Articles>Graphic Design

What Everybody Ought to Know About Digital Photo Retouching

Today we take a look deeper into the hidden art of digital retouching where skies can always be blue and imperfections simply disappear. Whether you like it or hate it, think it’s necessary or not, retouching is here to stay.

Understanding Your Brain for Better Design: Left vs. Right

This article will cover a basic understanding of what the left and right brains are, and each of their traits. We’ll also go into how we, as creative people, can harness this understanding of the left and right brain to be more creative, as well as succeed in other work-related tasks.

Be Kind to the Color Blind

Using color and color alone as a visual cue is appealing because it’s usually an aesthetically pleasing and a minimalist design technique. Calls to action and visual cues are critical to interface designers because users, especially on the web, have limited patience and are looking to process information and make decisions quickly. Since the brain recognizes and forms an emotional bond with colors almost immediately, colors are a natural choice for visual cues. Unfortunately, it’s easy to alienate or confuse some of your users when some of those aesthetically pleasing colors look very similar. To point out a few interfaces that use hard to differentiate colors as visual cues, here are a few examples that have given me some trouble.

Visual Methods of Communicating Structure, Relationship, and Flow

Many of us are more comfortable communicating in words than in pictures. For example, user assistance writers are by nature and training writers, so they understand words and are adept at using word processing and publishing tools. Writers use lexicentric tools not only for creating and delivering content, but also as cognitive tools—that is, tools that help them think more clearly and efficiently. Thus, a user assistance writer might create a user-task matrix or take advantage of a word processor’s outline view when creating or evaluating a document’s structure.

Using Expression Blend to Explore, Demonstrate, and Document Design Solutions

For the last 6 months, I have been using Microsoft Expression Blend as my primary design tool. Blend, shown in Figure 1, is quickly becoming a powerful product. Its new Sketchflow module had me at hello.

The Ever-Evolving Arrow: Universal Control Symbol

The arrow and its brethren are everywhere on our computer screens. For example, a quick examination of the Firefox 3.0 browser, shown in Figure 1 in its standard configuration, yields eight examples of arrows—Forward, Back, and Reload buttons, scroll bar controls, and drop-down menus that reveal search engine, history, and bookmark choices.

The Tangible View Cube

As interaction designers at Autodesk, we sometimes engage in design and thought investigations that are not directly related to the task at hand. These investigations are ways to frame problems by venturing into related design disciplines. For example, in order to understand what might be an appropriate transition when changing views in a 3d model, we try to understand how a video artist would create a transition between two scenes in a video. To understand how to improve the graphic quality of elements drawn in a building information model, we look at lots of pencil sketches drawn by architects. We think, what would happen if an on-screen element was made from physical material?

Speed Racer: Collaborative Sketching Saves the Day

Give 3 designers 4 weeks to create multiple conceptual designs for 8 features and what do you get? If they are team of innovative designers you might get the designs and a new process. If they are a team of committed designers you might get the designs and an improved collaboration. We were lucky. We got all three.

Usability Testing with User Proxies: When is "Close" Close Enough?

How can we designers get valid feedback from more design iterations in less time? One bottleneck in the design flow is finding a steady stream of usability testers. Between the extremes of the perfect (an actual user, on site) and the unacceptable (the developer who's coding the feature), lies the grey zone of user proxies. Can you use internal employees with relevant domain knowledge to usability test your products, and still get valid data?

Editors and Designers: 6 Ideas for Better Collaboration

Demonstrates how collaboration between all involved in a project can improve the final product, improve the bottom line, and improve your own knowledge base. By understanding the point of view of your collaborators, you can present information better and be sure they understand your point of view better as well.

Design Reviews and Posting Without Answers

In our design review sessions, a couple of members from our eight-person team share what they’re working on and ask questions about challenges they’re facing. We provide feedback and critique their project. If you’ve ever participated in a creative writing group, the design review works similarly. Team members use common sense and experience to guide their questions and reviews. Somewhat in contrast to a creative writing group, though, you don’t have to bring a finished piece to share.

Rich Typography On The Web: Techniques and Tools

In addition to font stacks, why not replace the heading text with an image, embedded font, or bit of Flash? The methods described below are easier than they sound. And the end result is that the vast majority of users will see the beautiful typography you want them to see. A word of warning, though: don’t use dynamic text replacement for all of the text on your page. All that would do is slow it down and frustrate your visitors. Instead, save it for headings, menu items, pull quotes and other small bits of text.

Ampersands With Attitude

Ampersands have long been the character in a typeface with which typographers can indulge themselves. Sweeping curves, flirtatious finishes and bold statements – these are the things that make ampersands an exciting character to use and, better still, to design. There are, however, two problems.

Analysis of Team Design Review

Every other team meeting, three team members get 30 minutes each to talk about projects they are working on, and they get to demonstrate some of the cool things they are integrating into the project. As a team, we look at the project and both learn from what they’ve done, and make suggestions on how they might improve the project.

Setting Up Photoshop For Web, App and iPhone Development

Most people who have designed websites or apps in Photoshop will, at one point or another, have had issues trying to match colors in images to colors generated by HTML, CSS or code. This article aims to solve those problems once and for all.

Visual Design for the Non-Designer

What can a non-designer do to harness the power of visual design without calling professional help? Quite a lot, says internationally-regarded visual designer Dan Rubin. We called Dan to talk about what design techniques are accessible to mere mortals.

The Social Life of Visualization: Part 1

In 2009 we are in the midst of an interesting era for data visualization, particularly as it becomes coupled with the social web. Increasing processing speed, bandwidth and storage capacity are making it relatively simple to render and access visual representations of data. Developers have released libraries of code so we can easily create our own visualizations; and access to all kinds of data is becoming incredibly standardized, particularly through the use of APIs. So as visualization becomes much more straightforward to integrate into online environments, it makes sense to rethink how it can best be used in this setting.

Stock It To Me

I do think stock photography allows you to quickly add professional looking images with somewhat of a limited budget. However, it is extremely easy to settle on tired overused somewhat ambiguous images (cliche handshakes, “strategizing” business people and towering skyscrapers) or even worse, duplicates of the same picture or people on different (potentially competitor) company branded information.

Let’s Call It a Draw(ing Surface)

HTML 5 defines the CANVAS element as “a resolution-dependent bitmap canvas which can be used for rendering graphs, game graphics, or other visual images on the fly.” A canvas is a rectangle in your page where you can use JavaScript to draw anything you want.

How to Draw with HTML 5 Canvas

Among the set of goodies in the HTML 5 specification is Canvas which is a way to programmatically draw using JavaScript. We’ll explore the ins and outs of Canvas in this article, demonstrating what is possible with examples and links.

Copywriting or Design: Which Gets the Best Results?

Designers believe that if something isn’t working well, and it comes down to changing the copy or the design, it’s always the copy that should be changed, reduced or sometimes nearly completely eliminated. How can I convince my designer co-workers that succinct, simple and memorable words can be just as important as the visuals?

Eleven Ways to Use Images Poorly in Slides

As digital cameras have become ubiquitous, and cheap (or free) photo websites plentiful, more people than ever are using images in presentations. Images are not appropriate for every kind of talk, but even when images are appropriate (such as keynote/ballroom style presentations), people are still making the same common mistakes. So here are some things to keep in mind if you use images in your next talk.

Ten Tips on How to Think Like a Designer

Below are 10 things (plus a bonus tip) that I have learned over the years from designers, things that designers do or know that the rest of us can benefit from.

The Art of Icons

Being "minimalist" and "streamlined" is not always most effective. Have you ever written yourself a quick, shorthand note, only to find later that you had no way to unpack your own great idea? Icons work similarly. They are pictures – meant to provide a visual shorthand to users moving through a task. While research indicates that icons are best when initially paired with text to increase recognition and learnability, users experienced with a given set of icons will begin to ignore the text, scanning for and acting from the image alone.

Spatial Descriptions by Children

Drawing a map is cognitively challenging. It requires you to do some abstract visualization.

Jim Coudal of Coudal Partners

Manufacturing, distribution, marketing, sales, customer contact – all of that is supremely manageable by a very small team. In the traditional model, you have this big corporation where the creative department is in the back, and they’re those wacky people with the Tabasco ties and chattering teeth in their cubicle, and everybody is a little afraid of them because they’re so “wild.” The rest of the company is the marketing, production, distribution, all of that. Well, our idea was that the little creative team could do everything.

In Which a Concept Model Makes Me Giddy

Concept models aren't for everyone. When I show fellow designers these artifacts, I sometimes get "You show that to clients?" Like any deliverable, there's a time and a place for concept models. If you're anything like me, however, you think visually. Even if your models don't see the light of day, a good model can help you get a better grip on the problem, or lay some groundwork for your designs.

Effective Alt Text

It is perfectly possible to diligently apply alt text to every image on a site and create a result that is completely useless. Unless the alt text effectively conveys the information the image displays, it will be ineffective.

Making $10,000 a Pixel: Optimizing Thumbnail Images in Search Results

In search results, the old adage a picture is worth a thousand words rings true. When it comes to making your search results more efficient to use, more relevant, and more attractive, images reign supreme. There is simply nothing else on your search results pages that can come close to offering the same potential as thumbnail images for dramatically increasing your conversion rates and revenues.

Fifty Monochromatic Website Designs

Color choice is a key element to the success of any design. It invokes an atmosphere and sets the mood. One method for using color is to use only shades of a color, which is known as a monochromatic color scheme.

Image Optimization Part 1: The Importance of Images

On average, 46.6% of the page weight for these popular sites consists of images, included either inline with tags or via CSS stylesheets. This is a massive percentage and it tells us one thing: There’s huge potential to improve the performance of websites if we can improve the way we handle the image payload. By focusing on images you can make a difference and delight your site visitors with a faster and more pleasant experience.

Strategic Numbers: Discussing the Value of Design With Sara Beckman

We’re excited to bring Sara Beckman from the faculty at the Haas School of Business back into the Adaptive Path fold. We first worked with her in 2003 on our groundbreaking report, Leveraging Business Value: How ROI Changes User Experience.

Four Ideas to Organize Your Technical Document Images and Screen Shots

Most technical writers would include at least a few images to illustrate a point, or screen shots that accompany the description of a certain step-by-step procedure, etc. Organizing such images can really become a problem, especially when you have dozens and hundreds of them. Finding, editing, and importing them can quickly become a logistical nightmare, especially when a technical writer is working under a deadline pressure. Here are four ideas to organize and name your images for higher productivity.

Why 2007 I.P.C.C. Report Lacked ‘Embers’

Several authors of the 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change on the projected effects of global warming now say they regret not pushing harder to include an updated diagram of climate risks in the report. The diagram, known as “burning embers,” is an updated version of one that was a central feature of the panel’s preceding climate report in 2001.

So, You Want To Screen Capture, Huh?

Here's a quick tutorial about screen captures, thus the title. If you're not sure what a screen capture is, then think about the pages you've seen lately. Maybe some of them have had specific sections of the desktop or a program made into an image. It was almost as if they captured part of the screen as an image.

Text Extraction from Graphical Objects During XML Conversion

Materials that include ornamentation and complex design features have long been challenging to convert to XML, even by hand. The problem is two-fold: complex documents usually contain a variety of graphics, some of which may be simple ornamentation, with others actually fundamental to the subject matter. In addition, these graphics can consist of images overlaid either with text that is integral to the image content, or with actual body text. The analysis and extraction of such content into a meaningful order in the converted XML file is not currently possible via scripting conversion tools, and can be time-consuming and arduous to tag manually.

Applying Techniques of Textual Reuse to Graphics Using SVG and XML

Structured data techniques are typically applied to text-based data. Technologies like SGML and XML have allowed text-based publishing to constrain and control the creation of text-based information, increasing the usefulness, accuracy, and reuse of information.

Good Designs Have Strong Contrast

Push contrast more than you might be naturally inclined. If you don’t, you end up with conflict. The next time you eat at a restaurant, look closely at the menu. A good menu has a high degree of contrast between sections.

Graphic Thoughts: My Top 10 Photoshop Moves, Part 1

Almost every time I speak to an audience about graphics or Photoshop, I’m asked if I went to school to learn what I know about the application. The truth is that while I spent more than 3 years in an Advertising Art degree program, I ultimately switched gears and got a Bachelor of Business Administration degree in marketing (Mom and Dad were thrilled with this news!), and that was in the early ’90s—pretty much in the infant stages of Photoshop.

Graphic Thoughts: Creating Great Backgrounds in A Snap

Recently, I had the chance to go with my in-laws to City Museum in St. Louis. What an amazing place to get lost in by crawling through inventively designed tunnels that go underground to many stories below the city streets. The most impressive thing to me was how the place was constructed—they used everyday items, such as metal storage bins, bottles, and gears (plus what looked like a million other items) to create elaborate mazes of artwork.

Creating Perspective Shadows

Perspective—it’s one of the first things you learn about in any art class. The basic idea is that it’s the way your eye actually sees something, represented on a flat surface such as paper or a monitor. A simple example is drawing a group of objects: You represent an object in the distance by making it smaller, while making objects close to the viewer larger—make sense? In this tutorial, I’m going to show you how to create perspective shadows in Adobe Photoshop CS3. The result is dynamic, but the technique is a breeze!

Stepping into Oz: Managing and Delivering Successful Visual Design

How can design teams get to a successful visual design with their clients? Getting to the right visual design can be the trickiest part of a design project. One of the key reasons is that some clients have a hard time saying clearly what they want from the visual design.

The Joy of Sketch: Explorations in Hand-Crafted Visuals

There’s always been a strong visual element to our work: architecture diagrams, interface wireframes, concept models, system and service models. And we’ve become adept at the computer applications that help us create these things. But there are other tools out there, such as the simple tools of pen, paper and sketching.

The Sphere of Design

This article introduces the "Sphere of Design", which is a simple conceptual model that illustrates the relationship and trade-offs between 'looks' and 'works'.

Design for Persuasion

Five proven techniques for powerful and effective marketing design.

Five Simple Steps to Designing Grid Systems:

Aesthetics can be measured and more importantly can be constructed. If you want something to be aesthetically pleasing there are steps you can take to make sure it is going in the right direction. Now I'm not saying that 'follow these rules and you will create something beautiful'. What I am saying is that by following a few of these guidelines can go some way into creating something compositionally balanced, which will inherently be more aesthetically pleasing.

Crop Images Contextually

Crop images contextually for faster downloads and higher impact. By cropping maximally and resizing you can convey meaning without slowing down your web pages.

CSS Overlays: Using CSS Positioning to Overlay Web Objects

An overlay is when one web object overlaps another. Overlays are often used to highlight or draw attention to important items on websites to raise conversion rates. This article shows how use CSS positioning to avoid slicing and dicing your overlays and assembling with tables. Along the way we'll look at the workarounds we used to make the technique work with different browsers (most importantly IE5.x Mac and Safari).

The Sphere of Design

The web design community thankfully seems to be wrapping up the "design vs. usability" argument. In case you missed it, the conclusion was: "Not either/or but both, and it depends."

Graphic Design vs. Usability

Graphic Design can "hijack" usability efforts if the graphic design team is not "on board" with usability. This is probably why these days more and more graphic artists (like the students at the Art Institute of Portland where I am currently teaching a class) are learning about usability and have a sensitivity for its user-centered intentions.

Graphic Design Plays a Minor Role on the Web

The best websites are highly functional. They are task-focused. Graphic design has an important, though limited role. Don’t try and force the Web to be what it’s not.

Color Universal Design (CUD): How to Make Figures and Presentations That are Friendly to Colorblind People

There are always colorblind people among the audience and readers. There should be more than ten colorblinds in a room with 250 people (50% male and 50% female). There is a good chance that the paper you submit may go to colorblind reviewers. Supposing that your paper will be reviewed by three white males (which is not unlikely considering the current population in science), the probability that at least one of them is colorblind is whopping 22%!

Forty Beautiful Grunge Photoshop Tutorials

In this collection, we present to you 40 excellent, high-quality grunge Photoshop tutorials. So fire up Photoshop and get ready to get your hands… dirty!

Develop PHP applications with Picasa Web Albums

Picasa Web Albums offers Web application developers a REST-based Data API to manipulate the photos and albums stored on its servers. PHP's SimpleXML extension and Zend's GData Library are ideal to process the XML feeds generated by this API so you can customize PHP photo management and photo sharing applications. In this article, meet the Picasa Web Albums Data API and see how you can use it to retrieve photos and photo metadata; add, modify and delete photos; and perform keyword searches of Picasa's user-generated content.

Cooking With Stock

It’s not a secret. We all use stock imagery in our day-to-day design work. So why doesn’t anybody ever talk about it? Just like the inventory of a grocery store, not everything you see on a stock photo site is an ingredient for a gourmet production. By far the worst mistake you can make when choosing stock is selecting stereotypical or clichéd images to convey a concept.My guess is that we’re all just a little ashamed. We want people to see our work as just that: ours. When you have to tell someone that you didn’t create that grungy texture, or you didn’t take that beautiful photo, it feels a lot like admitting that you’ve cheated on a test. But this is nonsense—as designers, it’s our job to put things together and deliver a composition that looks good.

Photoshop vs. Fireworks

Photoshop. Fireworks. If you’re a serious web designer (and not using the GIMP) you’re going to be using one or the other. But which is best?

Web Design 101: Photoshop

Photoshop promises great power, but can be more than a little challenging when it comes to clarity and patience. New users can easily get frustrated at how daunting some of the challenges can be when it comes to getting the job done, and even those who are a bit more familiar with it still ﬁnd points of frustration that impede both production and creativity. So for those who barely know Photoshop, but would like to become more familiar with it—ﬁnd out what sort of things to look for when it comes to the palette system, layers, styles, effects, various tools, and saving or exporting their work—let’s look at the basics.

Converting Text to Outline

Powerful design software makes many choices available to graphic designers, but just because you can do something doesn’t always mean you should. For example, sometimes it’s a good idea to convert your text layouts to outline, but sometimes it isn’t. Learn more about this occasionally necessary, often ill-advised practice before you decide whether or not it’s time to convert.

Drawing Hilbert Curves with SVG

Hilbert curves are a type of space-filling curve that can be constructed with the SVG polyline element, using a basic design and then aggregating.

Creating Bulletproof Graphic Link Buttons With CSS

A CSS problem I have been wrestling with lately is how to create a bulletproof shrinkwrapping graphic button. By that I mean an image-based button that will expand and contract to fit the amount of text it contains. It is a very useful technique for CMS-driven sites that allow the client to change the text that is displayed on buttons, as well as for multilingual sites.

Print-Friendly Images and Logos with CSS

In certain instances, not everyone views every portion of your website online: eventually, someone is going to print parts of it. In many cases, this is perfectly fine: if you have a print style sheet that takes care of your worst sins, your website should look okay. But one area where it may still look lackluster is the images.

Five CSSriffic Treatments to Make Your Images Stand Out

Sometimes just having images isn’t enough. Sometimes we need a little help to make our outstanding images truly stand out. And that’s where CSS can help. Here are five things you can do, using CSS, to make the most of your images.

Why Should Engineers and Scientists Be Worried About Color?

At the core of good science and engineering is the careful and respectful treatment of data. We calibrate our instruments, scrutinize the algorithms we use to process the data, and study the behavior of the models we use to interpret the data or simulate the phenomena we may be observing. Surprisingly, this careful treatment of data often breaks down when we visualize our data.

Twenty Best Simple and Inspirational CSS Web Designs

After looking through hundreds, maybe even thousands of websites, I’ve compiled the top 20 CSS websites for clean and simple design. What do these designs have in common? They all have clean simple interfaces and remain uncluttered and easy to read. Many of the designs display a good deal of illustrion or photorealism, two of my favorite current trends that can contribute a lot to a design.

Twenty of The Best Uses of Color in Current Web Design

Many sites “play it safe” when choosing colors. Brilliant colors have to be carefully controlled to avoid looking amateur. I’ve selected these 20 sites for excellent use of color along with their overall web design. Quality of CSS, features, ease of use all come into play as well.

How To Capture a Screen Shot of your Desktop or the Active Window in Windows

Have you ever pressed the PrtScn (print screen) key on your Windows keyboard and wondered why it was there since it never seemed to do anything? Well, it does do something! It copies an image of your screen onto the "clipboard," ready to paste into any graphics program. These steps show you how to use it along with Windows' standard image editor, Microsoft Paint, to save an image of your screen.

Get the Most Out of Your Color

Color can play an important role in technical documentation.

Case Study: Shipshape Photography

Photography has become an essential element of the communication mix for the American Bureau of Shipping (ABS), and is used to reflect the diversity and international nature of the business. If executed properly, a photograph can help explain a technical point or issue in such a way that it makes sense to an audience outside of the shipping community. We initially decided to use photography to enhance the visual content of our annual report. We now also use it in company newsletters (both internal and external), brochures and exhibit stands.

Storytelling Photos

Anyone can relate the facts of an event, just like anyone can hold a camera up to a scene and document it. But bare facts and badly composed images make for poor communication. It takes skill and talent to write a good story, one that will inform and entertain. The same is true for photography. Images have always been storytellers. A good image can relay large amounts of data in a format that is pleasing and quickly absorbed by the viewer. That makes photos potentially more influential than a massive amount of words.

A Sack in the Sand: Photography in the Age of Information

Throughout the 1990s the relationship between culture and technology was sharply focused in a debate about whether digital technologies signalled the death or radical displacement of photography. The case for the cultural continuity of photography centred upon a rejection of a strong form of technological determinism. It is now clear that far from being displaced to the margins of culture, there is now more photography than ever. There have also been dramatic developments: mobile phone manufacturers have put more cameras into people's hands then ever before; the photograph as social document and historical witness persists but in changing ways; photographs circulate globally on an unprecedented scale via electronic image banks. It is clear that such changes and developments do involve new technologies. However, rather than being due to the kind of technological determinism debated earlier, this is because photography has come to exist within a new technological environment. In many recent accounts, 'information' and information technology are repeatedly cited as constituting a new and shaping context for photographic practices.

The Awesome Power of Visualization 2: Death and Taxes 2007

Visuals that provide insights come from 1) a deep understanding of the goal / objectives 2) from thinking beyond what standard trend lines or stacked bar graphs can provide. Something non-normal to grab attention and yet communicate insights (sort of already contain recommendations and action items and not just data).

Digital Photography: Communication, Identity, Memory

Taking photographs seems no longer primarily an act of memory intended to safeguard a family's pictorial heritage, but is increasingly becoming a tool for an individual's identity formation and communication. Digital cameras, cameraphones, photoblogs and other multipurpose devices are used to promote the use of images as the preferred idiom of a new generation of users. The aim of this article is to explore how technical changes (digitization) combined with growing insights in cognitive science and socio-cultural transformations have affected personal photography. The increased manipulation of photographic images may suit the individual's need for continuous self-remodelling and instant communication and bonding. However, that same manipulability may also lessen our grip on our images' future repurposing and reframing. Memory is not eradicated from digital multipurpose tools. Instead, the function of memory reappears in the networked, distributed nature of digital photographs, as most images are sent over the internet and stored in virtual space.

Newspaper Design as Cultural Change

his article describes the (re-)design of newspapers and magazines as a process of cultural change which goes beyond designing a publication's layout, typography and use of colour, and includes designing the processes and structures of its production.

Creating Appropriate Graphics for Business Situations

Charts and graphs are ubiquitous in business documents, and most students in my business communication courses are well aware that they need to be able to create many different types of data representation. Most of them have had a great deal of experience working with spreadsheet applications, and they know how to manipulate data and present it in the various forms permitted by their software.

Getting Started with Graphics for an Enriching User Experience

Good web design does not necessarily mean good use of colors and layouts, but it does transcend beyond it. Design elements like color, font, size, frame, etc. play an important role nonetheless, but what is more important is that how it affects the aesthetic sensibilities of the users. The warmth and the feel of the web site, or in another words, the texture of the web site is a crucial area to turn our attention to. By texture of the web site what it means is the subtleties of the surface of the web site. Varied aspects as discussed in this article, when sensibly used -- and in combination with good deign skills aimed at creating intuitive appeal -- are of definite help of when it comes to developing engaging graphics on your web site.

Proposal Flowchart Excellence: Ten Rules for Scoring on Top

'Flowcharts-- UGH!' That's a too-typical reader reaction when faced with the average flowchart. It underscores the author's challenge when trying to develop this potentially powerful tool. For conveying process, there is no better means. In proposals, however, where the flowchart must also serve as a sales tool, its optimum form is not always clear. This paper provides some guidelines, such as: Ensuring your flow is a process of merit. Letting goals dictate form. Organizing for readability. Focusing on action. Using simple, standard visuals. Illuminating features. And obviating responsiveness... To reap the winning rewards.

Electronic Image Manipulation - Technological Advances and Ethical Considerations

Electronic imaging has enabled the desktop publisher to capture and manipulate images to produce documents that are both attractive and cost-effective. In addition to making basic corrections such as balancing colors and improving highlight and shadow detail, the desktop publisher can retouch photographs and other artwork to repair damaged areas, eliminate distracting elements, or alter composition. However, the ease of manipulation has, in some cases, overshadowed the many ethical issues that desktop publishers need to consider. Integrity of the image, ownership of artwork, and copyright laws are some of the issues that desktop publishers must confront.

Literature Review: What is Visual Literacy?

This paper takes a look at what is being said in various disciplines (technical writing, journalism, education, psychology, user interface design, and visual arts) in an attempt to answer the question 'What is visual literacy?' A corollory is 'How will I know when I have achieved it?' A working definition of visual literacy has many implications for how we train technical writers in order to meet the professional challenges of the future.

Design is Function

Good design, like good writing or editing, cart make or break a technical publication. Even if you know little about design us a discipline, as a technical communicator you employ it in every publication you produce. If technical communicstion is indeed the art that bridges the gap between people and technology, then understanding the function of design us an inherent element of communication is paramount. Design seeks 10 translate perceptions, goals, and desires through the manipulation of images and language. Design inspires understanding, is both an art and a science, and is good business. Design matters! The purpose of our presentation is to explore the relationship between design until technical communication and heighten the level of consciousness of the function of design.

Seeing is Believing: Communicating Information Graphically

Diverse work situations and varied skills, abilities, and motivation affect how users handle documentation to do their jobs. Communicating graphically challenges the communicator to 1) select illustrations that orient users ana' 2) use dynamic arrows to show the motion required. The communicator then 3) shows the order of steps within a task by using numbers with 'numberness.' Users' eyes seek information dynamically: help them find needed i$ormation by 4) keeping tasks within eyespan on a page. Then 5) use a grid to consistently layout an interesting page.

London Through Rose-Colored Graphics: Visual Rhetoric and Information Graphic Design in Charles Booth's Maps of London Poverty

In this article, I examine a historical information graphic--Charles Booth's maps of London poverty (1889-1902)--to analyze the cultural basis of ideas of transparency and clarity in information graphics. I argue that Booth's maps derive their rhetorical power from contemporary visual culture as much as from their scientific authority. The visual rhetoric of the maps depended upon an ironic inversion of visual culture to make poverty seem a problem that could be addressed, rather than an insurmountable crisis. This visual rhetoric led directly to significant features of and concepts in western societies, including the poverty line and universal old-age pensions (social security).

An Unbearable Lightness?

This article considers various notions of 'beauty' and how these have informed the creative and critical processes of graphic design, specifically typography. The author considers how the Renaissance revival of Greek mathematics to support a 'universal beauty' was gradually unpicked by Enlightenment thinkers such as Descartes, Kant and Hume, and how this process has subsequently shaped modernist and postmodernist attitudes towards 'beauty'. From our current vantage point it could be argued that 'beauty' should now be considered a redundant concept; however, design schools and studios continue to make value judgments dividing the 'beautiful' from the 'ugly'. On what basis are these judgements made and are they still valid in a pluralistic society? Is it possible that we now have a new sensibility, a different notion of beauty? Reflecting upon important questions raised by the American designer and writer Steven Heller in his controversial essay 'The Cult of the Ugly' in _Eye_ magazine in 1993, the author proposes that 14 years on from the article, we can indeed witness a new aesthetic sensibility, shared but not universal, rooted in loss yet also 'found'.

Beautiful Evidence

Beautiful Evidence is Edward Tufte's fourth and latest book and both follows and diverges from the directions established with The Visual Display of Quantitative Information (Tufte, 1983), Envisioning Information (Tufte, 1990), and Visual Explanations (Tufte, 1997). Visual Display examined pictures of numbers, Envisioning explored pictures of nouns, and Visual Explanations addressed pictures of verbs. Beautiful Evidence foregoes the 'pictures of' approach and instead establishes the role of evidence as the foundation of reasoning. In some ways, this latest book might have been better positioned as the first book because of its efforts to explain interplays of understanding and reasoning.

Making the Strange Familiar: A Pedagogical Exploration of Visual Thinking

Scholarly conversation within the field of professional communication increasingly has focused on the practice, research, and pedagogy of visual rhetoric. Yet, visual thinking has received relatively little attention within the field. If our programs produce students who can think verbally but not visually, they risk producing writers who are visual technicians but are unable to move fluidly between and within modes of communication. This article examines the literature and pedagogical practices of visually oriented disciplines to identify strategies for helping students develop the ambidexterity of thought needed for the communication tasks of today's workplace.

Medical Tables, Graphics and Photographs: How They Work

An examination of a random sample of four medical journals--The Lancet, The New England Journal of Medicine, The Journal of the American Medical Association, and The Journal of Laboratory and Clinical Medicine--reveals that one-fifth of the space of articles in medical science is devoted to an average of three tables and three flow charts, graphs, or photographs. Given these figures, the absence of discussion of visuals in the literature on medical communication may seem puzzling. But the puzzle is easily solved: our basic education gives us a coherent vocabulary for talking about prose, but no coherent vocabulary for talking about tables and visuals. Once we have this vocabulary in hand, we make another step in the direction of an explanation of the nature of communication in the medical sciences. We may note that understanding the meaning of a medical article is not just a consequence of understanding its texts; it is a consequence of understanding all its meaningful components working together--verbal, tabular, visual.

Be Prepared: Fill the Gaps in Your Photoshop Know-How

It's next to impossible for one person to know the ins and outs of every single facet of Photoshop. With that in mind, we present three video tutorials to plug a variety of holes in your Photoshop knowledge.

Getting Design Done

Here's how to apply the principles of a well-known productivity system to your creative process. The resulting creative habits can boost your design skills while they reduce stress and free your mind to tackle big problems.

Critiquing the Culture of Computer Graphing Practices

This paper is a critique of current approaches to the development of computer graphing and graph visualization programs. Developers of these programs model the user as an individual problem solver who is reliant on perceptual skills to create and interpret graphed information. Such a model of graphing is ill-suited to meet the complex needs of real users, a supposition that is supported by work in two major areas of graphing theory and research: the sociology of science and the educational research of mathematics and scientific students. These areas have not been traditionally cited when planning computer graphing or visualization programs or when assessing their usability. A review of the literature in these fields reveals that an over-reliance on a user's perceptual skills is unlikely to result in successful graph practices.

Theories of Visual Rhetoric: Looking At The Human Genome

For too long, journal articles and textbooks on scientific and technical discourse have adopted a positivistic approach to visuals. Unfortunately, this approach is problematic. It ignores that visuals are constructions that are products of a writer's interpretation with its own power-laden agenda. For example, in representing a tamed and dominated nature, visuals become instruments of patriarchy. Reading them responsibly requires that we uncover some of the values attached to the strategies of creating visuals and to the objects created. This article reviews the current approach taken by composition scholars, surveys richer interdisciplinary work on visuals, and-- by using visuals connected with the Human Genome Project--models an analysis of visuals as rhetoric.

Communication Through Imagery

The field of technical communication focuses on the ability of the author to gather information, interpret it, and then present the necessary items to the reader in a clear and concise manner. This article serves to briefly outline several of the key factors involved when deciding how to include imagery in technical materials.

Documenting Networks

Documenting networks is playing less with words, and more with diagrams. It also requires an engineering mind, an ability to think out-of-box, and creative mind. Technical writers can rise to a new scale and expand their skill sets if they are able to document networks.

Seeing the World in Symbols: Icons and the Evolving Language of Digital Wayfinding

Of all the objects that occupy our digital spaces, there are none that capture the imagination so much as icons. As symbols, icons can communicate powerfully, be delightful, add to the aesthetic value of software, engage people's curiosity and playfulness, and encourage experimentation. These symbols are key components of a graphic user interface--mediators between our thoughts and actions, our intentions and accomplishments.

Technical Illustration Custom Fills

Custom made fills can be of significant value to technical illustrators. This article shows many custom fills and how they can be applied. There is also a free download of over 50 custom fills.

Can Designers Save the World (and Should They Try?)

Designers are clearly more self-conscious about their social role today than they have been at any time in the last 20 years, yet the lack of substance of the critics who have come to the fore, and the issues on which it is chosen to take a stand, reflect a political agenda that is set elsewhere. There are many areas of life in which designers can make a real difference, but we need to look first at why they are taking themselves so seriously in the noughties.

Is Design Political?

Politics is commonly thought of as the activities of political organizations--from which the majority of designers (if not majority of people) feel disassociated. But there is a missed opportunity here: at base, politics is about values, and design is nothing if not a means of embodying values.

Dealing with Images in Content Management Systems, Part 1

Most web-based content management systems offer a variety of tools to help contributors enter text. When it comes to graphics, content contributors are usually expected to provide web-ready images to the system. This means that either editorial users needs to know about image optimisation and web image formats, or additional staff are required to make web-ready images out of raw materials. This article demonstrates a technical solution to this problem.

Graphic Design vs. Usability

When the philosophy of the 'skin interface' is applied to other applications, it becomes problematic. There is nothing wrong with that concept as long as it is clear that it only works with highly specialized applications such as Winamp. It is even culturally expected in the Winamp community that skins will be created and made available.

Graphics Don't Appear or Won't Print

Objects in the drawing layer are visible in Page Layout (Print Layout) view and Print Preview but not in Normal view. Interestingly, a frame is a sort of hybrid object that can appear to float (and text can be wrapped around it), but it is actually inline and can be viewed (though not in position) in Normal view.

The Draw Layer: A Metaphysical Space (And How to Bring It Back Down to Earth)

Word's draw layer is a metaphysical space where floating objects reside. It really isn't a layer, since floating objects can be sent behind the text layer or brought out in front of it. Either way, they continue to reside in the draw layer.

Dither Scatterplots with XSLT and SVG

Use XSLT and SVG to offset points in X-Y scatterplots so they do not plot on top of each other.

Beatrice Santiccioli: Specializing in Color

A visual designer discusses why Swatch, watercolors and cooking can inspire the design of color. Louise Sandhaus draws out how Beatrice Santiccioli came to be the Queen of Color.

Beyond Graphic

Today's graphic designer has moved beyond graphic. The term 'graphic' fails to accurately describe our profession to the business community and the public. We should consider replacing it with a more relevant, accurate description of what we do today. Why?

Gaining Insight and Inspiration from Veteran Designers

As a designer, there are days when it's tempting to just churn out something that looks nice, without any thought given to the creative process. To keep a fresh outlook on our work and maintain a true sense of purpose, we have to keep up our educational process. A designer should never lose his or her passion for learning.

Accurate Image Manipulation for Desktop Publishing

Devoted to the best possible quality in the desktop publishing workflow. This calls for accurate calibration and correct choice for the working space.

JPEG Tutorial

This page presents a brief description of how JPEG compresses images. JPEG, unlike other formats like PPM, PGM, and GIF, is a lossy compression technique; this means visual information is lost permanently. The key to making JPEG work is choosing what data to throw away.

An Introduction to Visualisation

Visualising things makes them tangible and brings them into shareable form. Visualisation brings ideas to life and helps understanding. Visualisation techniques help elicit, communicate and analyse ideas and concepts.

Representing Content and Data in Wireframes

Visio practically groaned as I opened the wireframes for my current project, which were in something like the twentieth revision. It was the usual story--poorly defined requirements and business rules--and my project folder was fast becoming the poster child for Feature Creep Flu.

Identical Twins?

For the same reason a doctor uses different types of scissors or scalpels for specific cases, or a handyman carries different types of screwdrivers, a smart designer will have the tools that are necessary to complete any design task that might arise. In many ways Photoshop and Illustrator seem to be exactly alike, but they aren't.

My Brain's Not Like Yours: Individual Differences in Visual Processing Styles

The principles of graphic design 'work' for viewers for several reasons. One reason is that well-designed graphics perform significant information-processing functions for viewers. This workshop looks at individual differences in several dimensions of information-processing style (including visual/haptic,field independent/dependent, high/low detail analysis, high/low visual distractibility, and leveling/sharpening in visual memory). It then examines the ability of graphic designs to 'supplant' processing skills for viewers by either captializing on viewer strengths or compensating for their weaknesses.

Reflections on an Icon Development Process: Managing Design

Software organizations are increasingly willing to hire consultants in technical communication for projects in visual design. This paper examines ten factors critical to successfully managing icon development, based on experience in two different companies, Practical issues -defining the scope of the problem, recruiting the contractor and reviewers, writing the contract, deciding where the contractor should work, validating the images -- require attention to make your partnership with a consultant work.

Using Graphics to Help Users Build Mental Models

Research shows that adults learn more efficiently when they have formed an accurate mental model of the product they are trying to use. We can help our users form accurate mental models more quickly by graphically depicting that model on the interface. One product using that approach allowed engineers to become productive with no reference to user documentation.

Verbalizing About the Visual: Visual Analysis Tools for Design Evaluation and Group Communication

While technical communicators are increasingly involved in visual design, they frequently have difficulty communicating verbally about the visual, and, therefore, contributing effectively to design development. A five-step visual analysis tool provides a common framework and language for design evaluation and group communication.

Picture This: An Effective Relationship Between Writers and Illustrators

Writers and illustrators often find themselves in an adversarial relationship rather than working toward a single goal. The main reason for this is that writers don’t know enough about how illustrators work. By learning more about the similarities between the process of writing and illustrating, by reviewing the main characteristics of technical writing, and by treating illustrators as professional colleagues, writers can implement a strong collaborative work environment in which to create effective, accurate documentation.

Graphic Designer Needs a Web CMS

While you can create very powerful content management solutions with most open-source packages -- they have a much steeper learning curve than you experienced with HTML or Flash.

Ten Tips for Talking to Artists

Explains some of the terminology used to describe graphics and explains the roles graphic designers play in the production of technical art.

Empirical Proof for Presenting Screen Captures in Software Documentation

None of the previous studies on screen captures addressed the functions in the framework. There was no empirical research on any of the four functions of screen captures. This article presents our research on these functions. Each section starts with a brief explanation of the function. Next, we illustrate the screen capture designs used to test the function. The remainder of each section explains the setup and results of the empirical study. The article ends with some general conclusions about the functions of screen captures.

How to Use Images to Convey Themes

Advances in technology have democratized the process of illustrating documents such as brochures, reports, and websites. With digital cameras, scanners, and a wide variety of stock illustrations available, technical communicators need not rely on graphic designers to choose images for their documents. However, conveying a theme or concept through a series of images can be a difficult task, and literature says little about choosing images to convey a theme. This paper synthesizes results of available literature and looks to theories of visual rhetoric to fill in the gaps regarding images and themes. Results of a survey show that readers of more easily identify themes when connections between words and images are clear

Figures

General guidelines for illustrative figures in technical reports.

Screenshots with the Mouse Pointer

How to produce screenshots which include the mouse-pointer.

SVG as a Page Description Language

SVG has matured into a rich, fully featured graphics language resulting in its suitability for all traditional graphics applications. The SVG working group is continuing development of various profiles for use in specific application areas, such as mobile devices. One of the most important uses of computer graphics languages is in the area of printing. Many languages used for printing are proprietary and display various feature sets. SVG in contrast is vendor neutral, contains much of the functionality of existing languages for printing and is a wonderful candidate for future hard copy devices. A new SVG profile for printing is being developed as part of the SVG standardisation effort.

The Big Picture on Monitors

The analog format of the CRT is challenged by the digital capabilities of the LCD monitor.

A Higher Standard

Electronic Publishing magazine discusses the current activities related to standards development in the graphic arts. If you've been wanting to understand more, this is a great article to give you a background on standards development.

Standardizing File Formats

The quest for seamless file exchange in the graphic arts continues. Graphic Arts Monthly takes a look at what CGATS is doing to develop file format standards.

Mutant Education

Up goes that hand and out pops that dreaded can-opener of a question: 'Why aren't we learning programming in this class?' A litany of responses begins to unfold in my now Prozac-pleading brain: Because it's not graphic design; because it's too specialized; because graphic designers won't be doing it or shouldn't be doing it because they'll end up as hacks if they do it and the profession will go to hell; or because it's another program - maybe even a department-unto itself. I'm feeling queasy. It used to be so simple, so clear: We knew what graphic design was and what it wasn't.

Graphic Designer's Digital Printing and Prepress Handbook

The Graphic Designer's Digital Printing and Prepress Handbook is not a beginner's manual. Sidles does not walk you step-by-step through the basics of trapping or scanning. Instead, hers is an approach that expands on the knowledge of the graphic design professional. I think her aim is to help you become someone who easily knows how to avoid buying paper that will curl or using overprinted type that is illegible. Sidles, with her print production experience, seems to care about sharing the wisdom she has acquired through decades of haps and mishaps—no small benefit.

Book of Probes

Combine the probing thoughts of media culture sage Marshall McLuhan with the visual insights of design guru David Carson and the result is the quintessential coffee table book for anyone that works with technology and design. The Book of Probes is an intentional chocolate-in-my-peanut-butter experiment to combine the ideas of McLuhan with the images of Carson in thought provoking ways.

White Graphics: The Power of White in Graphic Design

Every graphic designer or editor who has been forced to explain to a client why there is nothing—text or image—on a part of a page should have Gail Deibler Finke's newest book. It demonstrates clearly and convincingly 'the power of white in graphic design.'

Easy Web Graphics

Easy Web Graphics would be a good choice for novice or intermediate users of Microsoft FrontPage and Microsoft Photo Editor who want to make better use of those products.