Articles for a GED course: Article 9: How do you write an email? What pieces do you HIGHLIGHT to make it easy for the reader to scan your message? How do you add visuals and graphics to support your message? What size font do you use?

TO THE GED STUDENT -- think about how I laid out this message. How did I communicate the main idea?

What is the main idea of this email message?

What part of the message is conveyed with examples and what part with images? How does font size play a role?

Hello Fred

I haven't seen your ebook yet. I want to share with you some of the "evolution of graphic design" that is spreading to schools and presentations in general (in business).

1. Seth Godin's rules for power point presentations

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2007/01/really_bad_powe.html

2. many ways of reaching various degrees of prior knowledge.

The basic concept is "we tend to learn the next thing on our horizon." If we have heard about the mouth's long term chemistry, then we will be concerned and eager to learn about how we can maintain the chemistry of our mouth. If we have never heard of the concept, it might take some additional information to get us interested in asking about "Well, what should I do between brushing and flossing?"

3. Is there a way to "break up" the text on a page?

If someone is scanning a book, flipping through pages, are there pages with boxes and quotes and photos, something for the eye to catch and glimpse while flipping trhought the pages?

What does the eye land on when the book is opened to a random page?

- A photo?

- A quote in 24 point?

- A series of small sub headlines?

- perhaps a graphic element that describes what the page is about?

I could have presented the above information in a solid paragraph… like this:

What does the eye land on when the book is opened to a random page?

A photo? A quote in 24 point? A series of small sub headlines? perhaps a graphic element that describes what the page is about?

I hope this info has been helpful. I've been loping at a PREZI that a European school is using and I thought, "This gives some good examples about how to engage a reader and it also can annoy the reader, so it might be helpful for Fred to see this while he's still designing his book."

Steve

here are some images from the PREZI