http://tc.eserver.org/dir/Design/Graphic-Design/Document-Design A listing of the most recently indexed works about Design and Graphic Design and Document Design in the field of technical communication. en-us Copyright (c) 2005-08 by the EServer. All rights reserved. tclib-editorial@eserver.org (TC Library Editorial Board) webmaster@eserver.org (Geoffrey Sauer) http://tc.eserver.org/images/newlogo.gif http://tc.eserver.org/dir/Design/Graphic-Design/Document-Design http://tc.eserver.org/35462.html http://tc.eserver.org/35462.html It may sound like a simple thing, but you better believe that a lot of thought goes into the design of a magazine cover. Covers compete for attention next to dozens of other magazines on the rack. In this tutorial, we’ll not only take you through the process of creating a cover, but also reveal techniques that designers use to make their covers stand out. http://tc.eserver.org/33849.html http://tc.eserver.org/33849.html 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. http://tc.eserver.org/33604.html http://tc.eserver.org/33604.html 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. http://tc.eserver.org/33144.html http://tc.eserver.org/33144.html 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. http://tc.eserver.org/32572.html http://tc.eserver.org/32572.html 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. http://tc.eserver.org/31664.html http://tc.eserver.org/31664.html Color can play an important role in technical documentation. http://tc.eserver.org/30072.html http://tc.eserver.org/30072.html 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. http://tc.eserver.org/28734.html http://tc.eserver.org/28734.html 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. http://tc.eserver.org/28593.html http://tc.eserver.org/28593.html 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. http://tc.eserver.org/28592.html http://tc.eserver.org/28592.html 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.' http://tc.eserver.org/26673.html http://tc.eserver.org/26673.html You can find desktop publishing tutorials, tips of the day and design resources. http://tc.eserver.org/25769.html http://tc.eserver.org/25769.html Devoted to the best possible quality in the desktop publishing workflow. This calls for accurate calibration and correct choice for the working space. http://tc.eserver.org/25770.html http://tc.eserver.org/25770.html This section explains Linear Calibration. Linear is the same as gamma 1.0 or gamma-space 1.0. http://tc.eserver.org/25049.html http://tc.eserver.org/25049.html 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. http://tc.eserver.org/25048.html http://tc.eserver.org/25048.html Circle meets square as Sandee Cohen nests frames inside frames to accentuate images in Adobe InDesign. http://tc.eserver.org/24784.html http://tc.eserver.org/24784.html 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. http://tc.eserver.org/24730.html http://tc.eserver.org/24730.html 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. http://tc.eserver.org/24160.html http://tc.eserver.org/24160.html 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. http://tc.eserver.org/24087.html http://tc.eserver.org/24087.html The grid of a table can feel like a prison sometimes—too confining, dreary and dull. Important information just mopes inside the cells. http://tc.eserver.org/23492.html http://tc.eserver.org/23492.html How to produce screenshots which include the mouse-pointer. http://tc.eserver.org/23090.html http://tc.eserver.org/23090.html Discusses efforts to create manuals that rely entirely on pictures for communication. http://tc.eserver.org/21916.html http://tc.eserver.org/21916.html Too often, illustrations just sit there, taking up space on the page. Here's how to make them work. http://tc.eserver.org/21494.html http://tc.eserver.org/21494.html 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. http://tc.eserver.org/19883.html http://tc.eserver.org/19883.html 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. http://tc.eserver.org/19828.html http://tc.eserver.org/19828.html 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. http://tc.eserver.org/15201.html http://tc.eserver.org/15201.html Asserts that screen captures aren't as necessary and helpful as many writers of documentation might think. http://tc.eserver.org/14161.html http://tc.eserver.org/14161.html 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. http://tc.eserver.org/13759.html http://tc.eserver.org/13759.html 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. http://tc.eserver.org/12997.html http://tc.eserver.org/12997.html This is a list of resources related to desktop publishing and graphics. I'm including things like icons and wallpaper in the graphics category. http://tc.eserver.org/10300.html http://tc.eserver.org/10300.html 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. http://tc.eserver.org/10241.html http://tc.eserver.org/10241.html 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.