Beauty is in the Presentation of Documents

According to researchers and scientists from Xerox and the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT), there's a certain eye-appeal and measure of intent that users have to create for their documents to achieve interest and attention.

The aesthetic appearance of the document is as significant as that of the words it carries. Investigation is being done to prove that "intent" and the impact of cross-media design are important elements that a document has to carry in order to attain a smooth integration of paper and digital displays. A research fellow from Xerox argues that whatever the purpose, effectiveness of the document depends on characteristics such as design, comfort of the use of the technology by the users, whether it's easy to find the information, and feedback about the completion. Whether it’s a commercial for a juice drink in a touch screen monitor, or an ad for people to vote in the newspaper, nevertheless, the "intent" in any format is the same; that is, to produce action.

In a paper presented at the ACM Symposium on Document Engineering, researchers and scientists developed ways to quantify document properties such as aesthetics, as well as the concept of document intents. The paper identified 150 measurable value functions that a designer and artist can use to get the message across to the target recipients. The value functions include density of the text, colorfulness of the image, regularity of positioning of images, and diversity of font and typeface. However, the paper also suggested that "although style is measured in a large number of value properties, those can be clustered into a relatively small number of intents."

The implications in the field of automatic document conversion would then vary from one medium to another, as stated by the researchers. Although the intent is constant, the ways and means to convey that intent would therefore differ with the design, images, etc.

One of the intents of advertising is to capture attention. To utilize that intent, one advertisement would design it in large headlines in the newspaper; another form of advertisement, for example on the web, would have animation to get the attention of browsers and users; yet another advertisement would be displayed in a cellphone with voice and sound included. No matter the medium, the advertisement would only have one intent, and that is to tickle the curiosity of the target audience, and get them attracted enough to inquire and later on buy the product.

Another element that the researchers are looking at is the characteristic of having a universal intent and appearance that any type of medium would be able to display the document. They argued that with presentation methods constantly changing, "the diversity makes any single fixed output appearance obsolete." In their envisioned transformation matrix, a document prepared for one type of display space may be applied to another with still the same intent expressed accurately and automatically. Whether the document is transferred from one medium to another, the transformation matrix would be able to change the intent and appearance accurately and automatically to accommodate the new medium. With the new document layout, the researchers sought formulas that will calculate the aesthetics of a document no matter where it appeared.

In addition to this, the team of researchers has also indicated quantifiable factors that could produce aesthetically pleasing layouts—- alignment, regularity, uniform separation, balance, proportion of white space, height to width proportion, uniformity, and the position of small objects in the document so they don't appear to be falling off a page.

In conclusion, the researchers were quick to admit that although they have outlined the features that could help in providing a document that works and delivers the intent accurately, there are still other factors that could influence the aesthetic appearance. Nevertheless, they stand by the rules that they have developed to have yielded good results when applied to the problem of automatic document layout.

About U Printing

U Printing is an online printing company that offers four color process printing, digital printing, large format posters printing, and variable data printing. For inquiries log on to http://www.uprinting.com
###