[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 »

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 hard part is coming up with the idea of the … more »

Today I was trying to learn more about elearning when I stumbled across Tom Kulman’s Rapid eLearning Blog and was sucked into the content for the next fifteen minutes. The visuals on his blog are intriguing. They’re the kind of visuals I wish I had on my blog. They remind me a little of the visual artistry on The Oatmeal. Even more genius, he promises … more »

This week I needed to create some visuals for a PowerPoint to illustrate concepts related to blogging. Since I have limited artistic ability (perhaps even negative artistic ability), I resorted to a stick figure person as a common theme. I spent a while trying to decide which tool to use to draw with. It turns out drawing a basic circle in Photoshop that doesn’t have … more »

Presentation Zen: 10 rules for making good design

The effects of screen captures in manuals: a textual and two visualmanuals compared.