Document Design Companion Series
This series focuses on the internal and external communication of medium-sized to multinational corporations, governmental bodies, non-profit organizations, as well as media, health care, educational and legal institutions, etc. <p>Monographs in the series cover aspects of (electronic) discourse – written, spoken and visual – combined with aspects of text quality (function, institutional setting, culture). They will be problem driven, methodologically innovative, and focused on effectivity of communication.</p> <p>Document Design is ‘designed’ for: information managers, researchers in discourse studies and organization studies, text analists, and communication specialists.</p><p>This series was discontinued after volume 7.</p>
-
-
Accessibility and Acceptability in Technical Manuals
More LessAccessibility and Acceptability in Technical Manuals is written for an audience with a general interest in readability studies, linguistics and technical writing. With the main emphasis on technical manuals the book is primarily targeted at those who have a special interest in the design and use of utility texts and how these texts are received and understood by a multifaceted audience. Accessibility is not a new research area and many explanations have been offered over the past years as to why non-experts often have difficulties in comprehending texts written by technological experts. This book offers a new approach to accessibility studies by exploring not only style, but also attitudes to style, by asking text consumers which style they prefer for different parts of the manual. A key role is played by the Systemic Functional Linguistics' notion of grammatical metaphor, a stylistic choice that is commonly used in technical literature. Grammatical metaphor — although apparently obstructing the comprehension process of some readers — is a common element in the preferred style that separates the ‘insiders’ from the ‘outsiders’. An explanation of this rather surprising result is offered by resorting to Critical Discourse Analysis.
-
-
-
Discourses of Post-Bureaucratic Organization
More LessThis book considers the discourses that come into play in organizational change. The book outlines the tensions that arise for people having to enact change, and analyzes the ways in which they position themselves in changing organizational environments. The book takes a social semiotic perspective on discourse, organization and change. Here, discourse encompasses not only the multi-modal resources that people mobilize in organizational (inter)action, but also the practices and transformative dynamics afforded by those resources. The organizational changes highlighted in the book revolve around three dimensions of work that are increasingly coming to the fore: participation, boundary-spanning and knowledging. These dimensions are explored through case studies, including a health planning project, an initiative to standardize work practices, and the tension between paper-based and IT-based reporting. The book addresses the relevance of this discourse perspective to organizational research more broadly, by investigating organization as a dynamic of ‘resemiotizations’.
Cover illustration by John Reid
-
-
-
Information and Document Design
More LessRecent research in information and document design explores research by presenting reports of actual research studies in information and document design. It specifically reports on ten studies in the areas of marketing communication (part one), functional communication (part two) and online communication (part three). An introduction places the research into a broader context and explores the different research traditions in the field. This publication is intended for researchers, who consider the different areas of study in information and document design and the different research traditions. The book is also interesting for professors and students in information and document design and related fields: it will serve as a guide in discussions during seminars on research on information and document design. Experienced practicing professionals in the field, who want to keep abreast of current developments in the field and should be prepared for upcoming ones, will benefit from this publication too.
-
-
-
Information Design
More LessThe goal of communication-oriented design of messages should always be clarity of communication. In information design the task of the sender is actually not completed until the receivers have received and understood the intended messages.
Information Design – An introduction includes chapters explaining verbo-visual communication, information and message design principles, design processes, and design tools. These chapters can be seen as a general framework for production of information and learning materials. Based on theories for verbo-visual communication this book presents several practial guidelines for the use of text, symbols, visuals, typography, and layout in information and learning materials.
Rune Pettersson is Professor of Information Design at the Department of Innovation, Design and Product Development (IDP) at Mälardalen University in Eskilstuna, Sweden.
-
-
-
Perspectives on Multimodality
More LessThis volume sign posts several paths of multimodality research and theory-building today. The chapters represent a cross-section of current perspectives on multimodal discourse with a special focus on theoretical and methodological issues (mode hierarchies, modelling semiotic resources as multiple semiotic systems, multimodal corpus annotation). In addition, it discusses a wide range of applications for multimodal description in fields like mathematics, entertainment, education, museum design, medicine and translation.
-
-
-
Reading and Writing Public Documents
More LessGovernments communicate with the public through all kinds of documents: forms, brochures, letters, policy papers, and so on. These public documents have an important role in any democracy and their design very much affects the efficiency with which governments can perform their tasks.
Document designers, linguists and other communication experts in the Netherlands have been studying public documents from a design point of view as well as empirically for decades. In this book, the most prominent of these researchers present the results of their work, collectively giving an overview of various recurring problems in government-to-public communication, and providing suggestions for problem solving.
-
-
-
Web Site Design is Communication Design
More LessWeb Site Design is Communication Design is written for practitioners, trainers, and students of Communication, Business, Information Science and Media Design.
This book is based on a series of case studies of web-site design processes in smaller and larger organizations, including Amazon and Microsoft. It offers a well-researched, reflective and thorough analysis of the activities undertaken, in combination with practical, real-life experiences of web-site designers and producers. It pays attention to the often complicated organizational context that web designers and producers have to work in, while they serve both bosses and target groups to their best intents. The importance of careful evaluation is stressed throughout the book and in the concluding checklists, which guide the practitioner through the design process, from initial idea through site maintenance and re-design.
-