Graphics and Tables

One of the nice things about technical writing courses is that most of the papers have graphics in them — or at least they should. A lot of professional, technical writing contains graphics — drawings, diagrams, photographs, illustrations of all sorts, tables, pie charts, bar charts, line graphs, flow charts, and so on. Once you get the hang of putting graphics like these into your writing, you should consider yourself obligated to use graphics whenever the situation naturally would call for them. Unlike what you might fear, producing graphics is not such a terrible task — in fact, it can be fun. You don't have to be a professional graphics artist or technical draftsperson to produce graphics for your technical writing. There are ways to produce professional-looking graphics with tape, scissors, white-out, and a decent photocopying machine.

McMurrey, David A. Illuminati Online. Design>Graphic Design>Technical Illustration

Graphics and Web Design Based on Edward Tufte's Principles

This is an outline of Edward Tufte's pioneering work on the use of graphics to display quantitative information.  It mainly consists of text and ideas  taken from his three books on the subject along with some additional material of my own.  This page is in  text only format: in order to understand the concepts you need to read the books because the concepts cannot really be grasped without the illustrations, and current video monitor technology is too low in resolution to do them justice. His work has been described as 'a visual Strunk and White.'

University of Washington-Seattle (1999). Design>Graphic Design>Technical Illustration

Graphics, Design and Technical Communication: Exploring Disciplinary Boundaries    

How much about graphics and visual design should the courses in our technical communication programs cover? This has become a programmatic issue because technical writing has become more graphically dependent. This is true in many arenas: when designing electronic or print documents suchas brochures, issues such as color theory, perspective, and proportionality come into play along with the rhetoric of the written word. The crossover between the visual and the linguistic is most evident in newmedia, especially in Web design.

LaGrandeur, Kevin. CPTSC Proceedings (2001). Design>Graphic Design>TC

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.

Barnhill, Suzanne and Dave Rado. Word MVP Site, The (2005). Articles>Graphic Design>Software>Microsoft Word

Graphics Libraries

Graphics Libraries section gives links to public domain graphics libraries all over the Web.

HTML Writers Guild. Design>Graphic Design

Graphics on the Web

There is no limit in the Web specifications to the graphical formats that can be used on the Web. You just need a MIME type so that the format is labelled correctly for transfer across the Web, and so that a suitable viewer (if one exists) can be located at the other end. In practice, certain formats are more widely understood than others; certain formats are more suited to one type of graphical data than another; so you should make an informed choice about what format to use.

W3C. Design>Web Design>Graphic Design

Graphs on Steroids  

A hypothetical example to help technical communicators think through ethical issues in the workplace.

Bryan, John G. Intercom (2003). Articles>Graphic Design>Ethics>Charts and Graphs

Gratuitous Graphics and Human-Centered Website Design

Notice how frustrating most company websites are. Lots of pretty pictures that take forever to load. Hardly any information on a page. Notice how difficult it is to find the information you seek, and especially, how difficult it is to do comparison shopping. Don't companies realize that in today's world, the website is a great opportunity to practice customer-centered interaction -- make the customers happy and they will come back again and again? Frustrate them and, well, the competition is only a click away.

Norman, Donald A. JND.org (1999). Design>Web Design>Graphic Design

The Guide to Effective Illustration: Images for Presentation and Publication

An important part of modern communication is the use of images, both with oral presentations and in publications, to convey the essence of the author's message. As the methods of preparing, transmitting, and presenting images proliferate, we are all challenged to make the best use possible of each imaging technology.

Walworth, Vivian, Mary McCann, John McCann and Louis Rosenblum. Society for Imaging Science and Technology, The (1999). Books>Information Design>Graphic Design>Technical Illustration

Guidelines on Graphics Usage

Illustrations and technical graphics are essential to any technical documentation. They assist users' understanding by simplifying complex content through clear, understandable and effective information. A primary objective of technical documentation is to ensure that users use products effectively and safely. Graphics and illustrations assist in accomplishing this objective. Striking the right balance between text and graphics enables documentation to be effective support to product use. This article recommends a few guidelines and best practices to adopt when working with illustrations and graphics in technical documents.

Chava, Uday. Indus (2005). Design>Graphic Design>Technical Illustration

Guild of Natural Science Illustrators

The GNSI is a non-profit organization that sets high professional standards, provides opportunities for professional and scholarly development, encourages and assists member networking, and promotes itself to potential clients and the general public.

GNSI. Organizations>Graphic Design>Technical Illustration>Scientific Communication

Review: Half the Truth and Something Like the Truth

As an art director, I'm an avowed secret handshake guy from way back. They teach it to us in design school when they make us swear on a stack of Pantone color selectors and old type specimen books that we'll never reveal the secrets of the design world, especially to editors and writers (word people). Early reviews of Type & Layout have been ecstatic, so I had wondered whether someone had finally sold the secret handshake to the enemy. I shouldn't have worried. This is not really a design book, and it is not a book that most designers are going to care for. What worries me is that nondesigners won't know that.

Fleshman, Steven D. Editorial Eye, The (1995). Articles>Reviews>Graphic Design

Hand Tinting a Photograph with Photoshop

Before the age of color film, when black-and-white photography was the only option, it was common practice for photographers to tint a black-and-white image with colored dyes to mimic real-life colors. Although we now have all the advantages of stunning color photography, we can still use Photoshop to replicate this technique, and add great charm to black-and-white images.

Shelbourne, Tim. Photoshop Tips and Tricks (2006). Design>Graphic Design>Software>Adobe Photoshop

Harnessing the Power of PNGs

Compared to GIF and JPEG, the PNG file format has a lot to offer: smaller file sizes, higher quality, and superb transparency. All you need are a few guidelines and techniques to expand your design toolbox.

Sawyer McFarland, Dave. Creative Pro (2007). Design>Graphic Design>Image Editing>Standards

Help! Tips for Working in Photoshop 7

A 'quick start' guide to creating graphics using Adobe Photoshop 7.0.

Agena, Kate. Purdue University (2003). Articles>Graphic Design>Software>Adobe Photoshop

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.

McDowell, David Q. PennWell (2003). Articles>Graphic Design>Standards

La Historia de la Visualización

La historia de la visualización es la de la búsqueda de nuevos artefactos para amplificar la capacidad de conocer, es la historia de la escritura y de los mapas, la historia del conocimiento.

Dursteler, Juan Carlos. InfoVis (2002). (Spanish) Design>Graphic Design>History

A Horse of a Different Color is Fine--Just be Accurate!

As much as the hardware and software manufacturers in the digital imaging world would like you to think that buying a digital camera and a photo quality printer will make you Ansel Adams, those of us that earn our living as pixel jockeys battle with color management in one way or another every day. Depending on your workflow and the final destination of your images, there are a number of ways to keep your colors accurate.

Dorgay, Jeff. Digital Output (2003). Design>Graphic Design>Prepress>Color

Hot Shots  

The elusive screen, captured at last.

Kvern, Olav Martin. Adobe Magazine (1998). Design>Graphic Design>Technical Illustration>Screen Captures

Hot Spots Too Bright

I have a photo of a pearl necklace, which has one bright flash spot on each pearl. How do I reduce the brightness without making the pearls appear dull and gray?

Photoshop 911 (2004). Design>Graphic Design>Software>Adobe Photoshop

How Do We Understand a System with (So) Many Diagrams? Cognitive Integration Processes in Diagrammatic Reasoning  

In order to understand diagrammatic reasoning with multiple diagrams, this study proposes a theoretical framework that focuses on the cognitive processes of perceptual and conceptual integration. The perceptual integration process involves establishing interdependence between relevant system elements that have been dispersed across multiple diagrams, while the conceptual integration process involves generating and refining hypotheses about a system by combining higher-level information inferred from the diagrams. This study applies a diagrammaticreasoning framework of a single diagram to assess the usability of multiple diagrams as an integral part of a system development methodology. Our experiment evaluated the effectiveness and usability of design guidelines to aid problem solving with multiple diagrams. The results of our experiment revealed that understanding a system represented by multiple diagrams involves a process of searching for related information and of developing hypotheses about the target system. The results also showed that these perceptual and conceptual integration processes were facilitated by incorporating visual cues and contextual information in the multiple diagrams as representation aids. Visual cues indicate which elements in a diagram are related to elements in other diagrams; the contextual information indicates how the individual datum in one diagram is related to the overall hypothesis about the entire system.

Kim, Jinwoo, Jungpil Hahn and Hyoungmee Hahn. Yonsei University (2000). Design>Graphic Design

How to Blur the Background Around an Object

Working in your new layer, and on the item you wish to keep in focus, find a starting point, click the mouse once and begin slowing tracing around the object. Once it has been entirely traced, return to your starting point and double-click to select your object. Under the SELECT menu choose INVERSE. Then under the FILTER menu choose BLUR » GAUSSIAN BLUR. When the Gaussian Blur window appears, use the radius slider bar to choose the amount of pixels to blur. I chose 4.5 for my example. When you are satisfied with the preview, click OK.

Hill, Julie. Presentations (2003). Design>Graphic Design>Software>Adobe Photoshop

How To Blur The Background Around An Object

Julie Hill shows you a quick and easy way to enhance a photograph's point of interest using Photoshop 7.0.

Hill, Julie. Presentations (2003). Design>Graphic Design>Software>Adobe Photoshop

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