Make products that are plain, accessible, sourced, and labelled
What will you actually make, and does every element earn its place honestly?
This chapter covers the making of the actual items: each with one job, written in plain language, usable by everyone in the audience, and carrying its sources and its sponsor in the open. It also sets the rule for generated or altered media: label it on the product, and never use it to stand in for a real person.
All stages
Design each product for one job
Phase four turns the series into products: the individual flyer, letter, radio spot, video, post, or talking-points card. Give each product one job. It addresses one audience, makes one main point, and asks for one action with a clear next step. Put the main message first, where a reader who stops after ten seconds will still get it; the CDC Clear Communication Index scores material on exactly this.
Then go through the draft element by element (headline, image, colour, music, statistic, deadline) and ask what each one is doing. An element earns its place if it informs, helps attention or understanding, or makes the action easier. If its only work is to hurry, shame, or frighten, take it out.
Plain language
Write for the reader you have. Use short sentences, common words, and the active voice. Use the audience's own terms from stage two. Give numbers people can picture: counts and simple frequencies, with the comparison stated. Say what to do, where, when, what it costs, and what to bring. Translations should be written or reviewed by fluent members of the community, not produced by machine and left unchecked; a mistranslated instruction is a false statement with your name on it.
Accessible by default
Build access in from the start. That means readable type and strong contrast, text alternatives for images, captions and transcripts for audio and video, layouts that work with screen readers and on small phones, and a version that does not need the internet at all. Accessibility is part of honesty here: a truthful product that part of the audience cannot use has told those people nothing.
Show the source and your name
Every product carries three things in the open: who made it and who paid, where its factual claims come from, and how to reach you with a question or a complaint. Add the date. Where a claim is uncertain or the evidence is mixed, the product says so; confidence you do not have is a form of pressure.
Use photographs of real people and places connected to the campaign, with consent, and do not present a stock or staged image as a local one. Draw charts with honest axes. Quote people in context and let them see the quote before it runs.
Label synthetic media
If any image, voice, video, or translation was generated or materially altered by software, say so on the product in words the audience will notice. Never use a synthetic likeness or voice of a real person without their consent, never depict an event that did not happen as though it did, and never present a generated face or voice as a member of the public. Those uses are the stock in trade of covert operations, including the AI-assisted ones that model providers and platforms disrupted in 2024, and they are prohibited here. The defensive chapter for this stage covers how they are spotted. When in doubt, use the real photograph and the real voice.
Techniques at this stage, and where the line is
Clear layout and plain words make true information easy to take in. That ease is the point of good design.
The line: Using polish and smoothness to make a weak or false claim feel true exploits the same ease.
Real, relevant, consented images that show the place, the people, or the action you are asking for.
The line: Images that imply something the text could not truthfully say, or stock and staged pictures passed off as local, mislead through the eye.
Emotion in proportion to the facts and tied to something the audience can do.
The line: Emotion used as a substitute for the facts, or to rush a decision past reflection, is pressure and not information.
Choose precise words and test them with the audience for connotations you did not intend.
The line: Words chosen to prejudge the question or to demean people who disagree are manipulation by vocabulary.
Show the representative figure, say where it comes from, and include the inconvenient number a careful reader would ask for.
The line: Selecting only the favourable data creates a false overall impression from true parts.
Make the most useful information the most prominent: what to do, where, when, and what it costs.
The line: Making a minor point vivid while a material condition sits in small print steers attention away from what matters.
There is no honest use of deceptive synthetic media. A generated illustration or voice-over is acceptable only when labelled on the product and when it depicts no real person without consent.
The line: Any synthetic depiction of a real person without consent, or any generated face or voice presented as a real member of the public, is over the line.
Worked example
Fictional example, continued. The Riverside Health Partnership now makes its products: a flyer, a school-nurse letter, a 30-second radio spot, a 60-second video, and a card for parent volunteers.
- 1The flyer opens with the main message: free catch-up vaccines for school, evenings and Saturdays until 22 August. Where, when, what to bring, the note about a possible second visit, and the nurse phone line follow. A first draft that put the action in the third paragraph scored below the pass mark on the Clear Communication Index and was rewritten.
- 2Language: the text is checked at a sixth-grade reading level. Spanish and Somali versions are written by bilingual staff and read back by two parents each; a phrase that read as an order instead of an offer is changed.
- 3Access: a large-print flyer, captions and a transcript for the video, radio for families without internet, a screen-reader check of the web page, and bus routes beside each clinic address.
- 4Every product carries the line: Riverside Health Partnership; paid for by Riverside County Health Department, with the date, the phone line, and the web address of the state school immunisation requirements. A stock photograph of a smiling family is replaced by a real picture from a Saturday clinic at Millrace, taken with signed consent.
- 5A designer proposes a generated image of a nurse and a cloned version of Dr Okafor's voice for the Somali radio spot. The lead refuses both. Dr Okafor records in English, and Hodan Ali, a Somali-speaking clinic nurse, records the Somali version herself. One generated map graphic is kept and labelled: illustration generated with AI.
- 6Element check: a red last-chance banner with a countdown is removed, because clinics continue at normal hours after 22 August and the banner would be untrue. The dates are stated plainly in its place.
Outcome. Five products, each with one action, a source line, and an attribution line, in three languages with accessible versions, ready to be tested.
Product check
Run this for every product before it goes to testing. Saved in this browser only.
Each product, its audience, and the single action it asks for.
A reader who stops after ten seconds should still have it.
Tick what is true of this product.
Tick what is true of this product.
The attribution line, the sources shown or linked, the contact, and the date.
For each: is it real, is there consent, and is it in context?
Labels go on the product itself.
Anything taken out because its only work was to hurry, shame, or frighten.
Ethics gate: Phase IV, product development and design
0/7If any of these is not true: Fix the product or pull it. Add the source or cut the claim, label or replace the media, remove the pressure element. A product that cannot pass without its misleading element is dropped.
Common mistakes
- ×Burying the action under background and good intentions.
- ×Design that wins praise in the office and cannot be read on a phone or by a screen reader.
- ×Machine translation published without a fluent reader checking it.
- ×A stock photograph that implies local people took part.
- ×Urgency devices, such as countdowns and last-chance banners, attached to a deadline that is not real.
Which parts of this are information and which are pressure?
Related
References
- Department of the Army (2013). FM 3-53: Military Information Support OperationsProduct development and design as a distinct phase that follows series development and precedes approval.
- Baur, C., & Prue, C. (2014). The CDC Clear Communication Index is a new evidence-based tool to prepare and review health information. Health Promotion PracticeScoring criteria for public material: main message first, a call to action, plain language, and usable numbers.
- World Health Organization (2017). WHO Strategic Communications Framework for Effective CommunicationsProducts should be accessible, actionable, credible, relevant, timely, and understandable.
- World Wide Web Consortium (2018). Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1Standards for contrast, text alternatives, captions, and compatibility with assistive technology.
- Plain Language Action and Information Network (2011). Federal Plain Language GuidelinesPractical rules for short sentences, common words, active voice, and reader-centred organisation.
- OpenAI (2024). AI and Covert Influence Operations: Latest TrendsCovert operations that used generative models were identified and disrupted; a cautionary case for the labelling rule.