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Document design theories these days (whether from experts or novices) seem to have a running theme: keep it simple and keep it clean. Steve Jobs made a career out of this idea, literally living by the old adage coined by the master Leonardo Da Vinci: “simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.”

Have you ever looked at a paper that your teacher handed you back, with her scribbles in red ink all over the page asking you to revise, and you didn’t have a clue what she meant? You’re seeing brackets and squigglies and letters with circles around them–it’s obvious she has a

Maybe it goes without saying, but every color has a place and purpose. There are times when you want bright, flashy colors and there are times when you should avoid them at all costs. As you begin working and designing with color, one of the first things you’ll want to

Résumés communicate a lot about us. When we turn in a résumé, employers assume a whole lot about who we are beyond just our job experiences. By the way we design, edit, organize, and include information, employers suddenly assume things, like how old we are, how hard we work, what’s

Learning to write well doesn’t come naturally for most people. In fact, good writing is a skill acquired over many years of practice and experimentation (and, typically, good writing is accompanied with a lot of reading) . But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t a few tricks you can do

Banned this week: selfie sticks and PowerPoint. That’s right, in the last couple days, news has spread across the globe that Disney Theme Parks are banning those wickedly popular three-foot selfie camera extensions. For safety, of course. And in other banning news? The Copenhagen Business School just banned PowerPoint from

It’s just a little comma, right? No biggie. Not like most people know the rules anyway! If this is your attitude towards those pesky little punctuation marks, you might want to take a second glance. Punctuation does more than you might think to writing: it changes pace of reading, it

  Do we ingest media like we ingest dessert–with binges in non-substantive material, with samplings of sugar-coated delicacies in favor of something with, say, a little more protein? Or vitamins? That’s the comparison James Madison University student Kathryn McDearis made in her “New Media Manisto”; her argument? We’re consuming media far

Due to popular demand and a large number of requests, I have finally adopted my “18 Rules for Using Text” post into 20×30 poster format! No matter what kind of document you produce–a memo, flier, brochure, proposal, PowerPoint–you should know the most fundamental rules for designing with text. This list