Document design is the field concerned with creating texts, that is books, pamphlets, posters and others that integrate words and pictures in ways that help people to achieve their specific goals for using texts at home, school, or work.
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The documents below demonstrate different types of writing or writing for different purposes.
Pearson Education (2005). Resources>Business Communication>Document Design
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The truth about PageMaker's not-so-secret life in the office.
Nordling, Tamis and Wendy Katz. Adobe Magazine (1998). Design>Document Design>Software>Adobe PageMaker
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Moving from Unstructured to FrameMaker Plus DITA
This page provides some answers to the question 'What resources would you recommend for someone moving from unstructured Frame to Frame+DITA?' Carla Martinek, Translation Coordinator/Editor, started making this list in response to a CMS question on the FrameMaker+DITA listserv, and thought it would be worth sharing.
KeyContent.org (2006). Resources>Document Design>Software>Adobe FrameMaker
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Much Ado about Nothing, Part 2: Deconstructing a Page 
In a continuation of his January column, Hart sheds some light on page layout and design—and gives color to a seemingly “black-and-white” concept.
Hart, Geoffrey J.S. Intercom (2008). Design>Document Design>Visual Rhetoric
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Much Ado about Nothing, Part I: The Importance of White Space
White space is a paradox: by definition it contains no information, yet it clearly communicates despite lack of content. Hart describes how to incorporate white space into the information design process.
Hart, Geoffrey J.S. Intercom (2008). Articles>Document Design
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Multi-Column Layouts Climb Out of the Box
A project I recently worked on required an elastic layout with two columns of equal height, each with a different background color. As usual, there was no way to tell which column would be taller. I immediately thought of Dan Cederholm's Faux Columns, but I needed an elastic layout. I also looked at the One True Layout, but this seemed buggy and required too much extra markup and too many hacks for my taste.
Pearce, Alan. List Apart, A (2007). Design>Web Design>Document Design>CSS
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New Uses for Old Clipping Paths
No one enjoys drawing clipping paths (or, if they do, they rarely admit it in public). The transparency features in Adobe® InDesign® spare you the headaches of drawing clipping paths because the program honors background transparency in Adobe Photoshop® files. However, there are still times when a clipping path comes in handy, so don’t throw the Bézier out with the bathwater.
Blatner, David. Adobe (2004). Design>Document Design>Software>Adobe InDesign
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Newsletter Design for Non-Designers
Newsletter design comprises everything from column width and typeface to clip art style and paper color--where do you start? You don’t need to be a graphic artist to design an appealing newsletter—but you need to know the basic principles and how to apply them consistently. Consciously or not, every time you read something, you make judgments about its design. Was it easy to read or skim? Did the artwork seem appropriate? Were the page numbers easy to locate? In this workshop we will review these and other design elements and how to make them work for your newsletter.
Disch, Cheryl and Cheryl Lockett Zubak. STC Proceedings (1995). Articles>Document Design>Publishing>Newsletters
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One of the most frequent problem areas I encounter in the publishing field is when editors, writers and, yes even business people are expected to turn out a good newsletter. If my car isn't running right, I take it to the mechanic. I don't expect the car wash to fix the motor any more than I expect the mechanic to give it a wash and wax. Rare are the instances where the writer or editor is also a good designer and/or typographer. Yet they're almost always restricted by the software they use, the availability of good clip art or images, and the time to think about the details. I'm going to restrict myself to just the initial visual and organizational points in this critique. We could spend days talking about minutiae and the array of options involved in a full scale makeover. What I'll do is share some quick and easy areas where a simple fix will make a big difference.
Showker, Fred. Design, Typography and Graphics (2002). Design>Document Design>Graphic Design>Newsletters
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No More Lost Work, No Matter What You Use!
Create file versions on the Adobe Web Workgroup Server using your favorite Adobe application. Restore any version using Adobe GoLive.
Adobe (2003). Articles>Software>Document Design>Adobe GoLive
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Some unexpected ways that Adobe Acrobat software can help with design and publishing tasks.
Kvern, Olav Martin. Adobe Magazine (1995). Design>Document Design>Software>Adobe Acrobat
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One Hundred and One Spots, or How Do Users Read Menus?
Proceedings of a paper about how readers interact with designed documents.
Aaltonen, Antti, Aulikki Hyrskykari and Kari-Jouko Raeihae. Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (1998). Articles>Document Design>Interaction Design>Usability
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Picking the right strength characteristics when you're buying paper can determine whether your job holds up on press, in the mail, or in your customers' hands.
Sidles, Constance J. Adobe Magazine (1997). Articles>Document Design>Prepress>Paper
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Open Directory Project: Desktop Publishing
A directory of dozens of online resources in desktop publishing.
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OpenType fonts act just like PostScript Type 1 or TrueType fonts in programs like Microsoft® Word or QuarkXPress, but Adobe® InDesign® can perform special tricks with them, such as replacing characters with swashes (fancy versions of a letter), or with ligatures for character pairs such as “ct” and “ffi.” InDesign ships with several OpenType fonts, including Adobe Garamond® Pro, Adobe CaslonTM Pro, Caflisch Pro, and Kozuka Mincho Pro (a Japanese typeface).
Kvern, Olav Martin and David Blatner. Adobe (2004). Design>Typography>Document Design>Adobe InDesign
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Opening PDF Documents in Full Screen Mode
Adobe Acrobat allows users to configure the opening settings of PDF documents to display them in full screen mode. It's as effective as a PowerPoint display and very easy to accomplish. This tip explains how.
Shea, Dan. PlanetPDF (2007). Articles>Document Design>Software>Adobe Acrobat
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Thumbnails are minature representations of an image or page. They provide a convenient way to electronically "thumb" through many images/pages before retrieving the one you need. In this experiment, we measured subjects' recognition speed to thumbnails of five sizes.
SHORE (1997). Design>Document Design>Information Design
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Optimize Adobe PDF Files for Palm OS Devices 
You can read any Adobe® PDF document on a Palm OS® device by simply dragging the file into the Adobe Acrobat Reader for Palm OS application window. But if you want to optimize the PDF file for the best possible display on a handheld device, combine the power of Adobe Acrobat® 5 with Microsoft® Office 2000 or later.
Adobe (2003). Design>Document Design>Software>Adobe Acrobat
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An Overview of Desktop Publishing
The mission of Designorati:Desktop Publishing is to provide the knowledge, tips and tricks that can help you in your day to day work.
Bruno, Elisabetta. Designorati (2005). Design>Document Design
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Acrobat lets you 'pack' fonts into a PDF in three basic ways: by fully embedding, subsetting, or not embedding them. Each method differently affects a PDF file's size, editability, and typographic fidelity.
Patrick, Teri and Tamis Nordling. Adobe Magazine (1998). Design>Document Design>Typography>Adobe Acrobat
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Page Design: Directing the Reader's Eye
Sevilla discusses principles of effective page design and techniques that ensure consistent document layout.
Sevilla, Christine. Intercom (2002). Articles>Document Design>Visual Rhetoric
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All Web pages should be structured for ease of comprehension. This includes putting items on the page in an order that reflects their relative importance. Designers should place important items consistently, usually toward the top and center of the page. All items should be appropriately aligned on the pages. It is usually a good idea to ensure that the pages show a moderate amount of white space—too much can require considerable scrolling, while too little may provide a display that looks too 'busy.' It is also important to ensure that page layout does not falsely convey the top or bottom of the page, such that users stop scrolling prematurely.
Usability.gov (2006). Design>Web Design>Document Design
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Page Layout and Sample Designs in Full Color Manuals for Japanese Users
Compared to American users, Japanese users have a tendency to prefer visually intensive manuals. This is especially true for the fill-color manual of the color copier which I am responsible for, as can be seen from the many requests and comments regarding the presentation of examples, how color is used, and the layout, It is my intent to introduce the tastes of Japanese manual readers by explaining the improvements that have been made to the visual aspects of the fill-color manual for one of our color copiers.
Mizukami, Rieko. STC Proceedings (1997). Design>Documentation>Document Design>Japan
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A collection of dozens of links to online resources in page layout and desktop publishing.
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Opening somebody else's PageMaker publication? Here's an explorer's guide to the discoveries and dangers that may be lurking.
Kvern, Olav Martin. Adobe Magazine (1996). Design>Document Design>Software>Adobe PageMaker
