Viewing 11 posts - 1 through 11 (of 11 total)
  • Please help make my Word document less 1970s
  • sl2000
    Full Member

    My wife works in the NHS as a palliative care doctor.

    She needs to get a leaflet-style MS Word document widely disseminated around the hospital.

    It looks very dated and boring…


    pcleaflet by sl2000, on Flickr

    …and she was hoping that I could improve it a bit. Problem is I work in IT and can only make things look like I’m told rather than coming up with a nice design.

    We’d both be very much obliged if any of the more designery types here could take a look and see if there’s some simple improvements I could make.

    Palliative Care is not a well-funded speciality, so there’s no money either from the hospital or drugs reps to pay someone to do this.

    I’ve put the document on dropbox: anonymised eolc document.docx.

    CaptJon
    Free Member

    This could be fun depending what mood the graphic designers are in.

    slowoldman
    Full Member

    Hmm, someone I used to work with would make that look like an explosion in a font factory. I think it looks OK.

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    geoffj
    Full Member

    Communication not decoration
    Looks ok to me
    IANAD

    probably does need some pie charts though.

    wallop
    Full Member

    Just use fewer capitalised words.

    scaredypants
    Full Member

    Looks fine, but a unicorn and a rainbow can brighten any document – fo’ sho’

    brokenbanjo
    Full Member

    Replace the words with a phallus.

    project
    Free Member

    IDENTIFY= A patient is a real person somebodies family, freind or workmate, They have cancer,and dont have long to live.

    Undertake multi disciplinary team assesment, get everyone together who will be involbved with treatment of the person who is dying and chat about the treatments /outcomes.

    Document, Write things down and give a copy to close relatives.

    Re evaluate, chat to family, person who is dying and other staff frequently, make them aware of what is going to happen and how it is happening.

    Been there and its not a nice place to be, staff training for all on how to talk to dying patients and relatives helps,as does some compassion.

    No need for fancy words and long drawn out appraisals.

    muppetWrangler
    Free Member

    I would have thought the nhs would have a full set of design guidelines that are supposed to be used for all literature, you could start by getting hold of a copy of that.

    sl2000
    Full Member

    I would have thought the nhs would have a full set of design guidelines that are supposed to be used for all literature, you could start by getting hold of a copy of that.

    There are some resources eg http://www.nhsidentity.nhs.uk/tools-and-resources/patient-information mainly around external comms – but nothing for how to produce internal literature.

    If you all think this looks fine then that’s fab – we’ll leave as is (after taking out some capital letters).

    bonchance
    Free Member

    Suggestions:
    (Always) Reduce word count
    Pose short questions for headers. It should be immediately clear why/when to read.
    Support with examples (the explanations)
    Is the officialese appropriate?
    Crib a good example (flu pandemic got a lot of press last few days)

    Questions
    Is the up down flow repetition?
    If so replace with a circlular flow – this can also be your leading graphic. A stronger graphic could increase impact.

    If not what does it mean?

    Colour: Use either graduations if these are waypoints, or common signal colours to show hazard emphasis (red amber etc.).

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