In a recent webinar on writing scripts for video tutorials that I gave to the STC Tech Editing group for the STC last week, someone asked how to create screencasts for mobile apps. I thought it would be a good idea to respond in more detail in a blog post. Most likely your apps are designed for iPhones Continue Reading »
Category Archives: Visual Communication
Visually Appealing Documents Combine Text with Images
A few years ago, I was scouring magazines to get ideas for quick reference guide layouts. In particular, I found that WIRED magazine has some of the most creative and engaging layouts, often with text laid out in three or four columns, or along the side of a graphic, or in various quadrants about the Continue Reading »
Book Review: A Practical Guide to Designing with Data, by Brian Suda
A Practical Guide to Designing with Data (Five Simple Steps, 2010), by Brian Suda, is a thorough exploration of best practices for graphs and charts. It’s somewhat similar to Edward Tufte’s Visualizing Information in focus, and both have a shared antipathy toward “chart junk” in the effort to tell the story of data. Suda explains, Continue Reading »
Does Translation Mean You Should Omit Illustrations?
One can hardly dismiss the power of visuals. One of the oldest truisms in communication is that a picture is worth a 1,000 words. Instead of lengthy text, we praise infographics, diagrams, workflows, and other visual illustrations that communicate ideas. (See this collection of New York Times infographics.) In Visual Language: Global Communication for the 21st Century, Robert Continue Reading »
Podcast — Visual Composing: Document Design for Print and Digital Media, with Jo Mackiewicz
Download MP3 Length: 45 min. Recently Jo Mackiewicz (Auburn University) and Kathryn Riley (Illinois Institute of Technology) published Visual Composing: Document Design for Print and Digital Media with Pearson. This book covers the visual side of document design, including all the design decisions from the font you use to the colors you choose to the Continue Reading »
Minimalistic Callouts Heighten Visual Appeal
Lately I’ve been working on quick reference guides that contain a lot of callouts around screenshots. (By callouts, I mean explanatory text that points to some part of the image.) In trying to come up with the right design for callouts, I surveyed how other authors approached callouts. Below is a sampling of about 14 Continue Reading »
Adobe Illustrator and InDesign Integration with Layered Images [Visual Imagination #3]
Adobe Illustrator and Adobe InDesign integrate in a cool way when it comes to images. Let’s say you have a layered image in Illustrator. When you insert that illustrator .ai file into InDesign, you can turn the layers on or off within InDesign itself. This control with the layers allows you to use the same image Continue Reading »
What Is Chartjunk? [Visual Imagination #2]
Recently I wrote a wiki page listing all the benefits of installing Internet access in LDS meetinghouses. After I published my list, I realized the page was text heavy — so much that it looked uninviting and intimidating, even though the content itself was good. You can view the avalanche of text here. I like to Continue Reading »
Visuals Engage Users — Why Aren’t There More Illustrations in Help Content? [Visual Imagination #1]
At the last STC Summit in Dallas, one of the most attended sessions was Don Moyer’s Building Visual Explanations: Practical Advice for Writers. I was recently listening to the recording of the session. I’ve been feeling more and more lately that I need to develop my visual imagination. Illustrating concepts isn’t difficult, Moyer said. The Continue Reading »
Page Layout and Design Tips from Jean-luc Doumont’s Trees, maps, and theorems
I’m currently reading Trees, maps, and theorems: Effective communication for rational minds, a new book by Jean-luc Doumont. The reason I wanted to read the book is for Jean-luc’s expertise in visual design and page layout, because I thought it could help me design better quick reference guides. Although very little of the book deals Continue Reading »