To provide a design method which easily designs a slip for an OCR (optical character reader) with which a high character recognition ratio and a fast read processing speed are acquired also without needing experience.

An input processing part 22 inputs the type of a used OCR and necessary items of an entry item for a slip according to a guide message shown on a display device 21a by using an input device 21b. A character number calculating part 23 calculated the number of an appropriate character frame from the number of characters in each inputted item, and a character frame size deciding part 24 refers to OCR character data 25 and decides a character frame size with which the best character recognition ratio is acquired in every character class. Further, an entry position deciding part 26 decides on fastest entry position of a read processing speed based on the data 25, and a laying out part 27 arranges a character frame in the decided entry position. Arranged layout information is shown on a displaying part 28 and is also outputted as slip data 29.