Microsoft Office Document Designer and a New Blogger

I just finished reading an interesing book called Microsoft Office Document Designer: Your Easy-to-Use Toolkit and Complete How-To Source for Professional-Quality Documents by Stephanie Krieger. I don't usually read Office books intended for the average Office user but this book caught my interest. Why?

First, this book is a combination toolkit and a book. It includes a CD with an Add-in for Office that  helps you carrry out the techniques discussed in the book. This isn't a new idea in the IT world, but not one we often see for the average Office User (a.k.a. my mother and your mother).

Second, this book focuses on the visual layout, clarity and design of documents we produce in Office. I don't care how long a person has been using Office, as most of us don't do a good job with document presentation. So I enjoyed the practical guidance that leveraged my existing knowledge about Office to better use fonts, spacing, tables and other common Office features to create compelling documents.

One final thing I personally found useful was a color chart in the back of the book. The chart provides a list of colors that work well together to create an overall effective color theme.

The author Stephanie Krieger has a blog where she talks further about the concepts presented in her book.