[Audio clip: view full post to listen] 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 tables, column widths, … more »

My wife Jane attended a Segullah writer’s retreat conference this weekend. During the conference, one of the presenters explained a common mistake many novice writers make: they look for stories to fit a pre-selected theme. You hear the result of this strategy most commonly in church talks. Someone is assigned a topic, or has a topic he or she wants to explore. To make the … more »

Catalyst 2: User Experience We didn’t have a very good support model for the application. It became clear that our service desk, which included mostly BYU students working part-time and supporting over 100 different applications, couldn’t answer questions that users had. They would only escalate the questions to us. And not many of our customers trusted the support desk anyway. Eventually the project manager started … more »

Given that it’s a new year, a lot of people are writing about trends and predictions in technical communication. Ellis Pratt at Cherryleaf has an interesting post on the Top 10 Trends in Technical Communication for 2010. Larry Kunz has a post on Technical Communication Trends in 2010. Sarah O’Keefe chimed in with 2010 Predictions for Technical Communication. And Ben Minson has Ten New Year’s Resolutions. … more »

I spent much of last week with my head inside a Mediawiki skin (when I probably should have been working on another project). I’m not entirely sure what it is, but I sometimes get fixated by technical problems I can’t seem to solve. I first customized the FraternalRelief Mediawiki skin to match my organization’s home page. My customization wasn’t too bad, but I saw a … more »

12/9/09 update: I changed it back. I recently decided to change my blog theme. I know that people are interested in content more than design, but it’s worth a post explaining why I changed this theme. I’ve had the Limau Orange theme on my blog for about two years now. I grew tired of looking at it, and the design seemed a little out of … more »

Free download: Good vs. Great Design (summary) ~ Authentic Boredom.

Form and function by Communications from DMN.

When you insert a transparent image over a color background in Adobe InDesign, the transparent image may look good when you generate the PDF, but when you actually print the image from a laser printer, the transparent image has a faint background where the image should otherwise be transparent. I spent a long time trying to figure out the solution to this problem. It seemed … more »

Award-Winning Newspaper Designs | Inspiration | Smashing Magazine. This is a good way to get ideas for quick reference guide layouts.

50 Useful Design Tools For Beautiful Web Typography | CSS, Fonts | Smashing Magazine.

Customizing a SharePoint site is not necessary — you can use the default theme or related themes straight from the box. And this is really how SharePoint was intended to be used by the mainstream. But if you don’t want your SharePoint site to look like the hundred other SharePoint sites at your company, you can customize the look and feel. This is something I’ve … more »

Coding Horror: The Two Types of Browser Zoom. For help authors producing browser-based formats, the issues in this post may impact the usability of your help. How will Zoom impact your design?

Download in iPod format Jim from Iowa writes: I was doing some career research involving technical writing and stumbled upon your website.  I had a question about that sort of thing, and you seem like a good person to ask. To be frank, I have two main interests–writing and technology.  I love to read and write, but I also love engineering, working with computers, etc.  So, I guess … more »

Since I’ve been reading The Non-Designers Design Book: Design and Typographic Principles for the Novice, I’ve started to see the importance of contrast everywhere. The author, Robin Williams, argues that contrast is one of the four pillars of design, and that most people don’t include enough of it. As a result, rather than contrast, they end up with conflict. Williams writes: A design is in … more »