Designing + Referencing
Introduction – Using References For Accuracy
The conventions of academic presentation require that your work be supported by reference and citation. This means that you acknowledge the words and ideas of others, and upon which your own work stands. The appeal to other authors and their ideas makes your own work stronger by providing a supporting structure to your own efforts.
In practical terms, accurate referencing allows for the reader of your work to follow in your footsteps, locate the evidence, and come to the same conclusions…and to understand where your ideas have come from and how they have developed. In simple terms, accurate referencing provides for the trail of breadcrumbs or pebbles that allow others to follow your route…
The term for this is verifiability…Others can verify, or substantiate, your work through the simple process of following the same steps. This requirement is built-into the presentation of work.
This mechanism provides the basis of scientific methodology, and also applies to other forms of empirical methodology across various subjects and in the world of business.
Using References as a Design Tool
The contemporary conventions for academic referencing are also a form of design tool…Historically, academic referencing has involved footnotes and end-notes and a bibliography. This has tended to become confusing by requiring the reader to move from one form of text to another, and in different parts of the presentation. The old system also produced a page template with a number of different elements – body text and footnotes and headers and footers etc. And this simply looked cluttered. Consolidating this information into a unified template produces a tidy and coherent design for the page, which improves the user experience.
In-line referencing systems, like the Harvard system used across UAL, have been elaborated to provide the least interference to the flow of text. The name of the author and the page references are included, in-line and within brackets, as part of the main body of your text.
All of your reference material is listed, alphabetically by author surname, in the bibliography at the end of your text. The resulting page layout should be practical through its entirely logical organisation according to the functionality of reading. Because it is tidy and consistent, it will be seem better deigned from a user experience point-of-view.
De-cluttering the PageAlpha-Sorted Bibliography
According to the Harvard system, every reference is listed, in an alpha-sorted list, according to the surname of the author, and the date of publication. The Harvard conventions suggest, for both logic and practicality, that every reference be listed in a single unified list.
Your list should include all the material you have looked at in the preparation of your work.This form of bibliography works well when the list is mostly of books and periodicals; but it can become confusing when there are a number of other types of material referenced.If you are getting confused about how to unify the documentation of different kinds of reference material – just split the list so that books, journals, films, and websites appear in different sections. This will look tidier and will, therefore, work better.
The Harvard bibliography lists each reference by Author surname, initial, date-of-publication, title, publisher’s home town, publisher’s name. This can be expressed in simplified form as
Rennie P (2010) Modern British Posters London BDP
The removal of un-necessary punctuation makes for a much clearer list and makes for a better user-experience too.
Clem Crosby, from Academic Support, gave a very detailed presentation about the how the Harvard system works, and the logic that underpins its great flexibility. You can literally reference anything in a consistent and uniform way. The variety of material referenced has certainly got a lot wider as digital resources have grown.
Reference List and Bibliography
Clem mentioned the idea of a reference list at the end of a presentation. This is a list of the material you explicitly reference in your presentation. The bibliography is a list of all the material you have looked at and researched for your presentation.
For stage two undergraduate work, we require a bibliography to be attached to your work. You may add a reference list if you wish, but it is not required. The reference list is insufficient on its own, and must be supported by your wider bibliographical list.
In-line Reference
The idea of in-line referencing is equally straightforward…imagine that you are using an idea from a book by Paul Rennie, and that is described on page 10 of that book. You can reference that idea by placing (Rennie 2010.10) in the line of text just after you have mentioned the idea.
For Example
The poster was the first kind of image made to be seen from a distance, and whilst moving. The origins of the poster are therefore clearly associated with the acceleration of modern life within the modern 19C metropolis (Rennie 2010.10)There are two ways of using in-line citation…
As Background…
You can use in-line reference to identify the background of ideas from which you are summarising your argument. You can do this by simply referring to the various authors who have published material that you are using; for example, Rennie (2010) describes the poster as an important element in the development of social progress in Britain during the 20C.
As Foreground…
When you use a verbatim quote, you can add the additional precision required through the inclusion of a specific page number; for example, 2010.10.
Using Quotes for Signposts as Sub-Headings…
If you find a quote or an idea that seems really important to your own work you can remove the quote from the main part of your text and place it as a sub-heading. This has two main advantages. The first is that the specific quote is understood, by the reader, as a sign-post that applies to all of the following text. It therefore frames all of the text that follows in relation to an idea.
The second advantage is that it allows for a more interesting typographic design of your work.
Using quotes as sub-headings helps make the best use of the quotes you have found. You might also consider the use of pull-quotes within the presentation of your work.
Consistency
The correct use of referencing is important for assuring both the academic precision and integrity of your work, and for enhancing the user-experience of reading your work through clear sign-posting and de-cluttering. In this regard, the most important part of referencing is to be consistent throughout.