Using Graphics to your Advantage
From techwriting
[http://www.wikihow.com/Edit-a-Graphic-Based-Project ]
How to edit a graphic-based project:
Accompanying a project, presentation, or what have you with graphics can make or break it. Here are some pointers to keep you on track! This is meant to be a guide for editing a project after it has already been created. Once you are done with your project and ready to move on to these steps, take at least an hour of downtime where you do not look at it. This will allow you to edit it with a clearer, less absorbed mind.
1.) Feeling is crucial. How do you want your project to look when it's done? Is is a presentation about earthquakes so you want things to look like they are crumbling and sinking? Is it about deserts, so looking abandoned and desolate is appropriate? Keep your general tone and feeling in mind when editing your project. Everything needs to be tailored to its own needs; when you are making the project, you are the one that needs to design those needs.
2.) Look at your document; does it “lean” to one side? Is there a heap of white space that draws the eye away from your content? Are there too many photos in one area and too much text in another? Are pictures sized so that they draw the right kind of attention, but do not hog the page?
3.) If you glance at it, what grabs your attention right away? It should, if you're going with a traditional formatting style, lock right on either the main title or a picture (depending on your applications). If your focus strays elsewhere, consider different layout or changing title fonts. Also look at your picture size and make sure that step two is still in check.
4.) Are you working with color or in grayscale? If you are working with color, a triadic color scheme is recommended (that which uses colors a third of the color wheel apart from one another, i.e. red, yellow, and blue). Monochromatic color schemes can also look good. Using a few shades of the same hue will almost always compliment each other and highlight items without dominating a page. Take a look at facebook. It is a simple design, clean, yet all the right places call for your attention. All of that done with just a few shades of blue and some white.
5.) Look at your margins for a second (if you have any). Do they draw focus from the body of your piece? Are they disproportionate to the rest of your document? If margins are too small, it makes a project look bunched up and cluttered often, but gaping margins make the viewer get lost in the white space.
6.)Proportions are important with design. Take a look at your heading breaks, paragraphs, picture placements, etc. and make sure that they don't look funky. As a general rule, paragraphs sharing a page should be of approximately the same size. If you really want to be careful with proportions, follow the age-old Golden Ratio (1:1.618). It has been shown that shapes utilizing this proportion are extremely pleasing to the human eye.
7.) When you are done editing the first time through, take another at least hour-long break to get a fresh mindset on your project. Go back through and check for these things again. Make sure that you have not compromised one aspect of your project to allow for another one. Be sure that the order in which your project is presented makes sense based on its context and applications. Finally, make sure you like it. Acommidating your subject is different than smothering your creative voice.
