Document Design, Working-Class Rhetoric, and Education in the Hearl Maxwell Collection

A Focus on Document Design

     Whether you’re looking at rhetoric from a professional writing stand point or a working-class stand point, the main conclusion about rhetoric is that the persuasion of individuals through the power of the spoken or written word. Specifically looking at the Hearl Maxwell collection, the emphasis will fall on the written word and how each word is placed in a document to convey the meaning of the author to the reader. How does the design of a document help to convey the message that the writer is trying to make? Julie Dirksen states that “the goal of good learning design is for learners to emerge from the learning experience with new or improved abilities that they can take back to the real world, that help them do the things they need or want to do,” (Dirksen 160).
     
     Rebecca Hagen and Kim Golombisky, in White Space is Not Your Enemy, focus on graphic design and the four things that a good graphic design does: “It captures attention, controls eye movement, conveys information, and evokes emotion,” (Hagen XVIII). Graphic design combines text and pictures in a manner to portray an overall image of information for the reader to focus on whether, examples an advertisement or layout spread in a magazine. Hagen and Golombisky also point out that good form follows good function (Hagen 2). If a document is laid out in an appropriate manner, then the functionality of the document will help increase the availability of the information to the reader.

     Robin Williams came up with a document design process that is outlined in her book, The Non-Designers Design Book, following a set of criteria that create the acronym C.R.A.P. These four basic principles are contrast, repetition, alignment, and proximity. These principles are closely intertwined with each other and infrequently will they be applied as just one concept (Williams 13). These four basic principles tie back in with Hagen and Golombisky with their definition of graphic design and the placement of objects to help capture attention, control eye movement while conveying information and evoking emotions from the reader (Hagen 6). Successful document design will help to fill in the gaps between the previous knowledge that the comes in with and the information that they are supposed to take away from the work (Dirksen 208).
 

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