Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.
—LEONARDO DA VINCI
THE WAY OUR INFORMATION IS PRESENTED can be just as important as the actual words we use. Of course, if we have a publisher who will be looking after all the design decisions, we won’t have to worry if our thousand- page manuscript is typed single-spaced with quarter-inch margins and only first-line paragraph indention. But what if we are publishing our materials ourselves?
Poor layout can really deter readers from even starting, while good layout can help a document look interesting enough to encourage reading. It can also make it easier for readers to find the information they want. Obviously, graphic design is a huge topic and I can do little more than touch on various aspects here.
Probably the single most important thing is not to be afraid to play around a bit with your document. The computer has made this very easy. You can change fonts, line spacing and margins; try various styles for headings and subheadings; add pictures; rearrange the order of your information or the colours you are using. Have some fun. You will learn what you like as you experiment. But please, having done that, end up with something that is not fussy.
If you’ve written a lengthy instruction manual, your readers likely will not be ploughing straight through it from start to finish. Instead, they will probably be referring directly to particular parts or browsing around. So we need to include a complete table of contents at the beginning, and maybe also an index at the end which people can use to find a particular word or section.
Depending on the purpose of the manual, readers may be using it in a workplace with poor lighting, or while leaning under the hood of their car on a dark night. We cannot all do our reading in a comfy chair with a reading light focused right on the page. Sidebars (those wee boxes with information that is interesting or funny but not essential to the main text) are useful for letting people see that these parts can be left to read later (or not at all).
Headings and subheadings
Try to break the contents down into chapters and sections, and clearly mark
these with concisely worded headings or subheadings. Keep the type style
of these consistent throughout. This means choosing where you will place
the heading (centre, left and so on) and where you will use capital letters.