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Ask a technical writing professor: Why does it matter how your document looks?

Amelia Chesley - Monday, April 3, 2023
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Why does the appearance of your document matter? Well, why does the appearance of anything matter? Sometimes it boils down to first impressions, and sometimes appearances and design are even more important elements of communication. While what we write about and the content of our message is often our biggest focus, even the best content won’t have the effect we might want it to have if its design makes it hard for people to read or understand.

Good document design (or any kind of design) means focusing on the users—the audience—and making information as easy to read and understand as possible for those users. If users can’t access the information, or it’s confusingly presented, then it won’t do them any good! Poor design can muffle or undercut the message you’re trying to send. Good design can enhance your message for maximum impact.

All kinds of documents need design
When I was an undergraduate student, I was amazed to learn just how much design was involved in even boring-looking documents. Sometimes document design is about making your work look “professional” and appropriate for an academic or business/workplace context—think about the expected formats for a resume and cover letter. Design also plays a role in the elements of APA or IEEE formatting—it's not just citation structure, but styling for titles, headings, spacing, and columns. How we design text can send its own message, on top of the message in the words themselves.

In other cases, document design is about attracting attention and making your work aesthetically pleasing. Examples of this abound in marketing and advertising. You’ve probably seen this kind of design at work with flyers and posters around campus. Why such things are so important is somewhat obvious and yet not. I suppose as humans we value elements of design and beauty even in the most benign and meaningless parts of our lives.

In your writing, you might think about design from a variety of angles--

Text: what typeface(s) will you use? What sizes? What kind of spacing and organization of paragraphs makes sense for your purpose?

Spacing: how wide are the margins? How much space will you use between lines, between words? How much space between sections and section headings?

Color: does your document need color? What colors will look good together? Are you using color contrast in effective ways?

Shapes: are there important symbols or icons readers will need to understand throughout your document? will there be borders or backgrounds to think about? what style of bullet points will you use?

Images: will you include images, charts, or graphs? What style(s)? Will these be in color or black and white? Do they need labels, numbers, captions, or borders? How will images interact with the rest of the document?

Don’t leave design to the end
Often we worry about content first and only think about how to “make things look pretty” at the very end of our writing or composing process. Sometimes this works out okay, but other times the context, medium, and purpose of a document will mean its design will influence content (and not the other way around).

Whether the stylistic and design elements of your work will be dictated by an outside party (your professor or a professional organization, for example) or you will be making your own design decisions, both form and function are worth considering from the very beginning of your writing process.




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