3 Most Important Information Designs Concepts

The most important concept that I have learned so far is rhetoric, or the ‘context’ of the document and how it must be considered to create a successful end product. The purpose of most documents is to somehow persuade the audience/reader to believe something or take some action. That underlying motive must always be considered, I think, before document production can even begin. I did not realize this fact, but the ‘rhetorical’ aspect of documents has long been an issue for me. For example, my previous redesign project did not come out as well as it could have because I did not consider the ‘rhetorical’ (context) of it. It was not clear which company I was appealing to with the proposal because I had an image and the logo of Meals on Wheels on the cover, when the proposal was actually supposed to appeal to 1st Alarm Co. of Lubbock. I created a document with the wrong ‘rhetorical’ meaning, and therefore the document was ineffective.  

The second most important concept I have gleamed from the readings is the concept of alignment. I never really thought about it before but it makes a lot of sense. One concept within alignment that I find the most interesting is unity. I now understand that where you place something on or in a document is not as important as its inherent connection to other items of equal importance or meaning on the page. Before I just thought alignment was either centered, justified, or right or left-aligned. I never understood the visual importance of just which alignment you choose for a document, or that you can choose more than one alignment for a single document, as long as related information is presented the same way. For example, on a business card, the name of the card-holder should be presented in the same typeface as the name of the company they work for, but does not have to have the same typeface as the card-holder’s phone number, because that is separate information. Even if the information is not placed closely together, the information has definite unity.

The third concept that I find especially important in document design is contrast. Contrast is also a great way in which to show how information items in/on a document are related or unrelated. I have always been somewhat aware of contrast, but not consciously. Until reading the section on contrast in Kimball/Hawkins I never realized there were so many different ways, not even really realizing that bold, italicized, and underlined text are classic (though somewhat cliché) examples of contrast used in documents. I also had never consciously considered that there are so many different ways in which to create contrast. I had previously thought of contrast in text as consisting of two things: color and size; however, there are five notable ways, including shape, size, color, value, and position! Every successful document, either printed or online should include contrast, which is why street signs and websites generally are made up of two or three colors opposite each other on the color wheel.