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.

AIM for DTP. Articles>Graphic Design>Document Design>Color

Add Drop Shadows and Feathers

Now you can add drop shadows automatically in Adobe InDesign. Sandee Cohen shows how to feather shadow edges and adjust transparency to get the results you want.

Cohen, Sandee. Adobe (2004). Design>Document Design>Graphic Design

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.

EDITsphere (2007). Articles>Documentation>Intranets>Graphic Design

Electronic Catalogs: Graphics    

A compilation of the most frequently asked questions about graphics in electronic catalogs. You will find answers to general as well as to technical questions.

ITEDO Software (2003). Design>Documentation>Graphic Design>Online

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.

Gellevij, Mark and Hans Van Der Meij. Technical Communication Online (2004). Articles>Documentation>Graphic Design>Screen Captures

Gameful Art

So, you think you'd like to get into Games development? Follow along as Sessions School of Game Art advisory board member Jolene Spry interviews Dave Taylor, independent video game producer and long-term veteran of the gaming industry.

Spry, Jolene and Dave Taylor. Design, Typography and Graphics (2006). Design>Document Design>Graphic Design>Video

How to Break Out of the Cell  

The grid of a table can feel like a prison sometimes—too confining, dreary and dull. Important information just mopes inside the cells.

Valiulis, Dave. Adobe Magazine (1998). Design>Document Design>Graphic Design

Illegal Colors

Illegal colors are those colors which you can pick on your computer that will not reproduce using traditional CMYK offset printing. For example, open the Apple color wheel. Set the brightness as high as it can be and click on the aqua color at nine o'clock on the wheel. You see that bright, glowy, neon-like color? Isn't it beautiful? Too bad, it's illegal. There is no way that ordinary CMYK inks can reproduce that color. Most people get into illegal color trouble when they pick a color that looks great on the screen, and then have the job printed using process colors. They then complain to the print shop that the job looks dull, that all the brightness is gone. That's the fault of picking illegal colors. You won't get arrested but you will be disappointed in the output. The following is a list of some of the popular desktop publishing program and how they handle illegal colors.

Cohen, Sandee. Design, Typography and Graphics. Design>Graphic Design>Document Design>Color

Illuminating Illustrations  

Too often, illustrations just sit there, taking up space on the page. Here's how to make them work.

Kvern, Olav Martin. Adobe Magazine (1996). Design>Document Design>Graphic Design

IRTC Desktop Publishing and Graphics

This is a list of resources related to desktop publishing and graphics. I'm including things like icons and wallpaper in the graphics category.

Soltys, Keith. IRTC (2001). Design>Document Design>Graphic Design

Is This Ethical? A Survey of Opinion on Principles and Practices of Document Design    

In a national survey, 500 technical communicators and 500 technical communication teachers were asked to assess the ethics of seven document design cases. According to the 455 respondents, manipulating typography and leading to fit more or less information on a page and using persuasive coloring or spacing are ethical practices, while the manipulation of pictorial illustrations and the distortion of graphics are unethical. Opinion on using typography to decrease readability is divided. In five of the seven cases, women are consistently more lenient or men consistently more strict in their answers: common practices, specifications, reader's responsibility, writer's responsibility, writer's intentions, consequences, judgments, principles, and insufficient information. The explanation most often given was consequences, indicating a 'goal-based' philosophy of ethics.

Dragga, Sam. Technical Communication Online (1996). Careers>TC>Document Design>Graphic Design

Managing Quality Graphic Design in a Documentation Project  

Supervising the design of documentation is challenging for documentation managers who have little or no educated knowledge of design. However, quality design that maintains ease of reading, accessibility, comprehension, retention, and aesthetics is vital to the usability and success of the documentation and should be carefully monitored by the documentation manager. Decisions must be made up front on four design areas -- packaging, layout, typography, and highlighting -- before the project is underway. In addition, audience analysis and a design style guide are two techniques that managers should embrace in supervising design.

Listeman, Amy J. STC Proceedings (1995). Careers>Graphic Design>Document Design>Documentation

Newsletter Make-over Clinic

One of the most frequent problem areas I encounter in the publishing field is when editors, writers and, yes even business people are expected to turn out a good newsletter. If my car isn't running right, I take it to the mechanic. I don't expect the car wash to fix the motor any more than I expect the mechanic to give it a wash and wax. Rare are the instances where the writer or editor is also a good designer and/or typographer. Yet they're almost always restricted by the software they use, the availability of good clip art or images, and the time to think about the details. I'm going to restrict myself to just the initial visual and organizational points in this critique. We could spend days talking about minutiae and the array of options involved in a full scale makeover. What I'll do is share some quick and easy areas where a simple fix will make a big difference.

Showker, Fred. Design, Typography and Graphics (2002). Design>Document Design>Graphic Design>Newsletters

A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words, But...

What happens when we try to translate that picture or mental image into words so readers who don't have the picture in front of them can understand the meaning? Oftentimes...chaos.

Document Design (2001). Design>Document Design>Graphic Design

Putting Graphics Online: Avoiding the Pitfalls  

Online information is becoming more the norm today than paper-based materials with online Help a standard with most products and the proliferation of the Internet and intranets. However, putting graphics online can be one of your biggest headaches in an online project. This paper will introduce some of the issues you will encounter when putting graphic information online and make suggestions on how to solve them.

Cooper, Charles and Ann Rockley. STC Proceedings (1997). Design>Graphic Design>Documentation

Screen Captures to Support Switching Attention      

This study set out to validate the supportive role of screen captures for switching attention. Forty-two participants learned how to work with Microsoft Excel with a paper manual. There were three types of manuals: a textual manual, a visual manual with full-screen captures, and a visual manual with a mixture of partial- and full-screen captures. The findings show that participants in all conditions looked up from the manual to the screen on about 97% of the cases in which such a switch was called for. Rank order analyses showed that users of the visual manuals switched attention significantly more often than did users of the textual manual. No differences were found between conditions on learning effects and training time.

Gellevij, Mark and Hans Van Der Meij. IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication (2002). Design>Graphic Design>Documentation>Screen Captures

Screenshots with the Mouse Pointer

How to produce screenshots which include the mouse-pointer.

Springer, Hans. TC-FORUM (1999). Articles>Graphic Design>Documentation>Screen Captures

Selecting a Color Palette

It's not hard to persuade a designer that color matters. But persuading Fortune 500 companies? You might be surprised. Color consultant Leatrice Eiseman has carved out a major career in helping companies 'make correct choices in colors that sell.'

Eiseman, Leatrice. Design, Typography and Graphics (2006). Design>Document Design>Graphic Design>Color

Showcase Images with Nested Frames

Circle meets square as Sandee Cohen nests frames inside frames to accentuate images in Adobe InDesign.

Cohen, Sandee. Adobe (2004). Design>Document Design>Graphic Design

The Successes and Challenges of Visual Language  

Discusses efforts to create manuals that rely entirely on pictures for communication.

Hofmann, Patrick. Intercom (2004). Design>Document Design>Graphic Design>Visual Rhetoric

System Calibration

This section explains Linear Calibration. Linear is the same as gamma 1.0 or gamma-space 1.0.

AIM for DTP. Design>Graphic Design>Document Design>Color

Taking a Second Look at Screen Captures  

Asserts that screen captures aren't as necessary and helpful as many writers of documentation might think.

Bright, Kathy. Intercom (2001). Design>Documentation>Graphic Design>Screen Captures

ThinkCreation Blog

You can find desktop publishing tutorials, tips of the day and design resources.

Bruno, Elisabetta. ThinkCreation (2005). Design>Graphic Design>Document Design>Blogs

Using Design Elements as Page Organizers  

Creating a visual hierarchy has always been the primary concern of page design. Whether the purpose is to instruct, inform or sell -- communication is the primary goal. The designer's task is to organize the page so that the viewer can easily find pertinent information on the page and in the appropriate sequence. The layout or appearance of the page establishes relationships between items -- what is most important, what goes together, what is incidental. Structuring the page establishes clearly defined areas to assist the reader. Design elements can be used to add structure to the page by unifying or emphasizing particular page elements. Although conventions for print and online documents may vary slightly, these techniques can be applied to both.

Birchman, Judith A. STC Proceedings (2002). Design>Document Design>Graphic Design

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.

Elser, Arthur G. STC Proceedings (1995). Articles>Documentation>Graphic Design