Designing your documents and presentations is like creating the the cover for your book - or giving a well designed product shelf appeal. If the product is confusing and unappealing - no one is going to get past the first page or pick it off the shelf. Especially in today's world where cutting through clutter is key, it's important for the writer/ researcher to have such a firm grasp on his/her material that they can easily pull out the important information and present it to their audience in a clear and effective way.
Different types of presentations will call for specific design needs. A oral presentation might call for a PowerPoint presentation to accompany it. TED talks are often great examples of this. Poster presentations call for supporting images and well laid out headings and subheadings - as do newspaper and magazine articles. Websites are another way to present your research which require well thought out design. When designing websites, use of color, images, and title bars are key elements. It's also important that any information on a website in never more that two clicks away - this insures a well-navigated.
One thing I observed is that oral presentations were given more thought to audience engagement than other types of presentations. Here Bedford expresses the need for clarity, humor, catchy opening lines... The fact is, I think all written articles should be approached this same way. I think if an article would loose it's audience is read out loud, that article isn't ideally constructed.
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