1. Before and After – from plain text to a designed piece
2. This layout shows many design elements that a writer can consider when writing. What pieces of information are important for the skimmer to take away from the piece? The use of pullquotes, text boxes and data visualization helps to break up the text and enhance the important information in the report.
3. A concept or metaphor goes a long way and really intersects the written content with the visual imagery and typography, design and layout choices for the piece.
4. A large infographic piece created for online reading. The writer and designer had to work closely together to realize the concept and metaphors used, as well as making sure that the key data elements are elucidated.
5. A short illustration which highlights some key points of information, that was shared on social media.
6. Consider where the audience will be reading the content. In this case, this poster was on a BART (commuter) train, where the audience is captive and looking for something to read. So more text could be incorporated into this poster.
7. Who is the audience? These pages are from a heavily designed report which was geared to students to take action around computer and high tech recycling.
8. The audience for this report is concerned about policy change, so the design is clean and serious, and clearly communicates the content, while still using some elegant design elements to humanize the design.
9. How do we consider a piece—such as this newsletter from POWER, a grassroots economic justice organization—that needs to speak to a diverse audience, made up of youth, elders, English and Spanish speakers, working class and low-income people, as well as funders and donors, without losing the essence of the organization’s mission? The use of color, bold headings, text blocks, and photography, as well as equally balanced layouts in both languages, speak to a wide range of stakeholders.
10. Some tensions between writers and designers: the use of white space. This example shows what happens when the writer wants to fill up all the space with text. It looks a bit daunting.
11. White space, or negative space, is just as crucial a design consideration as what is placed on the page. It gives balance to the piece, increases legibility and enhances the reader’s experience.
12. Even though writers and designers have this tension about when to cut copy, there are ways to be able to incorporate more text into a piece. Some design gets compromised, but through the use of design tools such as color, typography, and design elements, these are still visually pleasing pieces.
13. This one-pager is heavy on text, but with some strategic design elements and use of custom icons, the piece is a visually exciting tool for the campaign.
14. A small trifold brochure using some basic design tools: use of color is not overloaded but kept to the color photographs and strategically used throughout the piece. A good use of leading—the space between the lines—breaks up the text while also drawing it out on the inside left panel. Bullet points and quotes also make this a digestable piece for the reader to understand what the project is doing.
Some links I have found useful:
http://vandelaydesign.com/blog/blogging/editing-goofs/
http://www.vanseodesign.com/web-design/communication-design-writing/