Chapter Lessons

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To communicate effectively, technical communicators must understand how to use page design elements and graphics. To use them effectively you should:

Understand the eight conventions of visual perception and design the pages with the reader in mind.
Establish visual hierarchies of information on document pages using a page layout grid, well-chosen type sizes and styles, ragged right margins, numbered lists, bulleted lists, and icons.
Consider using graphic illustrations based on the purposes they serve and on how well they work together with the text.
Understand the purposes that different types of graphics---figures, line drawings, charts and graphs, and tables---serve and how to fit them into the text.
Understand how to design effective graphics for Web pages.

If you're designing a document for use in other cultures, consider how other cultures perceive colors and icons, depict graphics of people as generic figures that diminish race and gender, and keep in mind that other cultures have modes of perception that differ from your way of seeing.

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