Plumbing the depths of Design

When working from home, I take the dog and half an hour for a walk at lunchtime. A couple of days ago, we saw a heron, lazily flapping through the sky en route to snack on someone's Koi pond. One of the many benefits of a short daily walking holiday is the opportunity to unhook your brain for a few minutes and let it make random connections. Dog, heron, carp, document design: what could be more natural?

If you

1. produce documents of any sort
2. are not a trained designer and 
3. have not yet seen Jon Moon's work,

then you would profit from his book or the templates freely available on his site. He recommends and illustrates four simple principles: Contrast, Repetition, Alignment and Proximity. Which suggests an obvious fishy acronym. Being British, Jon naturally went for the toilet alternative. That's just the way we are wired.

Or plumbed.