All of us as students want our work to look presentable. Whether it’s done by the type of font setting you use, to the page setup, or even if it’s as simple as adding pictures, they all make our work look more presentable if done right. This is not the most important thing to keep in mind when it comes to your work, making sure the content and grammar is on track is step one. The design phase is what should follow after.
Michael J. Klein and Kristi L. Shackelford discussed document design in Beyond Black on White: Document Design and Formatting in the Writing Classroom. They discussed that they use an acronym CRAP, which stands for contrast, repetition, alignment, and proximity. These are the four key design elements in a piece of work. Before reading this I had never heard of the acronym before and I feel that it is something that is handy to use in order to stay on the right track when looking at the design aspect of things.
Melanie Gagich discusses different modes of communication in An Introduction to and Strategies for Multimodal Composing. She explains that there is a visual mode, linguistic mode, spatial mode, gestural mode, and aural mode. Each mode aims to work towards a goal for example, the gestural mode is mostly used in speeches by an individual moving their hands or fixing their facial features to get a point across. She explains that these modes help you learn digital literacy skills.
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