Abstract
The author describes: (1) how desktop publishing requires documents to be designed; (2) how elements in documents communicate identity, unity, sequence, hierarchy, similarities and differences, and conventional meaning through visual characteristics like surrounding white space, size of font or element, value, placement, and orientation; (3) how information processing, graphic characteristics, and reading styles interact during reading to produce a visual hierarchy of document elements, and (4) how to use this information with desktop publishing to design efficient documents.< <ETX xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">></ETX>