Reading for February 6th

The book chapter discusses the idea of how to make documents easier and simpler to read. The entire design of the document is the way that people view and make decisions about the information. When looking at a document or even meeting a person, people make decisions about whether or not they will read the document or like the person within a few seconds. The design of the document has to be attractive enough to draw a person in and give them a reason to read the information. Even if it's the most important information in the world, someone might not read it because it doesn't look appealing. There are several factors that go into the appeal of a document such as white space, type size, font, line spacing, amount of images to text ratio, and the color of the text. The book talks about how its important to remember both your audience and purpose when designing a document. For instance, older people would not like to see smaller, fancier, harder to read fonts because they will have trouble reading it. Also, if it is a serious and sad topic but the entire font and pictures or colors are done with happy, light, breezy tones then it makes no sense. The book also discusses how showing a difference between ideas can make things easier to read. Overall, the entire chapter talked about keeping in mind the purpose, audience and appearance of the document  while designing the piece. It is important to remember that people will make their decision within seconds so you need to grab their attention without losing sight of the other important matters.