Posts Tagged "Visual design"

Appearing on The Forge Show from TechSmith Today at 2pm EST

I’m going to be on The Forge show today at 2pm EST. The Forge is a monthly web show put on by TechSmith, posted on their Visual Lounge blog. Here’s their description of The Forge: New to The Forge? Wonder what it’s all about? It’s TechSmith’s monthly webshow where we talk about screencapture, screencasting, visual (Read more...)

Visually Appealing Documents Combine Text with Images

A few years ago, I was scouring magazines to get ideas for quick reference guide layouts. In particular, I found that WIRED magazine has some of the most creative and engaging layouts, often with text laid out in three or four columns, or along the side of a graphic, or in various quadrants about the (Read more...)

Familiarity Affects Preferences for Text or Video

This weekend I had to replace the solenoid in my Frigidaire Gallery refrigerator. The solenoid controls the flow of water into the ice maker, among other things. I’m not a technician, so when I received the new solenoid and looked at the instructions, I was a little hesitant to do what the text said. I (Read more...)

Does Translation Mean You Should Omit Illustrations?

One can hardly dismiss the power of visuals. One of the oldest truisms in communication is that a picture covers 1,000 words. Instead of lengthy text, we praise infographics, diagrams, workflows, and other visual illustrations that communicate ideas. (See this collection of New York Times infographics.) In Visual Language: Global Communication for the 21st Century, Robert Horn’s main (Read more...)

Podcast: Visual Composing with Jo Mackiewicz

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 (Read more...)

Making Help Content Enjoyable to Read — Impossible Quest?

In my previous post (“Less Text, Please”), I argued that users want shorter texts. I also explained how social media and Internet sites have possibly rewired our brains to incline us toward shorter content — according to some, our gnat-like attention spans can only consume a few short paragraphs before tapping out. The Onion has (Read more...)