03/ 09/ 2006
by Reid Goldsborough
More and more, the research, education and communication we do involves photons and electrons flying around cyberspace. Yet a surprising amount of that data still winds up in a physical format that was invented in China in the second century: Paper.
After all, you're still reading this––not to mention books, brochures, papers and other documents that grease the wheels of society.
Since the 1985 invention of desktop publishing with the release of Aldus PageMaker (later Adobe PageMaker)––a program first used with the Apple Macintosh computer and the Apple LaserWriter printer––PCs have greatly facilitated the process of putting words and pictures on paper.
As powerful as PCs are at making you look good in print, they can be equally powerful in making you look bad. Computer journalist and pundit Mitch Ratcliffe once sagely remarked, “A computer lets you make more mistakes faster than any invention in human history––with the possible exceptions of handguns and tequila.”
Top high-end desktop publishing programs today include QuarkXPress (www.quark.com) and Adobe InDesign (www.adobe.com), while top consumer-level programs consist of Microsoft Publisher (http://office.microsoft.com/publisher) and Poster Software’s very affordable Publish-It (www.postersw.com). All of the programs feature document templates and sometimes page-creation wizards to help get you started.
Today’s top word processors, such as Microsoft Word (office.microsoft.com), Corel WordPerfect (www.corel.com) and StarOffice Writer (www.sun.com/software/star/staroffice), are richly endowed with design features, allowing you to use them for projects for which you used to need a desktop publishing program. Word processors, though, are still not as convenient as desktop publishing programs.
No matter what software you use and how much design automation it provides, you still need a modicum of design sense to avoid taking a pratfall. Many books have been written to help people minimize desktop publishing mistakes, but the bible is Looking Good in Print, which was first published 15 years ago, just celebrated its sixth edition and was written by Roger C. Parker, who specializes in design and marketing and does consulting, training and speaking.
Looking Good in Print is both succinct and comprehensive, starting with the basics and then drilling into more advanced areas.
Parker covers design concepts, grids, columns, headlines, pull quotes, fonts, white space, sidebars, photos, charts and more appearing in newsletters, newspapers, ads, brochures, catalogs, order forms, product sheets, menus, letterheads, business cards, fax cover sheets, resumes, business reports, coupons and more.
My favorite chapter is “Common Pitfalls,” some of which are:
- Don't create “whispering” headlines that fail to stand out. Headlines should be larger and bolder than the text they introduce, or they'll lead to gray, boring pages.
- Don't use too many typefaces. This is one of the oldest but most common mistakes that make a desktop-published page look amateurish and confusing.
- Don't overuse underlining. Bold and italic typefaces are better at emphasizing important points and don't make a page look as if it came off of a typewriter.
- Don't include too many rules or boxes. These design elements break up text and facilitate reading, but too many interfere with reading and make a page look busy.
- Don't use too many text special effects. Placing text over a darkly shaded or intricately designed pattern, overusing rotated text and including too many irregularly shaped text blocks makes a page look frivolous and difficult to read.
- Don't make all of the photos on a page the same size. Readers won't know where to look first. Make the most important photo larger.
- Don't cram too much information into a chart. Charts are supposed to visually communicate the most important information quickly. Pie charts with more than six slices and charts with text squeezed inside defeat the purpose.
- Don't jam-pack too much information onto a page. This can make information difficult to find.
- Don't create a hole of white space within a page. White space prevents a page from looking busy and intimidating, but if it’s trapped inside other elements, it interrupts the flow of text and graphics.
- Don't over-indent new paragraphs. Default tab settings for desktop publishing programs and word processors can create unsightly indents, particularly for narrow columns.
Find more free tips at Parker’s Web site, www.newentrepreneur.com.
Reid Goldsborough is a syndicated columnist and author of the book, Straight Talk About the Information Superhighway. He can be reached at reidgold@netaxs.com or http://members.home.net/reidgold.
