Posts Tagged ‘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…
Read MoreHow to Express Opposing Forces Visually in a Word Technical Document
“Opposing Forces” is a fairly common idea both in life and in technical communication. Hope and Fear oppose each other. They may overlap to a certain extent but their effect is very different. In the technical field, assuring backward compatibility and keeping the code length to a minimum, for example, cannot be done at the…
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…
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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 Describe a Step-by-Step Process Visually in MS Word 2010
© 2011 Ugur Akinci MS Word 2010 has these beautiful SMART ART drag-and-drop dynamic images that you can use to express many complex ideas like a step-by-step procedure, for example. There are almost infinite ways to do this but here’s a try: (1) Launch your MS Word 2010. Select the Insert tab on your MS…
Read MoreWhat are the Differences Between Technical Illustration, Information Design, and Editorial Illustration?
© 2010 Ugur Akinci Thanks to a number of responses to an earlier post about Technical Illustration, I had the opportunity to think more about the topic. I now realize that I have not clarified the various niches that exist within the catch-all category of graphic arts that we call “technical illustration.” Here I’d like…
Read MoreHow to Develop Your Technical Illustration Skills
© Ugur Akinci As I mentioned several times in the past, if you are a technical communicator who enjoys graphic arts, you are missing something in your career if you have not developed your technical illustration skills. Our industry is very ripe for those writers who can also draw and create all kinds of technical…
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