I'd Rather Be Writing » illustrator

Technical Writing – Making Resolutions for the New Year

Tom Johnson — Mon, 27 Dec 2010 06:35:05 +0000

As 2011 approaches, Lynda at WritingAssist.com encourages technical writers to make technical writing resolutions for the new year:

A new year means you get the chance to do things over, to do things better. Whether you’ve been happy with your technical writing team or you think things should improve, it’s time to look back on the past year to see what needs to improve and what needs to be removed from your company for the year ahead. (Technical Writing – Making Resolutions for the New Year)

A few of her recommendations were on the conservative side, in my opinion. Update your software, modernize your style guide. Nevertheless, this got me thinking about new directions I’ll take in 2011. I’ve been moving in some of these directions for a while. Here are the top 10 technical writing resolutions I have for 2011.

Use wikis rather than traditional HATS to author help content.
Give users quick reference guides rather than long printed guides.
Include more visuals, especially concept diagrams, in my help content.
Master Adobe Illustrator and increase my understanding of visual techniques.
Read more of my RSS feeds online and use them as a way to generate ideas for posts.
Start negotiating with project managers using an official user education plan rather than informal agreements.
Implement an official workflow of post-release documentation efforts based on user feedback, bugs, questions, and other unforeseen situations.
Solidify our team with standard approaches and processes as well as build unity through proximity.
Contribute to corporate blogging efforts for IT site.
Interact with community through forum, feedback, and other participation channels; stay abreast of needs and questions.

These aren’t so much resolutions as directions I’m heading.

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Adobe Illustrator and InDesign Integration with Layered Images [Visual Imagination #3]

Tom Johnson — Thu, 02 Dec 2010 15:21:21 +0000

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 multiple times without duplicating it or exporting it to another format.

Here’s a screencast showing how I implemented this integration in one of my guides. (My voice is kind of soft here because it’s late and I didn’t want to wake up the kids.)

To turn the layers on or off in InDesign, select the image, and then go to Object > Object Layer Options.

In the screencast, I also noted some more obvious integration points with images between these two applications. First, you can leave your file in the .ai format (or .psd if working with Photoshop) without exporting it to a JPG, GIF, or some other format. When you insert the file as a linked file, you can continue to edit the file within Illustrator and then just update the linked image in InDesign to get the latest edits.

This integration can be infinite, I believe. I didn’t explain this in the screencast, but with my Illustrator image, the image itself was made up of about 8 separate images that reside in their own Illustrator files. Each of the .ai files is inserted as a linked image into the master diagram .ai file. This master diagram is then inserted into InDesign. So if I open one of those supporting image files (for example, the firewall icon file), and update that, the changes propagate through all other files where I’ve inserted the image.

Given this integration, if you’re using InDesign as your authoring tool (which I do for quick reference guides), I highly recommend using another Adobe suite product, such as Illustrator or Photoshop, as your graphics tool, especially if your graphics have layeres.

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Two New Tools I’m Learning

Tom Johnson — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 13:10:21 +0000

Sometimes I can hardly believe I’ve gotten along for so many years as a technical communicator without a thorough understanding of Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Flash. They seem critical to technical communication.

Why Illustrator

With vector images (which Illustrator allows you to create), your images in quick reference guides will look sharp and crisp. The more quick reference guides I create, the more I realize how necessary images and diagrams are in giving the guides appeal. A good image makes or breaks the quick reference guide. If your image is pixilated or fuzzy, it lowers the value of your deliverable.

With vector images that you create through Illustrator, you don’t have to worry so much about size, because vectors scale without losing quality. You can also insert them as linked images in InDesign without having to export them to another format (such as JPG, PNG, or GIF). As linked images, you can continue to tweak and adjust the originals by dragging points. The images are versatile and can be easily updated based on different needs.

The main reason I’m learning Illustrator is simply that illustrations are powerful in technical instructions — it’s one of the most helpful skills you can develop. People may not read help, but they certainly stare at the visual images in help content. If you can master a tool that allows you to create sharp looking images demonstrating conceptual topics, your content will be engaging and visually attractive.

Why Flash

Video tutorials are also an important learning tool for understanding software. It amazes me how many technical communicators simply omit video. When I want to learn software, I prefer video tutorials over written instruction, so it’s natural that I see video as an essential deliverable. In fact, even outside of software, videos are helpful. When I recarpeted my daughter’s bedroom, I knew I needed a kicker to stretch the carpet, but I had no idea how to use it. A few Bob Vila videos clarified everything.

While Camtasia Studio is great for recording the screen, video tutorials that consist only of screen recording will tire readers. Often video tutorials have some conceptual information to relay to readers. This conceptual information is best illustrated through diagrams and other visuals — which you can create in Illustrator or other graphics tools (see my colleague’s post about this strategy). But Camtasia can only handle these images as static images — which is why I want to learn Flash, so I can create some animation and then pull the animated images into the Camtasia Studio timeline.

I don’t want to create anything super dynamic, just a bit of motion. As I’ve written about previously, I love the Michael Pick videos on WordPress.tv. Flash is the tool that will help me give my video tutorials a bit more life and movement.

The way I see it, both Illustrator and Flash can work powerfully together. I know I could spend a lifetime learning either of these tools, but hopefully little by little I’ll master what I need.

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Extracting Images from Visio and Inserting Them in Indesign

Tom Johnson — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 13:41:34 +0000

Have you ever tried to find cool graphics for conceptual diagrams but find yourself coming up empty handed? Sure, sites like istockphoto.com make icons available inexpensively. But no matter what the cost, if you work for a company you still have to submit an expense request, get it approved by management, and then subtract the cost from a dwindling budget. It’s a pain in the neck, and you’re usually in a time crunch, right?

Never fear, Visio is here. Visio has tons of great-looking icons. And they’re all vectors, so they resize seamlessly. There’s only one problem: they’re stuck in Visio.

With a little manipulation, however, you can unfree them from Visio and keep them looking sharp for insertion in InDesign. You need a power app (namely, Adobe Illustrator), but that’s it.

To extract images from Visio and insert them into InDesign, here’s what I do:

Open Visio and find the icon you want. Search for “secretary” or “design” and you’ll find the standard bald blue man. Select and copy the image.
Copy the image from Visio

Open Adobe Illustrator, create a new document, and paste in the Visio icon. You’ll notice that each of the sixteen million layers for the image suddenly appears.
In Illustrator, you can see see the layers
Right-click the icon and choose Ungroup.
Now here you can make a few adjustments to the icon, mostly removing things or changing colors. On the Illustrator toolbar, the black arrow allows you to move things, and the white arrow allows you to distort or reshape things. The white arrow is handy, for example, if you want to squish in the line that mysteriously extends from the head of the icon.
Modify the image
When you’re finished, go to File > Save As and save it as an Adobe Illustrator (.ai) file type.
Save it as an .ai file
In Adobe Indesign, go to File > Place and insert the image. You can still resize it and the vector properties of the image are retained, so you won’t see the jagged edges. In other words, Indesign allows you to embed the image as a vector, rather than rasterizing it and having it become pixilated.
Edges still look sharp in InDesign

If it’s absolutely necessary, you can convert it to a GIF, but the edges will look jagged. Open up the file in Photoshop and go to Image > Mode. Make sure RGB color and 8 bit are selected. Now save it as a GIF file or a Photoshop (.psd) file. The edges will be a bit jagged, but as long as you don’t resize it, the edges won’t be too bad.