Design
How to Republish Your Lists as a MS Word Smart Art Infographics
© Ugur Akinci Did you know that you can transform all your ordered or unordered lists into good looking infographics, thanks to MS Word’s SMART ART graphics? If you are sick and tired of good’old traditional lists, try the SMART ART way. Here is an example. Let’s say you have the following list: EVOLUTION OF…
Read More3 Ways To Create Documentation Color Scheme
As much as we would like not to trouble ourselves with inventing a documentation design – there’s no avoiding it. Your documentation is what represents you to your users, so it better look decent. You do not necessarily need a designer to fulfil this particular task. In this post, we are going to show you…
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3 Ways to Add Copyright Free Images to Your Blogs, Books and Documents
Introduction Copyright free images are a writer’s best friend. Images always cheer up any article, blog post, or document. But if you use images with copyright without paying for them you can get into trouble. So how do you get captivating images for free, without any copyright issues at all? Easy Sites to Find Good…
Read MoreBOOK REVIEW: Excellent Project Guide for Commercial Designers and Technical Illustrators who Draw Graphs
© Ugur Akinci If you’re a beginner or amateur illustrator or designer Adobe Illustrator CS2 @work: Projects You Can Use on the Job is not for you since it does not address the nuts-and-bolts aspects of Adobe Illustrator. This how-to volume assumes that you already know the basics of using the Illustrator. What the author…
Read MoreHow to Express a Continuous Cycle Visually in a Word Technical Document
“Continuous Cycle” is a fairly common idea both in life and in technical communication. Seasons form a continuous cycle that never ends: Winter, Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter, Spring, etc. In technical writing the process of writing, editing, reviewing, releasing also forms a process that never ends. It’s a continuous cycle that repeats itself. You can…
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4 Ideas to Organize Technical Document Images
Introduction Organizing technical document images is easier said than done. Most technical documents would have at least a few images to illustrate a point, or screen-shots that accompany the description of a certain step-by-step procedure, etc. Organizing such images can really become a problem, especially when you have dozens and hundreds of them. Finding, editing,…
Read MoreScoville Pepper Heat Chart – Information Graphics that Shape the Conversation
© Ugur Akinci Sometimes information graphics hit the bulls-eye. Here is one such graphic, throwing precious light on a recent news event: spraying the UC Davis students with “pepper gas.” When I first read this story, I couldn’t help but assume that “pepper gas” would hurt just like jalapeno pepper, but only a lot more…
Read MoreHow to Create an Instant and Good-Looking Document Cover in MS Word
You can create a nice looking cover within seconds by using MS Word. Method 1 1) Place your cursor in the beginning of your MS Word document. 2) From the ribbon, select Insert > Quick Parts >Building Blocks Organizer: 3) In the Building Blocks Organizer dialog box, click the on the label of the Gallery…
Read MoreHow to Edit Vector Drawing Objects in Inkscape
Inkscape is a great vector drawing software with poor documentation. Most people quit using Inkscape after a few tries because the GUI looks different than that of (say) Illustrator. Although I use Illustrator for most of my technical drawings I can’t help but appreciate the amount of functionality packed into Inkscape, which is after all…
Read MoreSimple Diagrams: Draw a Blackboard-and-Chalk Diagram
Simple Diagrams is proof that we’ve come a full-circle in technical illustration. We started fifty years ago with nothing more than a blackboard and a fistful of chalk. If we had any colored chalks we considered ourselves lucky. That was my elementary school experience. Then we went through the Photoshop + Illustrator revolution in the…
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