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Guidelines for contributors |
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We welcome texts that are about design for reading and reading-related research. |
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If you are pondering the idea of writing something for Design Regression, please get in touch. We welcome texts that are about design for reading and reading-related research. This entails articles on the reading process, typography, typeface design, lettering, multilingualism, information design, the social context of a designer, or visual literacy. While we leave discussing strictly historical perspectives to others, we may consider texts on recent history. In order to accommodate different approaches, we accept articles at different levels of formality, from research reports and serious essays to “just an idea”.
We try to summarize our expectations and reviewing process in the following paragraphs. You do not need to worry about the correct formatting for your abstract, but would appreciate you following our guidance in your draft article. Please consider that the published article will be licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International licence (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0).
We are looking for writing using clear and simple language, to reach a wide readership. If you send us an abstract (500 words) to [email protected], we will indicate our interest if we think it may be suitable and request a full draft. You should hear back from us within two weeks.
Suitable draft articles will be reviewed by a single reviewer, normally a member of the Design Regression team. If we do not feel competent to assess an article, we will invite feedback from an external reviewer. We will use an open peer review process such that authors and reviewers are aware of each other’s identity.
Although we will not be using a strict set of criteria for reviewing, the following may be useful as general guidance.
We will consider the quality of the content including, where relevant:
- strength of argument
- accuracy
- originality
- awareness of relevant literature or practice
- use of appropriate methods/data analysis
- validity of conclusions
- interest
We will also consider the quality of the writing, looking for:
- clarity
- avoiding unnecessary jargon
We will proof read and edit the final copy. The target word count for the article is a maximum of around 2000 words.
You can send us your draft article as a MS Word or PDF. The source files of figures will be required whether or not you embed your figures in the Word/PDF document.
- all figures should be referred to from the text, be numbered and have captions
- list all your captions in a separate text file
- captions can contain bibliographic references
- captions can contain references to sidenotes, but it is easier if they do not
- vector graphics should ideally be provided in individual PDF files (we will convert them to SVG for use on the website)
- for plots, please provide values (data points) and we will generate the plots ourselves. We are using a Javascript library to do this live on the website, so the readers can review the values conveniently.
- for photos and other bitmaps, provide as high resolution as possible in a JPG with minimal compression (best quality setting). We will optimize them for the website ourselves. Unless you really need to use colour, we prefer black and white photos as these fit best with our website design.
- when taking website screenshots, take a screenshot of the content, do not include the browser window. We will add a simplified browser window around it using our website styles.
We are using APA 7th style guidelines. The full details are available online but you might find this quick summary helpful for the basics.
Use headings to identify the content within sections and make these descriptive and concise.You can use up to five levels of heading, but three would be preferable in our case.
Up to 40 words, use double quotation marks, and add the page number with the in-text citation (Jones, 2011, p. 5).
Use the author/date citation system with the author’s surname and date and the full reference at the end. Citations can be in parentheses or incorporated into the text.
Smith (2008) reported that authors prefer clear guidance on formatting their references.
or
Authors prefer clear guidance on formatting their references (Smith, 2008).
or
In 2008, Jones found that authors prefer clear guidance on formatting their references.
Where there are multiple sources, order these alphabetically and separate them with a semi-colon:
Authors prefer clear guidance on formatting their references (Jones, 2010; Smith, 2008).
Where there are multiple authors, use first author et al. for 3 or more authors:
In interviews with graphic designers, Brown et al. (2021) found that some were drawing even before they could walk.
For two authors, use ‘and’ when incorporated into the text; use an ampersand when in parentheses:
Smith and Jones (2000) explored reader’s preferences for writing styles. Reader’s preferences for writing styles have been explored (Smith & Jones, 2000).
Author, A. A., & Author, B. B. (Year). Title of the article. Name of the Periodical, volume(issue), page–range. DOI or URL where available
Beier, S., & Larson, K. (2013). How does typeface familiarity affect reading performance and reader preference? Information Design Journal, 20(1), 16–31. https://doi.org/10.1075/idj.20.1.02bei
Author, A. A., & Author, B. B. (Copyright Year). Title of the book (edition.). Publisher. DOI or URL if available.
Rayner, K., & Pollatsek, A. (1989). The psychology of reading. (1st ed.). Lawrence Erlbaum.
Nielsen, J. (2000). Designing web usability: The practice of simplicity. New Riders Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1002/1520-6564(200124)11:1%3C73::AID-HFM6%3E3.0.CO;2-7
Within the text, cite the author of the chapter, not the editor of the book. In reference: Author, A. A., & Author, B. B. (Copyright Year). Title of the book chapter. In A. A. Editor & B. B. Editor (Eds.), Title of the book (2nd ed., pp. #–#). Publisher. DOI or URL
Morrison, R. E. (1983). Retinal image size and the perceptual span in reading. In K. Rayner (Ed.), Eye movements in reading: Perceptual and language processes (pp. 31–40). Academic Press. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-583680-7.X5001-2
You will find further reference examples on the APA website.