Exercise 7j - What Difference Does Design Make

Cassidy Trom's paper most resembles a magazine article in terms of layout and design. It is written as a sort of expose on Generation X and what is often associated with their time of youth. Like a magazine article, it incorporates pictures dispersed throughout for visual interest. Trom also captions the pictures and appropriately credits the sources. She also uses larger and a different style of font both in her title, which adorns every page, and to emphasize certain aspects of the topic and accent her paper, again adding visual interest. For instance, she explains how "artists used their popularity as a stage for their unruly behavior" and the difference in its style from the body text makes the reader stop and look at it for a second longer.

Because it looks like a magazine article, one might have more inclination to read it. Magazines typically cater to specific audiences, in that, they spend money on observing the type of people that buy their magazine so thus, the article must at least have something in it that concerns them. With an essay, the typical reader is more likely to shrug it off as something that was just assigned and written because it had to be.

I feel that because it is laid out in a more appealing way than the ordinary english paper, it would be more likely to be read by someone other than a teacher. Flipping through it, I was glad that it was five pages of text (in differing fonts) and pictures, rather than a straitlaced times new roman five paragraph essay. If reformatted to look more like a typical paper, I think it would lose that initial appeal. It would still be a well written, interesting essay but it would lose that hook of visual appeal that attracts and keeps many readers.