Assignment 4: Visual Design Part II
Due February 28, 2002

Select a poor design (you can use the one you worked on before if you like).

I. Repeat the exercise you performed in Visual Design Part I, which I repeat below.

a) What is your sense of the rhetorical situation for each text? What do the writers want their readers to know or do? What will these readers do upon reading the text? What should they do?

b) What's your gut reaction to the design in everyday terms? What's your general sense of why it's not working?

c) Describe the texts in terms of Robin Williams's four principles--one by one--at first holding back on critique. What elements are grouped together NOW (proximity)? What elements stand out and draw your attention to them or compete for your attention (contrast)? What elements are repeated (typefaces, font styles, bolding, icons, images, and so forth)? What alignments are in place?

d) Evaluate the current design features and decisions. If proximity is not working, then why not? and so forth.

II. Now you're ready to re-design.

Fold a sheet of paper into four sections. Design four workable revisions. This is not quite the same as drafting--each one does not necessarily improve upon the next one. Instead, create four workable designs that you think adhere to the Williams principles. The reason I ask you to offer several possibilities is so that you'll know that no design problem has a single best solution. Instead, the principles of design may lead you to many viable alternatives.

Deliverables:
- a cover memo explaining whatever you want to explain to me about doing this assignment
- copy of the original design you're working with
- rhetorical analysis
- four-part makeover sheet
- indication of which makeover you'll be composing in Word
- electronically-composed document--print or digital turn in

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