Typography is the study and process of typefaces; how to select, size, arrange, and use them in general. Traditionally, typography was the use of metal types with raised letterforms that were inked and then pressed onto paper. In modern terms, typography today also includes computer display and output.
#31505
Branding and the Role of Public Relations: A Bottom-Dollar Proposition
It used to be that advertising was king. If you had a product or service you needed to sell, you went to an advertising agency and developed an advertising campaign to get your item to the public. Then marketing joined the fray, and advertising became an extension of other things you were doing to market yourself, like trade shows or mailings. Eventually branding assumed center stage. Now everything you did to promote, market or sell your product or service, your company or even yourself emanated from the branding mandate. As it should be! The critical importance of strategically focused, consistently delivered messaging cannot be overstated.
Gelfand, Julie Gross. Communication World Bulletin (2004). Articles>Business Communication>Public Relations
#23972
Branding and the User Interface, Part 1: Brand Basics
Develops a foundation for future, more detailed discussions by introducing several key brand concepts.
Fortin, Nate. Cooper Interaction Design (2003). Articles>User Interface>Marketing
#23969
Branding and the User Interface, Part 2: Tips on New Media Branding: Behavior and Color
A look at how branding differs between traditional applications, like printed corporate collateral, and emerging new media applications, such as software user interfaces, with a focus on behavior and color.
Fortin, Nate. Cooper Interaction Design (2003). Articles>User Interface>User Centered Design
#10574
Many web sites exist primarily to create or strengthen the brand for a product or service. We’re finding that a site’s usability can dramatically affect branding. And the graphical aspects of the site — such as logos or evocative pictures — have much less effect on branding than we expected.
User Interface Engineering (1999). Articles>Usability>Web Design
#25223
Branding Copy and Web Sites: A Bad Fit
The trouble with using text as a branding tool on web pages is that it gets in the way of what visitors are looking for. Visitors want and expect text to be useful and information. They are in 'active' and 'engaged' mode. They are searching. They want something. Text that isn't useful is disappointing.
Usborne, Nick. Excess Voice (2004). Articles>Web Design>Writing>Marketing
#31361
Branding dates back to ancient times and can be an aspect of every field. Not only does branding provide clients with a sense of professionalism and reliability, it can also help define your company.
Frick, Elizabeth G. 'Bette'. Intercom (2008). Articles>Business Communication>Marketing
#28893
A Breadth-First Survey of Eye Tracking Applications 
Eye tracking applications are surveyed in a breadth-first manner, reporting on work from the following domains: Neuroscience, Psychology, Industrial Engineering and Human Factors, Marketing/Advertising, and Computer Science. Following a review of traditionally diagnostic uses, emphasis is placed on interactive applications, differentiating between selective and gaze-contingent approaches.
Duchowski, Andrew T. Lunds Universitet (2002). Articles>Software>Usability>Eye Tracking
#27543
A Breakdown of the Psychomotor Components of Input Device Usage
This study investigates the breakdown of the psychomotor components of three different input devices, the mouse, trackball, and RollerMouse™ using the Stochastic Optimized Submovement Model. Primary movement time (PMT), Total Movement Time (TMT), Primary Movement Distance (PMD), and Total Movement Distance (TMD) were examined for each device. Results showed that psychomotor variables related to the primary phase of movement help to pinpoint how performance efficiency is affected by a particular device. For example, the relationship between %PMD and efficiency suggests that a device that affords users an initial accurate movement decreases the need for more or longer corrective submovements, thus reducing movement time.
Slocum, Jeremy. Usability News (2005). Articles>Human Computer Interaction>User Interface>Usability
#31599
Breaking Down the Silos: Usability Practitioners Meet Marketing Researchers
I often find that client companies keep two disciplines locked up in separate silos—usability research within IT and marketing research within the Marketing Services department. This can have a serious impact on the sharing of information relating to customer experience.
Kozatch, David. UXmatters (2008). Articles>Usability>Marketing>Collaboration
#31785
In 1992, the American Bar Association released the MacCrate Report, which listed the ten skills and four professional values that all attorneys need and critiqued law schools and state bars for not doing enough to teach and encourage the development of these skills and values. In response, law schools have significantly increased the skills-based components in their curricula, and most state bar exams now include a performance test. Technical and Professional Communication (TPC) programs already provide substantial instruction in all of the skills and values described in the MacCrate Report; further, an education in TPC prepares graduates to excel in law school and on the bar exam. This knowledge offers opportunities for growth if educators, administrators, and scholars take steps to encourage students to consider not only writing for but also joining in the legal profession.
Todd, Jeff. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication (2008). Articles>Education>Legal>Business Communication
#26754
SIN stands for Shy, Inactive, or New. I admit that it wasn't my original idea--I appropriated the name and concept from another organization.
Miller, Elisa K. Tieline (2006). Articles>Collaboration>Management
#13554
In our early writing years, many of us toiled under strict teachers who drilled the rules of English grammar into our collective consciousness. We sweated drops of blood on our pristine paper as we tried to craft perfect sentences for that much-desired 'A.' We prayed that we didn’t leave a word or clause misplaced or dangling for the teacher’s angry red pen to mark. Yet pick up a work of modern fiction, and you might notice that the writer has broken many of the rules that were drummed into our impressionable heads. These days, fiction often resembles the casual style of postmodern poetry, with sentence fragments and punctuation sprinkled about like seasoning. But in technical communication, we can’t be so casual. We must adhere to those rules of grammar our English teachers upheld— at least, for the most part.
Gallagher, Jolie A. Intercom (2002). Articles>Writing>Grammar>Technical Writing
#26113
Breaking the Word Processor Curve
When you first switch to Writer, this claim that Writer beats Word may seem hard to swallow. And no wonder; you're too busy learning the new menus to get beyond the fact that everything's only half-familiar. And if you're an unsophisticated user who has yet to learn (to steal the title of Robin Williams' book) that the PC is not a typewriter, you might never notice. However, if you're an advanced user for whom style, structured text and long documents are all part of word processing, then the claim soon becomes self-evident.
Byfield, Bruce. Linux Journal (2003). Articles>Word Processing>Software>OpenOffice
#29499
Want to see what passionate thinking looks like? Peek inside a brain filled with theatre, invention, games for girls, and design-as-activism.
Adlin, Tamara and Brenda Laurel. UX Pioneers (2007). Articles>Interviews>User Experience
#26203
The Internet Archive is one of the largest archives of digital media in existence. It contains five times more information than is in the Library of Congress and several times more information than is currently available publicly on the web. David Womack interviewed its creator, Brewster Kahle, for Loop.
Womack, David. AIGA (2002). Articles>Web Design>History
#22210
Bridges Across Many Borders: The Eastern Michigan University Write-Link Project 
In recent years, our field has been seeking ways to build bridges and to partner with technical communication programs in community colleges, practitioners in industry, and our colleagues in other areas of writing. Many in our field have also been incorporating community service into their pedagogy. Another focus has been to reach out to high schools in order to connect with students who represent the future of the profession. We all recognize the benefits to be gained from such partnerships and projects.
Blakeslee, Ann M. and Jay Steichmann. CPTSC Proceedings (2003). Articles>Education>Service Learning
#10393
This paper analyzes behaviors and mechanisms that led to successful and unsuccessful aerospace proposals written by one company over 10 years. Successful proposal managers elicited cooperation through persuasion and by successfully negotiating organizational, disciplinary, and cultural boundaries. Tracking devices that identified scheduling problems early in the project and designation of a dedicated, neutral project space located near corporate decision makers also contributed to a proposal team's success. This research suggests the need for technical writing instruction that develops students' non-coercive persuasive skills and their sensitivity to the communication challenges inherent in cross-organizational and cross-cultural contexts.
Kent-Drury, Roxanne. Technical Communication Online (2000). Articles>Grants>Proposals>Writing
#10584
Many usability problems are instances of what we call 'conceptual gaps.' A conceptual gap arises because of some difference between the user’s mental model of the application and how the application actually works.If the gap is large enough, it can stop the user’s work. For example, a user who wants to search the web for free local concerts may not know how to formulate a query that will yield this information. The gap between the search engine’s syntax and the user’s understanding of that syntax may prevent the user from accomplishing their goal.
User Interface Engineering (1996). Articles>Usability>User Interface
#23944
Bridging the Back-Office/Front-Office Gap 
With 75% of your organization's information contained in unstructured formats, can you transform it into 'usable content?' The problem that e-business exposes most often is inadequate integration.
Gross, Mitchell. KMworld (2001). Articles>Knowledge Management>Content Management
#31914
Bridging the Designer–User Gap
Depending on how representative designers are of the target audience, a project might need more or less user testing. Still, usability concerns never go away completely.
Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2008). Articles>Web Design>Usability
#30296
Review: Bridging the Gap between Cultural Studies Theory and the World of the Working Practitioner
Cultural studies is an academic field that focuses on understanding the unchallenged assumptions that constrain and shape communication and related interactions among people. Although the field has made considerable progress in the last half-century, many practitioners have either never encountered the field, or have encountered it only through extremist advocates who do the field a great disservice. As a result, they have lost the ability to benefit from the insights provided by cultural studies. In this paper, I review the recent book Critical Power Tools to provide an update on the current thinking in the field, and to demonstrate how the modern form of the field has much to teach technical communications practitioners who are willing to listen to what the theoreticians have to say.
Hart, Geoffrey J.S. International Journal for Technical Communication (2007). Articles>Reviews>TC>Cultural Theory
#29917
Review: Bridging the Gap between Cultural Studies Theory and the World of the Working Practitioner
Cultural studies is an academic field that focuses on understanding the unchallenged assumptions that constrain and shape communication and related interactions among people. Although the field has made considerable progress in the last half-century, many practitioners have either never encountered the field, or have encountered it only through extremist advocates who do the field a great disservice. As a result, they have lost the ability to benefit from the insights provided by cultural studies. In this paper, I review the recent book Critical Power Tools to provide an update on the current thinking in the field, and to demonstrate how the modern form of the field has much to teach technical communications practitioners who are willing to listen to what the theoreticians have to say.
Hart, Geoffrey J.S. International Journal for Technical Communication (2007). Articles>Reviews>Cultural Theory
#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
#23990
Bridging the Gap Between Design and Engineering Cultures
Developers want details. They want information they can take back and talk about on their own. They want the space to decide, based on their own criteria, what is valuable and what is not. They make use of the divide between designers and developers to help maintain their boundaries.
Rodgers, Deborah. Cooper Interaction Design (2001). Articles>Presentations>Engineering
#23984
Bridging the Gap with Requirements Definition
Developing a new product or service is tricky. When everything goes well, the product can redefine a market or even create an entirely new one, to the benefit of its manufacturer and its consumers. When the product doesn't click with its audience, though, the costs—development, employee, manufacturing—can be staggering. How do you ensure that your new product doesn't flop? One effective method is to conduct a requirements definition phase before developing a new product.
Olshavsky, Ryan. Cooper Interaction Design (2002). Articles>Usability>Specifications
