be easily accessible for all readers. This is because one of the major ideas within design is an “intuitive” reading process. Therefore, accessibility should be a consequence of design. It should not, however, be the other way around. If a writer writes the paper to be solely accessible, they can easily make major design flaws that hinder the documents effectiveness. For example, if a company put out an ad for their indoor trampoline park, but only focused on the organization of the material, the ad would become boring. While it would be easy for the parents to find the information they need, it would be lacking when it comes to grabbing their attention. If the company were to focus on design first and made it fun and exciting, they could then adjust it later to also be easily accessible.

When it comes to overall design and accessibility, the idea of color playing a large part in the texts success seems a little weird. When it comes down to it, however, the choice in color can have an immense effect on how the piece is received. One of the major challenges with this that isn’t found with other aspects of design is that color can change heavily depending on its source. For example, when color is used on a digit document, a certain color combination may work perfectly on the screen its being created on but, once it is opened on a different screen, it may clash heavily. Because of this, a writer needs to be careful with their use of color throughout the document to ensure that it is accessible to anyone regardless of the platform its being viewed on.

When it comes to creating the final document, there are numerous things the writer needs to be cognizant of in order to produce a graphically successful piece. Each piece needs to work together to ensure a good reception for the document because if anything is off, even if a color scheme is slightly clashing, it could ruin the document in the readers mind.

Good design of text and incorporation of images is essential in public writing, because it can strongly influence the reader’s perception of the message. A lot of thought must be given to the format of the piece to ensure that it is effective by being accessible to all people including those with disabilities. Often in both digital and print forms of communication good design and accessibility go hand in hand. The presence of white space, clearly defined headings, and a well-structured system of columns based on the for of text allow for easy understanding of the material being presented for everyone. The same general guidelines of organization of public forms of writing should be followed for both print and digital media, but digital media often is more complex due to incorporation of links and video messages to support the text and images.

Whether the reader is intentionally focusing on the layout of a piece of writing or not, it strongly influences their experience of the message. This was well communicated by Parker in “Redesign”, where he compares different forms of written communication before and after the layout is changed to a more effective one. Unnecessary clutter and poor blending of images with text makes a piece harder to navigate and can lead them to becoming disinterested in the reading or turn them away from reading it in a first place. The public is unlikely to stop and read a flyer, or reluctantly agree to taking a customer satisfaction survey, or become interested  in an advertisement if it is unpleasant to look at and does not “promote readability.”

Color is also another major feature of media that leaves a big impression on the audience regardless of whether they are trying to pay attention to it or not. Color has a very interesting way of provoking certain emotions and stimulating ways of thinking. The only issue with color is that not everyone is able to perceive it equally. People with colorblindness or low vision will not be able to experience documents that utilize color the same way a general audience can. Therefore, this must be taken into consideration when color is incorporated in media. It should definitely always be considered, but the document must not be fully dependent on it so that it can still be accessible for people who are incapable of perceiving the color the way it is intended.

In modern communication good design and accessibility often need to be worked out in the design of mobile sites. Almost all heavily used sites now have a mobile site or an app that has significantly different features than those of a normal website intended to be viewed on a desktop. This is extremely relevant in the design of social media sites like Facebook and Twitter where updates are made every few weeks in order to improve experience of use of the sites on mobile devices. Every time one comes out generally the public will complain for a day or two then immediately begin to adapt to the new change, because often they do end up making the site more accessible for a phone.

Although in some cases  accessibility can be an inconvenience for certain designs, a design cannot really be considered effective if you are eliminating a whole segment of the potential population of readers by not making the format accessible for them. Accessibility is all about reassuring that anyone in the public can be able to understand a message being communicated to them regardless of whether they are a part of the intended audience.

 

The general principles of good text seem to be common to both print and digital text.  These general principles can be generalized to the following five points:

1.     Finding a way to emphasize important parts of the text.  This can be done via headers and font types and sizes

2.     Using concise and clear wording.  Both print and digital texts emphasize avoiding redundancies in wording, and getting to the point of the message with the least amount of words possible.  This was especially evident in the alternative text mentioned in the web design page.

3.     Showing a theme of unity throughout the text.  A uniform style and tone throughout the text helps the reader absorb the entire message.  This was shown in Park’s text through the dinosaur design on the newsletter.  The graphic included was a childish dinosaur image, but the text layout was something similar to a serious research article.  It was explained how this could confuse the reader, making the reader flip between thinking they were reading a serious article or a fun one.

4.     The use of white space was also emphasized in both articles.  It can either detract or enhance the reader’s experience, as white space is used to break up the text.  It is important to include an appropriate amount of white space so as to avoid cluttering the space and distract the reader.

It is also important to note how design differs between print and digital texts.  Digital texts are not limited in space or material.  Color, hyperlinks, and videos can all be incorporated into the design without limiting factors like cost and space.  Print texts are limited in this respect, and so must be even more concise. 

Accessible text principles can be applied to both print and digital media.  Print and digital media, although in different mediums, both serve to convey their message as effectively as possible.  The article on accessible text was written with the basis of being applied to a website, but that is not to say these same principles aren’t meant to apply to print. 

 

White space is a key concept mentioned in the article, but it is also entirely relevant to print media as well.  Overwhelming a reader with a jam-packed and cluttered print text will detract from the purpose of it, regardless of what that purpose is.   

 

Color can be incorporated into accessible design, but must be done so tastefully.  Contrasting colors are a good way to place emphasis on certain areas of a piece.  Color schemes can include using complementary or analogous colors.  Incorporating color into a piece can add an exciting and attention grabbing component, and if incorporated appropriately will add to the pieces overall success.  It is important to also realize that too much of any one thing can become a bad thing.  Incorporating too much color can result in an experience that is ’ so chaotic that the viewer can’t stand to look at it”, so finding an appropriate middle ground is key.

 

Overall, the balance between accessibility and good design is one important to achieve.  Good design helps engage the reader, but accessibility helps the reader to get the most out of the given piece.  Finding a balance between the two will help ensure the reader engages in the entire piece, while also absorbing the entire message the writer hoped to deliver.

 

When it comes to grabbing a reader’s attention, good design and accessibility are paramount. They make a viewer give that second look, and heightens the chance of the design’s message getting across. These tools even permeate through both digital and print texts, as well. Specifically, there are several key design principles that apply universally to the two types of texts. First, white space is essential to creating a powerful design. White space in a document breaks up different sections, which draws more attention to the paper. A lack of white space can also create a sense of clustering and over-stimulation. This may turn readers away from the document. For print and digital texts, white space can and should be utilized to create a better design. Furthermore, appropriately chosen and placed images are vital to good design, whether it’s for print or digital text. These images draw attention away from the words. Therefore, an irrelevant picture hinders the message being pushed and is essentially worthless. A color scheme is analogous to image placement. Colors can make or break a print or digital text since they are usually the main attention grabber. A set of colors greatly helps create the sense of unity in a design. If a poorly chosen scheme was used, such as one focused too much on contrast, the message of the text may be lost. Finally, alignment of the text within a document is a universally known design tool. The alignment can help aid the reader’s eyes across the page in the desired path and help with the unity aspect. Since print and digital texts each contain sections of text, alignment can be used in a similar way for both.

Good design will always have some commonalities with accessible texts, regardless of the medium. White space, as mentioned previously, is a commonly used tool in good design to create the overall balance of the document. However, white space also acts as a buffer between sections, cutting large chunks of text into smaller ones. This improves the readability tenfold and heightens the accessibility of the document. In a likewise fashion, appropriately-labeled section titles are both accessible and principals of good design. The headings allow for screen readers to introduce the topic to a disabled reader, while also clearly marking off sections and creating a sense of balance. Simple vocabulary is another key aspect of good design and accessibility. Simpler language lets readers think less of the sentences and more about the message, while also improving speedreading and the general flow of the text. In regard to learning disabled people, simple text allows them to understand the message in its entirety.

There are still parts of good design that clash with accessibility. Color scheme is most prominent in this case. For any reader who is blind or colorblind, a color scheme has no effect. Consequently, much like the article on accessibility said, color alone cannot be used to tell the message of the document. This would cause its accessibility to plummet. Reversely though, the color scheme is vital to a good design. It balances the document, highlights important parts with contrast, and creates the overall sense of unity needed to appease the reader. Therefore, there will always be some form of conflict between accessibility and good design in this aspect and a balance must be found.

This leads directly into the topic of a balance between good design and accessibility. Color schemes need to be used sparingly to avoid creating accessibility issues. Images, on account of those with sight issues or poor internet, cannot be the essential component of the text. Aspects like these need to be balanced delicately between good design and accessibility, or the entire message will be lost. This balance is largely determined by the audience a writer wishes to invoke. Different communities of people require different levels of accessibility, so the balance is constantly changing based on who the author writes to. As a result, there is no one tried and true method of universally balancing accessibility and good design. For each document, an author must find a new balance to create a truly effective print or digital text.

 

The text from Park’s “Redesign” is focused on the process of improving, and redesigning, one’s work – typically in a textual layout but can also be compared to the other works (on principle of accessible design for digital text and basic color theory). Just as Park describes the differences in before-after examples of how the redesign process can make a text layout appear smoother or get across what they are trying to accomplish better, so too do both of the other texts. The NCDAE‘s piece on the main principles for creating accessible design focuses on the idea that the simpler you make your digital design (such as a table of Shelly’s daughters and their ages/birthdays), the easier it is to reach many audiences and the less confusion it will cause. In the same sense, Color Matters‘ piece about basic color theory emphasizes the color wheel, the harmony that colors can bring out with one another, and the context that colors can represent when contrasting or set next to one another. In the piece about color, we see very clearly how different the color red looks against different backgrounds – proving that there are better ways to make the focal point clearer to someone based on the design you choose.

These three pieces, though different in terms of what each is discussing, are all similar in their focus on making something look better to an audience. The piece by the NCDAE most predominantly seems to focus on simplicity in design – looking at Park’s examples of improved layouts on articles, ads, catalogs, etc. – I believe Park would agree to many levels that simplicity is best. Where one may want to put in tons of information about “fine timepieces”, the redesign showed as an example by Park saved “precious space” on the ad by “combining the names and descriptions of the watches into single paragraphs.” In many of the redesigns shown in Park’s piece, there appear to be simplified versions of the authors’ original works. By improving on their designs and utilizing the space they have, as well as the way a layout is formatted on the page to bring more attention to the most important words, the designs flow much more simply and are more appealing to your audience. Even basic color theory focuses (maybe more clearly) on simplicity in design because of the obvious appearance of a clashing color combination being distracting or detracting of value from a harmonizing color combination.

Overall, applying these methods mentioned to our own purposes of writing for the public – I would say that, when revising and thinking about your audience, it is key to discuss the importance of “‘more is less”. Try to relate to someone with a harmonizing color combination rather than a mess of clashing words and you are much more likely to get your point across to them. If you throw a bunch of text out that lacks any real focus on flow or emphasis on the key points, then you are likely to lose your audience’s focus and they will be unlikely to care about your piece. To be the most effective in affecting our audience, we should try to revise with simplicity in mind. Maybe we should consider more seriously what each piece we’re adding to our writing has to do with what we are trying to say. The more we focus on “is this necessary” rather than “I like this”, the more proficient we may become in achieving our goals of writing for the public.

When it comes to good design principles of print and digital texts, there is actually more overlaps than one might anticipate. While the execution of good designing principles for the texts is different, both articles on print and digital texts focus on reaching the desired audience and succinctly getting a point across.

In Park (2006), Park writes about various printed texts that one might use. He goes through original versions and then redesigns, and explains the benefits of the new versions. For nameplates, he says, “The best nameplates use a distinctive type of treatment to promote name recognition.” He then takes a complexly-designed nameplate and makes it smaller, cleaner, and gets rid of unnecessary words. The achieved effect is a more succinct title that should draw more viewers who will ultimately understand better what is being advertised. In the Principles of Accessible Design, the author focuses on the importance of digital text being accessible to everyone. The author declares, “Every non-text element needs a text alternative (alt text) that describes its content and function.” Then, the author explains that this would benefit people with “screen reader[s],” who are often blind, and people who have “their images disabled,” which is often due to low internet speeds. The result of the options the author has offered, as well as those that the author goes into throughout the article, is that more people will be able to understand whatever is on the page, meaning more people from a desired audience can be reached in the most succinct way possible.

Both articles, however, also speak about the importance of good design regardless of one being print or digital. Park speaks about the necessity of redesign, as I’ve mentioned. He explains that on occasion one must “evaluate each page element on its own merit and on its relationship to the overall design.” The purpose of this evaluation is to ensure the article succinctly conveys what it was intended to. Sometimes one must restart his or her design completely; other times one keeps only some aspects. He says that “the concepts you reserve are your points, and a good design is a straight line that connects them.” In other words, the design that one choses must be clear and defined. In the article about accessibility, it says, “There are many ways to make your content easier to understand. Write clearly, use clear fonts, and use headings and lists appropriately.” While this focuses more on the aesthetic appearance, the reasoning is the same as the Park example: ensure that the writing can be clearly understood by anyone who would read it.

Color is something that can influence both print and digital text. In the article about color, the author, explaining Color Harmony, says, “it engages the viewer and it creates an inner sense of order,” and that when “something is not harmonious, it’s either boring or chaotic.” The way that color can influence an article, whether print or digital, is important. Color can match or clash with the article’s tone, or it can help portray a tone that might otherwise have been missed without it. It is not an absolutely necessary tool, but it a tool nonetheless that can influence an article’s clarity and allow it to better reach an audience.

Among the redesigned graphics there are a few similarities that I have picked up on. First the redesigned texts all seem to look very clean and have straight cut lines. This makes it appealing to the eye and not confusing which makes the viewers much more likely to read the whole thing. This is very important because as a writer or producer of a figure you never want to deter an audience that is interested in your piece. Secondly, I noticed that all redesigned figures are very accurate at targeting a specific audience by language or graphics. The best example of this would be in the lab advertisements. In the original figure the pictures suggested that the lab assistant was going to be doing experiments because the graphics show a girl with tubes over a Bunsen burner and a glass slide. However, the truth is that this job is simply to be cleaning the lab and glassware. In this case the erlenmyer flask is a much better representative of the job that will be done by the employees. Finally, the style of the piece should be reflected in the way the piece is presented, i.e. The Fossil Record example. I think all of these properties are very important when it comes to written prints as well. These three observations relate to print texts very much because good print texts usually have similar qualities.

 

We have learned that some of the most important tools in writing is to consider your audience. Given that you know your audience, you should also adjust your tone and style to be most appealing to it. Similar to my first point about clean looking graphics, your writing should be the same. Your writing should be clean by flowing correctly from paragraph to paragraph and idea to idea without jumping all over the place.

 

When it comes to color in written prints and graphics, I do believe that written prints should be a little more conservative. It can give readers a headache to reading something in a bright or obnoxious color. However, when it comes to graphics there is much less writing so it is likely that it would bother the readers less. Furthermore, using colors can be very useful in this media because colors can help readers understand the image better and even draw peoples’ eyes to the graphic.

 

In all of the types of media it is very important to balance the components that go into the piece. If one variable of the piece is very prominent or exaggerated. For example, if the colors are very bright and variable then I would make other qualities of the piece more conservative. For instance, I would try to stick to a more conservative set up and other factors that play into the graphics.  It can be difficult at times to balance being a good design and being accessible. My suggestion would be to consider which you find most important. Accessibility: to be more reachable by your whole audience. Good design: your message is projected most efficiently and accurately. To put it simply, it is choosing between quality and quantity.

In her piece “Genre as Social Action, Miller rails against both the idea that categorizing genre is reductive and that normal methods of typifying and classifying genres fail to recognize the importance of any social aspect, to her the most important – but not only – way of recognizing genre. According to her, “Exigence is a form of social knowledge– a mutual construing of objects, events, interests, and purposes.”

In a way, writing within a known, established genre is at once restricting and freeing. From the beginning, the writer is aware of the genre’s conventions. This, however subtly, organizes their thoughts into somewhat pre-existing patterns and is naturally limiting. However, it also provides an unspoken undercurrent of communication between the writer and reader. The writer can take shortcuts, make bigger leaps, because writing within the bounds of a genre sets up certain expectations for the reader about how the writing will progress.  The writer can move forward assuming that they and the reader are beginning somewhat on the same page. In a mystery novel, the reader can assume, based on the conventions of the mystery/detective novel genre, that the killer will be revealed near the end, and does not stress halfway through that the mystery hasn’t been solved yet, leaving the last hundred pages open for police paperwork and an extended scene of the detective going out to a nice dinner to celebrate his catch.

Of course, as Miller points out, it is important to see “the ways actual rhetors and audiences have of comprehending the discourse they use”. If authors were to, all of a sudden, decide that the killer is never caught at the end, but at the beginning or never at all, then expectations would shift. The general social consciousness would have a different public perception (of course, as Miller argues, “exigence must be located in the social world, neither in a private perception nor in material circumstance,” but the altering of so many personal perceptions would have no choice but to alter the overall social perception as well), although this begs the question of whether the genre’s formal conventions would shift, or whether more subsets of the genre would simply appear.

In public writing, based on Miller’s standards, things get more complicated. Because she’s right – especially within the realm of public writing, social constructs are more important for determining genre than any formal features, or even intention (which, as Miller argues, is different from exigence). Concepts and words open to the public are under social power. /it was pointed out to me recently that the concept of pampering oneself takes on different meanings and flavors among social classes: for the rich and middle class, it is self-care, an important part of staying mentally and physically healthy. For people in the lower class, it is an irresponsible waste of money. The rhetoric, and public priorities concerning an individual’s health, change. The same action has different names because of our backgrounds, experience, history, feelings, politics, and connotations.

This has parallels to genres within texts. Miller maintains that “It is through the process of typification that we create recurrence, analogies, similarities. What recurs is not a material situation (a real, objective, factual event) but our construal of a type.” The same exact text, the same material object, could appear in a love letter, a prayer, or a eulogy. But those are both distinct genres. The main difference is in their usage.

In terms of public writing, it’s important to be aware of the myriad reactions people can have based on their segment of the social consciousness, and condense that into something approachable. The social perception of anything is inherently complex, and the onus is on the writer to harness all of this. More than with most kinds, public writing has to be written with an absolutely acute awareness of what action it is being used to accomplish.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Carolyn R. Miller nearly lost me from the very first sentence of her piece. I understand that academic writing warrants complex sentences and elevated vocabulary, but this journal was of another world. Miller emphasizes an active definition of genre–one rooted in what you do with forms and not what they are on their own. I barely scraped out this meaning from the text, but admittedly, Miller does raise a few interesting, helpful points on genre that can be utilized for rhetors and professional writers.

What little information I did glean from this piece included a very generalized definition of rhetoric. Midway through page 155, Miller refutes the idea that genre needs to be stylish; rather, it can be as routine as the simple information it is conveying. Genre is a rhetoric component of interacting with the public. She thinks you do not have to wow your audience, but rather should focus on sharing important information. Later in the piece, she applies John Searle’s view of meaning to genre, saying that if you want your genre to be impactful, it must be both a statement of something and the proceeding action. Genre does not just mean form, it is a form that serves a particular cause. Its shape is less important than its function. To writers and rhetors, it helps you understand how to participate in what it is you want to change.

For all the sound discourse she includes, Miller’s approach to distinguishing and classifying genres is dense and easy to lose track of. For a topic that concerns how you interact with and potentially teach people, it is viewed through a muddy lens created by the author’s text. One sentence that is especially difficult to process reads, “The organizing principles (from Harrell and Linkugel), in fact, do not distinguish classes of discourse; they distinguish methods of classifying discourse” (154). I perceive this point as being totally consumed by itself so that there is little meaning to be drawn out. I feel I do not fully understand what these clauses are working toward. Also, I feel as though one of the many impenetrable sentences could have held the secret to understand more of Miller’s view of genre. On page 159, she paints genres as “typified rhetorical actions based in recurrent situations.” I was stumped when reading this passage, and would be curious to hear what my fellow classmates made of it.

One way I believe Miller could inspire those who write publicly is her very literal call to action. Rather than emphasizing a fuss over the exact form or organization of your particular genre, Miller wants you to be ready to follow through with what you have written. Our words mean nothing if we are not willing to stand behind them. Why spend so much time on an animal rights billboard, an op-ed on the battle for marriage equality, or a white paper decrying the treatment of Foxconn employees if you are not prepared to take the next steps of your campaign? Miller’s words resonate specifically to our class, as well. Our projects need to be completed so we can pass the course, yes, but at the end of the semester, we should follow any feelings of obligation toward our causes and see just how far our words can go.

In “Genre as Social Action,” Carolyn Miller begins by stating rhetorical genres are defined by “similarities in strategies or forms in the discourses, by similarities in audience, by similarities in modes of thinking, by similarities in rhetorical situations.” Miller addresses two concerns in the article: one is to make genre a stable classifying concept and the other is to ensure that the concept is rhetorically sound. This is a difficult read, but there are pieces that can be pulled out to analyze so the reader can determine why Miller finds it so important to see genre as based in social action rather than firmly grounded in formal qualities.

Through the reading, there were a few pieces of information that stood out to me that answer the above question. Working from Campbell and Jamieson, Miller opposes that the study of genre is useful not because it creates a classification but because it emphasizes social and historical aspects of rhetoric. Here is where she argues that a rhetorically sound definition of genre must be centered not on the substance or the form of discourse but on the action it is used to accomplish. The study of genre can show how a certain type of genre can make all the difference. If you are looking to grab the attention of a large group of the public, one may use the internet in various ways so that it can be distributed to a wide variety of people. Writing for the public is all about what kind of genre is exploited and how you use that genre and the rhetoric involved toward your intended audience. Campbell and Jamieson note that “A genre does not consist merely of a series of acts in which certain rhetorical forms recur… Instead, a genre is composed of a constellation of recognizable forms bound together by an internal dynamic.” These statements show that genre becomes practical, fully rhetorical, and a point of connection between intention and effect as it is an aspect of social action.

Miller proposes that genre is limited to a type of discourse classification based in rhetorical practice and open rather than closed. Genre focuses in on particular forms, content, and techniques in every case. Sometimes you might want a more comedic genre to appeal to the public’s sense of humor or maybe a more of a horror style to exploit their fears and curiosity or maybe a satirical genre to show the follies and shortcomings of the issue you’re presenting. For me, a satirical genre may be used in a political ad to poke fun at an opponent. Now I can get into mudslinging political advertisements, but that can be reserved for a different kind of blog post. And that is the excitement of writing for the public; each genre can influence different ideas and emotions in every single person.

Overall, Miller’s conception of genre was difficult to understand. Genre refers to a conventional category of discourse based in large-scale symbolization of rhetorical action. Genre is a form at one particular level that is a fusion of lower-level forms and characteristic substance. Miller believes that genre is based in a social action that appeals to emotion and debate between the public that starts conversations rather than firmly grounded in a strict layout such as length and organization. I agree with her statements and how it is important for genre to be a social action to make writing for the public more of a thought-provoking subject rather than cut and dry writings.