Rough Stuff  

Is your Illustrator artwork too smooth-looking? Try adding patterns and textures to your work.

Alspach, Ted and Jennifer Alspach. Adobe Magazine (1996). Design>Graphic Design>Software>Adobe Illustrator

Save For Web

The purpose of the 'Save For Web' dialog is to allow you to tweak optimization settings for web file formats and show you how those settings will affect your artwork. This allows you to find a good balance between file size and image quality.

Welton, Aaron. Illustrator World (2005). Design>Graphic Design>Web Design>Adobe Illustrator

Say It in Pictures: Crash Course in Visual Literacy  

Today, communication requires more than just pages of printed words. Producing effective documents and training requires the ability to understand, think and communicate graphically. This demonstration shows how to communicate almost anything graphically. Through creative brainstorming you will start to think visually and learn valuable principles that you can use back on the job to refine your own graphics.

Horton, William K. III and Katherine W. Horton. STC Proceedings (1996). Design>Graphic Design>Rhetoric>Visual Rhetoric

Say it in Pictures: Visual Literacy for Business and Technical Communication  

Today’s communication media demand more than just words. Producing effective documents, training materials, and Web pages requires the ability to understand, think, and communicate graphically' to be visually literate.

Horton, William K. III. STC Proceedings (1998). Design>Graphic Design>Visual Rhetoric

Schools of Thought  

How do you educate graphic designers in today's complex world? Teach them sociology, psychology, business - and yes, some composition and color theory.

McCarron, Carolyn. Adobe Magazine (2000). Articles>Education>Graphic Design

Scientific and Technical Illustrations, Text, and the Idea of Audience  

Although authoring agencies typically devote considerable effort to creating text for specific audiences and purposes, non-textual elements are often created trivially. Yet, many design theories could be successfully applied to the creation of transactional non-textual information. This paper offers an overview for and references to major theorists; it also serves as the theoretical basis for a presentation that emphasizes pragmatic applications of these principles in the design of non-textual information for specific audiences and purposes.

Rubens, Philip. STC Proceedings (1998). Design>Graphic Design>Technical Illustration

Screen Capture Software: Better than Print Screen  

Everyone knows that detailed pictures are a necessary supplement for technical documentation. For those who create software manuals, this means screen captures—images of what users see as they look at the monitor.

Wardin, Carla. Intercom (2003). Design>Graphic Design>Software>Screen Captures

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

Secrets to Creating Compelling Photo Collages

Although collage is an old art form, tools such as Photoshop CS2 give it a new twist. You don't need to get out paint, brushes, scissors, and glue to make art. Instead, everything you need is on your computer. With a handful of photos, Photoshop, and the desire to experiment, you're well on your way to creating collage art. Helen Bradley gives the how-to's for creating a collage in Photoshop by using photos and other techniques, and how to use some design and Photoshop tricks to make sure the result is balanced and pleasing to the eye.

Bradley, Helen. PeachPit Press (2006). Design>Graphic Design>Software>Adobe Photoshop

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.

Lisberg, Beth Conney. STC Proceedings (1997). Articles>Graphic Design>Visual Rhetoric>Charts and Graphs

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.

Follett, Jonathan. UXmatters (2006). Articles>Usability>User Interface>Graphic Design

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

Selecting Stuff

This tutorial will show you some ways to select areas of your images using the variety of selection tools available in Photoshop. First we'll talk about why selecting part of an image is so useful, and then we'll examine the various selection methods in Photoshop: the Marquee tools; the Lasso tools; the Magic Wand tool; the Color Range tool; and the Quick Mask mode. Finally, we'll look at ways to modify and fine-tune your selections.

Elated (2002). Design>Graphic Design>Software>Adobe Photoshop

Seven Things You Should Know About Data Visualization  

Data visualization is the graphical representation of information. Information technology combines the principles of visualization with powerful applications and large data sets to create sophisticated images and animations. Representing large amounts of disparate information in a visual form often allows you to see patterns that would otherwise be buried in vast, unconnected data sets. Data visualizations offer one way to harness infrastructure to find hidden trends and correlations that can lead to important discoveries. Visual literacy is an increasingly important skill, and data visualizations are another channel for students to develop their ability to process information visually.

Educause (2007). Design>Graphic Design>Technical Illustration>Visual Rhetoric

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

Sizing Images for Print in Elements

This reader wants help sizing images to gang print onto single photo paper sheets...

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

Smart Curves  

SVG is fun, sophisticated, and full of possibilities - and one day it'll change the way we view the Web.

Blatner, David. Adobe Magazine (1999). Design>Graphic Design>Standards>SVG

Smarter Image Hotlinking Prevention

Tthe usual approaches for preventing hotlinking (hijacking) images have a couple of side effects. This system works much better.

Scott, Thomas. List Apart, A (2004). Design>Web Design>Security>Graphic Design

Society for News Design

The Society for News Design (formerly the Society of Newspaper Design) is an international professional organization with more than 2,600 members in the United States, Canada and more than 50 other countries, divided into the 19 regions shown below.

SND. Organizations>Graphic Design>Journalism>Technical Illustration

The Society of Illustrators

To promote and stimulate interest in the art of illustration, past, present and future, and to give impetus generally toward high ideals in the art by means of exhibitions, lectures, educational programs, social intercourse, and in such other ways as may seem advisable.

Society of Illustrators, The. Organizations>Graphic Design>Technical Illustration

Soft-Proofing and Printing with Profiles

Many photographers today print directly from Photoshop to photo-quality inkjet printers or send images to a lab to have enlargements made on LightJets, Lambdas, or the Fuji Pictography and Frontier systems. All of these devices are capable of stunning, photo-realistic output. However, if you do not employ color management effectively the output from these devices will not match the image you saw on your monitor. At best, you will waste some time, ink and paper making reprints. At worst, if you are sending images to a lab, proofs and reprints to get the image correct can become costly.

Hagadorn, Matt. Nature Photography (2004). Design>Graphic Design>Prepress>Color

SolidWorks to CorelDraw  

How to open SolidWorks technical illustration DXF files in CorelDraw.

Broz, Donald. Broz and Dian (2006). Design>Graphic Design>Technical Illustration

Some Graphic and Semigraphic Displays

Graphs and semigraphic displays are made for purposes. Different purposes usually call for different graphs.

Tukey, John W. Edward Tufte (1972). Design>Graphic Design>Visual Rhetoric>Charts and Graphs

The Sound and Motion of Color

Can sound and motion illustrate the personality of color? The Animation class at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design set out to discover the answer.

AIGA (2005). Design>Graphic Design>Visual Rhetoric>Color