Technical Illustration is the use of illustration to visually communicate information of a technical nature. Technical illustrations often take the form of component drawings or diagrams (usually isometric or orthogonal), and are sometimes viewed as a subset of graphic design or visual rhetoric.
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InfoVis.net es un proyecto dedicado a la Visualización de la Información, entendida como el proceso de interiorización del conocimiento mediante la percepción de información, preferentemente (pero no sólo) de forma visual. A veces se confunde la Visualización de la Información con el Diseño de Información. Este último es parte de aquella.
InfoVis (2004). (Spanish) Design>Graphic Design>Technical Illustration
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Review: Visualización de Redes Sociales
Las redes sociales son las responsables de muchas de las estructuras de poder e influencia en nuestro mundo. No siempre es fácil reconocer su estructura y comportamiento. La visualización y el análisis de redes sociales pueden contribuir notablemente a conocerlas.
Dursteler, Juan Carlos. InfoVis (2003). (Spanish) Articles>Reviews>Software>Technical Illustration
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The advent of multimedia technology has made 'visualization' a hot topic in technical communication. This paper classifies visualization into three categories, referring to differences in visualization between Western culture and Japanese culture.
Moriguchi, Minoru. STC Proceedings (1998). Articles>TC>Technical Illustration>International
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Visualizing Information: An Overview of This Special Issue 
The guest editors offer a brief history of visualization, discuss the present state of the art, and explore the possibilities and challenges that lie ahead. They then discuss the contents of this special issue in terms of the trends in visualization theory and research. They conclude by observing that technical communicators must respond to the challenges presented in the content of this issue, both by using the methods presented and by performing the further research the authors call for. Additionally, researchers must incorporate the results of inquiry in the related fields.
Gribbons, William M. and Arthur G. Elser. Technical Communication Online (1998). Articles>Graphic Design>Visual Rhetoric>Technical Illustration
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What Exactly is a Technical Illustration?
Is it not simply a graphic representation like any other? How does it differ from a technical drawing?
ITEDO Software (2001). Articles>Graphic Design>Technical Illustration
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What Is Technical Illustration?
In basic terms, technical illustration employs a balance of informative graphics, text, and embedded data or intelligence to compose pictorial views that visually communicate and clarify critical product information.
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Use preferably a drawing, not a photo! Photos most often include too many irrelevant details. The arrow lines are often more difficult to see on a photo.
Ring, Peter. Peter Ring Consultants (1996). Design>Graphic Design>Technical Illustration
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WhitePaperSource is a rich information source for white paper enthusiasts. It contains news about the industry and a forum for discussing everything and anything about writing and marketing white papers.
WhitePaperSource. Articles>Writing>Technical Illustration>Business Communication
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Why Illustrations Aid Understanding 
A small collection of illustrations is provided to show some of the diverse ways illustration may aid understanding. The display of parts and assemblies often relies on techniques such as explosions and canonical views to communicate the global structure and relations of a system that may have hidden pieces. Book illustrations exemplify specific visions of described situations and allow readers to save memory and summarily review potentially complex descriptions. Visual proofs abstract from details and embody reliable metatheories that provide semantic guarantees for inferences. And conceptual illustrations when effective rely the logical method of universal generalization to help viewers grasp general ideas.
Kirsh, David. IWM-KMRC. Design>Graphic Design>Technical Illustration>Visual Rhetoric
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Wigner Distribution Representation and Analysis of Audio Signals: An Illustrated Tutorial Review 
The Wigner distribution provides a visual display of quantitative information about how a signal’s energy is distributed in both time and frequency. Through its low-order moments the Wigner distribution embodies the fundamentally important concepts of both Fourier analysis and time-domain analysis. Signal energy is distributed in such a way that specific frequencies are localized in time by the group delay time (from classical filter theory) and at specific instants in time the frequency is given by the instantaneous frequency (from classical modulation theory). The energy spectrum (energy per frequency) and instantaneous power (energy per time) are specified by the zero-order moments of the distribution. The net positive volume of the Wigner distribution is numerically equal to the signal’s total energy. While the theoretical underpinnings of the Wigner distribution are mathematically elegant and do merit in-depth study, a substantial amount of practical insight, understanding and interpretive skill can be gained by carefully examining a wide variety of computed Wigner distributions such as those of the audio signals presented in this brief report.
Preis, Douglas and Voula Chris Georgopoulos. STC Proceedings (1998). Design>Graphic Design>Technical Illustration>Charts and Graphs
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Wordless Manuals: Replacing Words with Pictures
How do you convey an entire set of complex instructions without words, and why would you even bother? Since he first quipped this question, Patrick Hofmann has deleted countless words from the pages of hardware user manuals. Patrick is a technical illustrator and writer who, with the help of his team at Quintext information engineering in Waterloo, Canada, creates wordless documentation and visual solutions for his clients. In this session, you will learn what he learned: how to use wordlessness to downsize multi-lingual sets of assembly manuals, and how to illustrate complex instructions with the same concern for usability as we have with writing.
Hofmann, Patrick. STC Proceedings (1998). Articles>Documentation>Technical Illustration
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Maps are one of the most basic (and informative) infographics. The simple map. A rectangle with a few lines, some labels, and an X can impart what it would take hundreds of words to describe. Lee McCormack offers an insightful look into how to create a simple but informative infographic —the map.
McCormack, Lee. Boxes and Arrows (2002). Design>Graphic Design>Technical Illustration
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In the following tutorials you will be learning how to use a series of points in space to create an illustration. The work will be based on creating a WWII aircraft, the C-47 Skytrain.
Tech Drawing Tools (1999). Design>Graphic Design>Technical Illustration>3D
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Constructing the Bicycle in Isometric
This bicycle drawing will be constructed over an orthographic primitive. The scale will be 1 to 1 and you will be able to work in all three axes using the primitive for placement.
Tech Drawing Tools (2001). Design>Graphic Design>Technical Illustration
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The Google Chrome Comic: Why it Didn't Work
I'm amazed with the Google project, because the lack of narrative seems like a basic omission from such a high profile project.
Porter, Alan J. Content Pool, The (2008). Articles>TC>Technical Illustration>Web Browsers
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A Photo Essay of Classic Instruction Manuals
How do you run the A/C on a spy plane? Where's the Start button on a nuclear power plant? Don't try to wing it—read the directions! A portfolio of classic instruction manuals.
Honan, Mathew. Wired (2008). Articles>Documentation>Technical Illustration>History
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Classic Computer Manuals from Apple and IBM
Apple's first user manual was largely the creation of Ronald Wayne, Apple's third founder, recruited from Atari by Steve Jobs for a 10 percent stake in the new company. Wayne not only wrote the entire 10-page booklet, he also drew the intricate cover logo depicting Isaac Newton beneath an apple tree.
Honan, Mathew. Wired (2008). Design>Documentation>Technical Illustration>History
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The (Mostly) True Story of Helvetica and the New York City Subway
There is a commonly held belief that Helvetica is the signage typeface of the New York City subway system, a belief reinforced by Helvetica, Gary Hustwit’s popular 2007 documentary about the typeface. But it is not true—or rather, it is only somewhat true. Helvetica is the official typeface of the MTA today, but it was not the typeface specified by Unimark International when it created a new signage system at the end of the 1960s. Why was Helvetica not chosen originally? What was chosen in its place? Why is Helvetica used now, and when did the changeover occur?
Shaw, Paul. AIGA (2008). Design>Typography>Technical Illustration>Case Studies
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Perspective—it’s one of the first things you learn about in any art class. The basic idea is that it’s the way your eye actually sees something, represented on a flat surface such as paper or a monitor. A simple example is drawing a group of objects: You represent an object in the distance by making it smaller, while making objects close to the viewer larger—make sense? In this tutorial, I’m going to show you how to create perspective shadows in Adobe Photoshop CS3. The result is dynamic, but the technique is a breeze!
Gray, Lawrence. Event DV (2008). Articles>Graphic Design>Image Editing>Technical Illustration
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Applying Techniques of Textual Reuse to Graphics Using SVG and XML
Structured data techniques are typically applied to text-based data. Technologies like SGML and XML have allowed text-based publishing to constrain and control the creation of text-based information, increasing the usefulness, accuracy, and reuse of information.
Williams, Jim. IDEAlliance (2004). Articles>Graphic Design>Technical Illustration>SVG
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Visually Modelling Business Processes
Learn how to visually design and implement process definitions using BPSS V2 including the use of context mechanisms and workflows, signals and joins. A selection of sample industry and government applications will be provided from automotive, financial, homeland security and healthcare applications.
Webber, David. IDEAlliance (2004). Articles>Business Communication>Technical Illustration>Workflow
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Four Ideas to Organize Your Technical Document Images and Screen Shots
Most technical writers would include at least a few images to illustrate a point, or screen shots that accompany the description of a certain step-by-step procedure, etc. Organizing such images can really become a problem, especially when you have dozens and hundreds of them. Finding, editing, and importing them can quickly become a logistical nightmare, especially when a technical writer is working under a deadline pressure. Here are four ideas to organize and name your images for higher productivity.
Akinci, Ugur. Technical Communication Center (2009). Articles>Graphic Design>Technical Illustration>Screen Captures
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A Periodic Table of Visualization Methods
An interactive presentation of a variety of visualization techniques used by graphic designers, technical illustrators and document designers to convey information.
Lengler, Ralph and Martin J. Eppler. Visual Literacy (2009). Presentations>Graphic Design>Technical Illustration>Visual Rhetoric
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By having consumers perform furniture assembly themselves, Ikea is able to both lower costs and slowly drive their customers insane. To be fair, Ikea assembly instructions are not that bad. They brilliantly only use pictures, which are clearer than text and require no translation. Still, recognizing that some people may still have difficulty understanding them, I offer this handy explanation of some typical Ikea instructions that came with a bookshelf I recently bought.
Tech Writer's World, A (2009). Humor>Documentation>Technical Illustration
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Harnessing the Power of Annotations -- An Interview with Dan Brown
Annotations come in all shapes and sizes depending on the artifact and the intent of the document. People are probably most familiar with wireframe annotations, where the author calls out areas of the screen to describe functionality not immediately discernible from the picture alone.
Spool, Jared M. User Interface Engineering (2009). Articles>Interviews>Visual Rhetoric>Technical Illustration
