Design of the environmental impact statement

In this position paper, I analyze the design of the environmental impact statement. I begin by describing the regulatory, genre and audience requirements for this type of technical communication document. Next, I describe four theories of visual design-supra-textual design, metadiscourse, page layout, and typography. I compare and contrast the visual layout of two representative documents against these four theoretical concepts. My goals are to determine if these two documents comply with regulatory requirements for layout, page limit, and readability and to identify the dominant stylistic features of these two documents. In summary, one of two documents met the regulatory requirements for design. With regards to stylistic features, both provided dense blocks of text, although one was more readable than the other. Neither document uses colors or graphics effectively. One offers a better page design, and both use typefaces effectively. I suggest that government agencies allow the visual design of this genre to evolve to better support the needs of the reader.