Document design is the field concerned with creating texts, that is books, pamphlets, posters and others that integrate words and pictures in ways that help people to achieve their specific goals for using texts at home, school, or work.
#27930
Background Positioning vs. Centered Elements
When the browser is told to center a background image within that container, it has to decide where the actual center lies. In the case of an odd total pixel width, the browser must select one side or the other of the central odd pixel as the "center" of the container.
Bergevin, Holly and John Gallant. Position is Everything (2006). Design>Web Design>Document Design>CSS
#30192
Baking up a Batch of PDF Files 
Customize how Acrobat works for you by building and using batch sequences. The beauty of a batch sequence is that you can modify or run it as you like.
Baker, Donna L. Adobe (2007). Articles>Document Design>Software>Adobe Acrobat
#29522
Bastien PROT: XPS une alternative au format PDF
XPS (XML Paper Specification) est un format de fichier électronique à présentation fixe comme le PDF du concurrent Adobe qui préserve la mise en forme du document et permet le partage des fichiers sans perte dinformation. Le format XPS garantit que, lorsquun fichier est affiché en ligne ou imprimé, il conserve le format souhaité.
Rédacteur Technique, Le (2007). (French) Articles>Document Design>Standards>XML
#22555
Becoming a "Business Communications Service Provider"
Print service providers have historically been defined by output technology such as commercial color, sheet-fed, web offset and large-format. These print technologies by themselves can be easily commoditized. As the market begins to migrate to a digital infrastructure, Print on Demand – or POD – represents something far more interesting and important than technology for technology’s sake. POD hardware and software offer the potential for new ways to communicate business information. The primary focus of successful users of POD technology is building a services portfolio and positioning their companies to provide 'business communications solutions and services.' These users are looking at digital printing and the associated services as a way to decommoditize printing and increase both profitability and customer loyalty.
Pellow, Barbara A. Digital Output (2004). Design>Document Design>Prepress>Printing
#27982
Best of Show -- Winners of STC's International Competitions
Read about the Best of Show winners of the 2005•2006 competitions in international technical art, international online communication, and international technical publications. Also, meet the winner of the international student technical communication competition.
Intercom (2006). Articles>TC>Document Design>International
#30083
Beyond Help: Making Help a Core Component of an Electronic Performance Support System
With the advent of HTML Help and the ability to embed Help directly inside an application, there’s been an increased interest in creating Help systems that are seamlessly integrated with their host applications. By blurring the line between the application and the Help that supports it, and by developing Help that automatically responds to user actions, application developers and Help authors now have the ability to develop true electronic performance support systems (EPSS). With this new ability will come a paradigm shift in the ways applications are developed and documented.
Wexler, Steven S. STC Proceedings (1999). Articles>Document Design>Help>EPSS
#21934
Whether you know it or not, 'database publishing' probably describes some of what you do. Here's how to do it better!
Kvern, Olav Martin. Adobe Magazine (1996). Design>Document Design>Databases
#21865
Blank paper...could anything be more basic and uncontroversial? Who'd have thought those innocuous white sheets could cause such a ruckus? Learn what the fuss is about and why paper mills and environmentalists are lining up on either side of the presses.
Sidles, Constance J. Adobe Magazine (1998). Design>Document Design>Prepress>Paper
#26933
Bloom's Taxonomy in Technical Content Development 
Technical writers provide information enabling users to learn and apply various technologies. In the endeavor to enable users, technical writers often need to use different strategies of classification, presentation, and structuring for the different types of information. However, in most cases such classifications or decisions about the best method of presentation and optimum structure are guided by instinct and are rarely heuristic. In this article, we present an established classification of information called Bloom’s taxonomy (of educational objectives), which can help technical writers make decisions about content classification.
Robbani, Wasique. KeyContent.org (2006). Articles>Document Design>Academic>Contextual Inquiry
#25113
An overview of the typical components of a printed technical book and the typical content, format, style, and sequence of those components.
McMurrey, David A. Illuminati Online (2001). Articles>Document Design>Publishing
#24035
Book Layout, PDF Creation, Preparing Documents for Press
This is a 10 hour, 5 week course taught one-on-one or in a small group (2-5 people) that is an introduction to the Adobe InDesign application. In the course we will cover the fundamentals of designing rich documents, including books, pamphlets, and posters.
Newman, Rob. University of California San Diego (2004). Academic>Courses>Document Design>Printing
#10754
Write a book this afternoon. Sound preposterous? To the contrary--you can create an information-packed, 16-page booklet using a single sheet of paper in little more time than it takes to type the text. Use it to market your product or service, to tell the story of your organization or to offer tips and how-to information to prospects and clients. Print five or ten copies directly from your laser printer or take your master artwork to a commercial printer and have it reproduced by the thousands. No matter how you cut, fold and staple it, this book is proof-positive that big things do come in small packages.
Chuck Green. Ideabook.com (1999). Design>Document Design>Prepress>Printing
#20477
Bridging the Gap Between Design and Editorial
With both Adobe InDesign® CS and Adobe InCopy® CS in your publishing workflow, writers and editors can compose stories in InCopy at the same time designers are laying out the pages using InDesign—without overwriting each other’s work.
Adobe (2003). Articles>Document Design>Software>Adobe InDesign
#25933
Brochures are good for some things but not others. The key to not wasting your money is to understand what brochures do well, and what they don't do well.
Bennaco (2005). Articles>Document Design>Marketing
#21947
Buying Laser Paper That Won't Jam
How to choose paper for laser printing.
Sidles, Constance J. Adobe Magazine (1996). Design>Document Design>Prepress>Paper
#29143
In this article, the author demonstrates that the semiotic model proposed by Charles Morris enables us to optimize our understanding of technical communication practices and provides a good point of inquiry. To illustrate this point, the author exemplifies the semiotic approaches by scholars in technical communication and elaborates Morris's model through analyzing visual and verbal elements of technical communication brochures from semantic, syntactic, and pragmatic levels. The discussion of semiotic approach reinforced by various examples illustrates that the semiotic model can be a tangible theoretical and practical tool to help students and practitioners study and analyze the use of visual and verbal elements in technical communication.
Fan, Jiang-Ping. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication (2006). Articles>Document Design>Assessment>Semantic
#21861
Even the pros forget the basics sometimes. Constance Sidles gives a quick refresher course on asking yourself, and your client, all the right questions when you're choosing paper.
Sidles, Constance J. Adobe Magazine (1998). Design>Document Design>Prepress>Paper
#29936
Cleaning up PDF Documents in Acrobat
If you are posting your PDF document to a web site, you'll generally want to upload a clean copy that will streamline the viewing experience for your site visitors. This tip outlines a quick way to remove unnecessary annotations, widgets, JavaScript, links, bookmarks and attachments, along with optimizing your documents for fast web viewing.
Shea, Dan. PlanetPDF (2007). Articles>Document Design>Software>Adobe Acrobat
#26859
A review of Kim Sydow Campbell's book Coherence, Continuity, and Cohesion: Theoretical Foundations for Document Design.
Kirloskar, Mukta. International Journal for Technical Communication (2006). Articles>Reviews>Document Design
#24222
Color in Technical Documents for Paper, Web, and PDF
Traditionally, technical documents have been produced in black and white because the cost of color reproduction on paper is high. With new delivery options of the Web and PDF, color is suddenly available at no cost online. And new digital printers make color on paper increasingly affordable. When opportunity knocks, issues tend to follow. Writers will find that using color is a learning experience. There is a new alphabet soup: RGB, CMYK, GIF, JPEG, CSS. There are new buzzwords: spot colors, process colors, digital printing. There are new techniques for representing color in Web pages and in PDF documents intended for paper or screen. Our presentation focuses on practical techniques, not graphic design.
Jackson, Ken and Sonya E. Keene. STC Proceedings (1999). Design>Document Design>Prepress>Color
#22502
Color Management and Windows: An Introduction
An overview of Microsoft image color management technology.
#18334
Establishing color control on the desktop can prove to be a frustrating task. And when you're dealing with color-critical customers or just plain want decent color, that's not the best situation. This PDF by Scott Olswold and Rick Dumont explains the fundamentals behind color management and then applies this discussion in terms of PageMaker.
Olswold, Scott. Makingpages.org (2002). Design>Document Design>Software>Adobe PageMaker
#20510
See the same colors in InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator, and Acrobat, thanks to the Adobe Color Engine.
Adobe (2003). Design>Document Design>Software>Color
#21955
Several years after the hype began, color management is maturing into a useful tool that can solve real problems. Here's a comprehensive overview.
Fraser, Bruce. Adobe Magazine (1995). Design>Document Design>Prepress>Color
#21893
In Acrobat 4, you open one PDF file. Then in the 'document' menu, choose 'insert file.' You’ll have to do this four times to bring your five documents together.
Harris, Steve. PDFzone (2004). Design>Document Design>Software>Adobe Acrobat
