Designerly Presentations: An Annotated Guide

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1 Designerly Presentations: An Annotated Guide Everything students need to be able to do for this course s projects can be successfully done in Microsoft Word and some simple image processing software all of which is probably already on your computer. The standard program used by graphic design professionals is Adobe InDesign. If you are already conversant with this software you may certainly use it but it is not necessary to try to learn it to successfully complete this course s projects. Do not use PowerPoint it is too crude a tool for the projects assigned in this course and has a number of shortcomings as a presentation program (see in spite of its popularity and ubiquity. Note: In the hints below the term presentation refers to the document you will submit for each project. Descriptive Title and Subtitle To help the reader it is very important to choose an appropriate Title: what is the subject of the presentation? And Subtitle: what is the approach taken to the subject? Note: it might be even better if the Names, Course Title, and Semester Date can also be included below a datum line on the bottom of the page, as here (from another class, and illustrating the use of reversed out text as well): 1

2 Organization Designerly presentations will have a clear and consistent meta-structure, or hierarchy with headings and, if necessary, subheadings each with their own clearly defined format According to Robin Williams, in her book The Non-Designer s Design Book ( ) there are four key organizational principles for page layout designs. Though a good layout will incorporate all of these principles they can be better understood by looking at each individually. Proximity Here the individual items are linked, are proximate to, their respective heading and a line space is used to differentiate the groups. Contrast is also used to better define each heading. 2

3 Alignment Left justification with ragged right tends to work best for text, right justification can also work well for headings and page numbers at times. It is best, in designerly presentations, not to indent but, instead, to use line spacing to better differentiate the aspects of the layout. 3

4 Repetition Repetition, e.g. of the headings, helps reinforce the relative hierarchical importance of each element of a page layout. Contrast The resume on the right has greater contrast and so is more readable, it also has a better meta-design. 4

5 Feel free to change the margins on your page; the default margins in Word cramp the page a bit for this type of assignment. Always include page numbers in your submissions, in the event the submission is more than one page long. You can incorporate a simple datum line on the bottom of each page, as here, to serve as a visual page this just restricts the amount of space you have to work with. The page itself serves as a visual frame. Fonts One of the key building blocks of your projects will be the text and this will be presented through your choice of fonts. There are two main types of fonts: Serif fonts, like this one, Times New Roman, and Sans-serif ones, like this one, Gill Sans, and these: Helvetica and Arial Designerly presentations will probably use sans (i.e. without) serif fonts, instead of ones with serifs. Designerly presentations won t use script or novelty fonts and they definitely will not use Comic Sans. No more than two different types of font will be used in a designerly presentation. Color can also be used to differentiate headings from the main text of a project. Note: It is preferable to use type size, style, and formatting for hierarchical emphasis rather than using underlining, where possible. Creative use of white space, as below, is acceptable and better than squeezing too much information on a page. 5

6 Images You can capture images from a monitor still or moving using a screen grab software program like Jing ( and then import them into your page layout. Your projects will all be submitted as PDF files and will be viewed on the screen so the resolution of your images needs to be no higher than 72 dpi (dots per inch). If you wish to print a document images should be 300 dpi. Ensure that the actual (physical) image size is no larger than it needs to be for inclusion in your presentation most submission problems come from not sizing images appropriately. Still You can insert images into a Word file by selecting Insert from the drop down menu at the top of the screen, dragging down to Photo, and then selecting Picture from File. 6

7 Tables At times it may be useful to include a table in your projects, in particular as a graphic means of presenting comparative data. One way to do this in Word is to go to Table from the drop down menu at the top of the page, drag down to Insert. You will then be given a dialog box in which you can enter the number of rows and columns you want in your table. You can then select each cell in the table and insert your date (words and, if you wish, images). The example on the following page is from another class it s an analysis of Frank Gehry s design for the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain. It provides a good illustration of the use to which a table can be put in design analysis. 7

8 Video It can be very helpful, when presenting studies of user-interaction experiences that inevitably unfold over time, to include a video in your project presentation. One can easily shoot video on a smart phone or digital camera, edit it, and upload it to a site such as Vimeo ( Vimeo is similar to YouTube, but less visually noisy. Within one s document you can paste a screen grab from your video and then hyperlink to this to activate the video while viewing the project on a networked digital device. Click on link to play the video. Clip Art Don t use it! 8

9 Submission Format Save projects as Reduced Size PDF s; you can do this by opening the PDF of your document in Adobe Acrobat, going to File in the drop down menu at the top, dragging down to Save As and choosing the Reduced Size PDF option. This will significantly reduce your project s file size. Always include your name and the file name in the document title and in the document itself. Technical Issues Acquiring Free Software As a student you may download many types of high-end software (including Adobe s Design Collection) free from: Software Training There are a wide variety of online training opportunities available to learn how to use software. Lynda.com is particularly helpful since the training is broken up by subject so you can view only the tutorials you need to accomplish your task: Before You Get Frustrated Call the UITS help line: (812) Consultants are available to give you phone support, literally all the time. They are very helpful too. 9