Graphic Design is the Key to Effective Plans

Open a planning document and you’re greeted with more than words — you’re entering a designed experience. Every margin, line, and header quietly guides how you move through the information. When design is intentional, it transforms complexity into understanding. When it’s not, even the best ideas can get lost in translation.  

When you open a planning document, what do you see first? Lots of text? Dense tables? Maybe maps? What you might not notice right away is how the design behind that content affects how you think and feel about it. Before we process information consciously, our brains make hundreds of tiny visual judgments: Is this clear? Is it trustworthy? Is it worth my attention? These snap reactions happen in milliseconds — shaped by color, typography, and layout. Good graphic design for documents isn’t just decoration, it’s a tool for clarity, persuasion, and cognitive engagement. 

At The Schreifer Group, we design each deliverable from scratch in partnership with our clients – font styles, colors, images, and layouts are all vetted to ensure that the documents are striking the desired tone and style. Here’s how we use graphic design to make effective, useful products for our clients. 

The Science of Design: How Visual Choices Influence Thought 

Design choices, from typography to layout, play a measurable role in how information is interpreted. The font, spacing, and contrast of text influences people’s belief in a statement, even if the actual content was identical. One study found that readers believed a sentence in high-contrast black-on-white more than in low contrast. Further, when participants read a question in the more informal “Brush Script” typeface vs. a regular “Arial,” a far greater percentage of the “Brush Script” group spotted the “trick” in the question (~40% vs ~6%). The conclusion: typography isn’t just style. It influences how we think. 

Fonts influence the way we think about the content that is being presented. 

Similarly, fonts evoke emotion and meaning (serif typefaces suggest tradition/trust, sans-serif typefaces invokes clarity/modernity, script fonts feel whimsical). The emotional response is driven not only by what’s said, but by how it looks. 

Fonts carry emotion before words do. What emotions do the above fonts evoke to you? 

In federal planning or programming documents, where decisions are made based on reading these materials, design becomes a strategic asset. If the reader is slowed down by poor legibility or mismatched style, critical thinking may either be impaired or go off track. 

How Graphic Design Enhances Understanding 

Technical plans, whether for installations, infrastructure, or strategy, are read by stakeholders, leaders, and subject-matter experts. Strong design helps all of these readers in several ways: 

• Visual clarity: By guiding the eye through hierarchy, spacing, and layout, readers can navigate the document more easily. Improper spacing and cramped text can trigger a negative reaction. 

The spacing and hierarchy in this Table of Contents help guide the reader’s eye from the most important information to the least. 

• Appropriate tone: Design (choices of fonts, alignment, color) sets the tone. A plan discussing serious mission impacts warrants fonts and layouts that convey authority and trust—serif or clean sans-serif, clear contrast, consistent spacing. Using overly decorative elements could undermine perceived credibility. 

The curvilinear design elements on this cover page evoke creativity and modernism, and nod to NASA's brand identity as a future-facing organization, while the serif typefaces keep the design rooted in the professionalism, trust, and seriousness one would expect from a government agency. 

• Cognitive flow: When design aligns with meaning (for example, showing “growth” with upward trend visuals, “risk” with cautionary color systems), readers don’t need to fight the format to get the meaning. Congruence between font and message improves reading speed and comprehension.  

The arrows on this page guide the reader’s eye downward, creating a natural and intuitive cognitive flow. 

• Emotional engagement: Design can be used to evoke confidence, urgency, and clarity. If the design makes the reader feel the importance and relevance of the plan, you have a better chance of achieving buy-in. 

The above quote emotionally engages the reader by tying the plan document’s purpose to NASA’s broader missions. 

Tailoring Design to Purpose and Audience 

Not every deliverable needs to be flashy—some documents are deeply technical and need precision and legibility. Others are conceptual in nature, designed to persuade leadership or shape long-term vision. When approaching graphic design for planning documents, consider: 

• Audience: Are you addressing leadership who may scan visuals quickly? Or are you preparing a detailed appendix for engineers? Layout, headings, and visuals adjust accordingly. 

• Purpose: Do you need to drive action, build consensus, or present data plainly? For action-oriented briefs, you’ll emphasize visual impact; for analytical reports, you’ll emphasize clarity and depth. 

• Content style: Is this a concept renderings-heavy piece? Or a table-rich operational plan? Design must flexibly adapt—conceptual renderings might benefit from layered visuals, bold typography, and clean infographics; data tables might need anchored icons, color-coded elements, and a consistent grid layout. 

Even text-heavy pages can feel clean, open, and inviting with the right design. Here, the alignment of elements and deliberate use of white space are carefully employed to create rhythm and visual balance. Large images and clear text hierarchy aid reader wayfinding. The design aims to improve wayfinding and approachability, resulting in a report that easily conveys a lot of information without exhausting the reader.

• Visual story: Every document has a story that the reader must navigate. For example, your plan could need to convey: mission baseline → gaps → recommendations → benefits. Just as street signs help someone navigate a new place (i.e., wayfinding), graphic design helps map a story visually so readers can follow the logic without getting lost in raw text. 

  
  

Putting Psychology into Practice 

Graphic design operates at the intersection of aesthetics and cognition — it’s not about picking fonts or colors at random, but about shaping how information is perceived and processed. The goal is to guide attention and support comprehension, not overwhelm the reader with decoration. 

1. Design for cognitive rhythm. Good documents have a visual rhythm — a sense of pacing created through spacing, alignment, and repetition. When the rhythm feels natural, the brain reads more efficiently and retains more information. When it’s cluttered or inconsistent, the reader’s attention drifts. Typography and layout are the voice and cadence of a document. They carry tone before content is processed.  

2. Optimize spacing and contrast. Low contrast or cramped text can reduce perceived credibility. Use generous margins, comfortable line spacing, and high contrast to boost legibility and trust. 

3. Visual hierarchy is key. Use headings, subheadings, bullet lists, numbered lists, and short paragraphs (as the style guide recommends) to help engage the reader, guide them through the logic, and highlight important points. There’s a psychological “sweet spot” where design feels both accessible and credible. 

The hierarchy of this page (including subheadings, headings, leading lines, and a numbered list) guides the reader through the most important elements first.  

4. Match visuals to meaning. It can be tempting to insert a chart because you have data. Instead, choose a visual format that reinforces the concept: trends, comparisons, frameworks, etc. And align the design style (color palette, iconography, layout) to the audience’s expectations. 

This graphic pairs visual cues with meaning using a green–yellow–red legend to show land ranging from easiest to develop to most difficult to develop. 

5. Maintain consistency. Using consistent page layouts, table styles, icon styles, and typography across sections or deliverables reinforces professionalism and reduces cognitive load for the reader. Repeated alignment, color systems, and typographic rhythms tell the reader: “This was intentional.” Consistency is trust in visual form. 

The Takeaway 

In the world of planning – especially when addressing military, federal, or agency leadership – how you communicate matters as much as what you say. Good graphic design isn’t a frill. It’s part of the cognitive architecture of a document: it shapes how your reader processes information, builds trust in your recommendations, and follows your story. 

The Schreifer Group's talented team of graphic designers thoughtfully customize every product to ensure it effectively meets our clients' needs. Whether it be a compelling rendering, detailed report, or quick-read summary, we leave no stone unturned when it comes to creating beautiful, functional work.  When we integrate the psychological underpinnings of typography, layout, and design into our deliverables, we aren’t just creating something pretty—we are creating something that works. For every page we design, we think: “How will the reader feel? How will they interpret this? Will the message land clearly and confidently?” 

If you’d like to talk through how excellent graphic design can support your next federal planning or programming document – whether it’s heavily graphic, technically dense, or somewhere in between, contact us at info@theschreifergroup.com – our team is ready to convey your content professionally and effectively.