I am currently employed as a technical writer, but the Tamarack Tee site marks my initial entry into the blogosphere. I didn’t have a problem developing the written content for the posts up to this point, but the HTML/CSS aspects were another story. Although I am familiar with HTML, I do not consistently create/maintain Web sites at my job so my design skills needed hands-on practice. Luckily, the recent re-design of my blog provided plenty of it. The Tamarack Tee blog initially employed a standard Blogger template. As the weeks progressed, I added several widgits and modified the default color scheme. Several weeks ago, I completely overhauled the design of the blog. I included a unique background pattern (downloaded from the Internet), adjusted the background colors, embedded a personalized banner and a personalized movie (currently hosted on Google videos). I also tweaked the column widths to enhance readability and use more white space. I did experiment with a newspaper-style, 3 column layout, but abandoned the change when I became bogged down in HTML that was over my head. I think the contents of each post meets the stated goal of the blog, to provide information and track my comprehension of various visual design elements. The posts are well-written and comprised of original thoughts without relying too much on canned content. I probably should have included more links to outside references throughout the posts, but I think any technical writer/visual designers who my stumble on to the Tamarack Tee blog will recognize the validity behind the posts.
As I continue with the blog, I will continually overhaul the layout and color scheme. I may also modify the goals of the blog, moving more towards technical writing instead of visual design. I'm hoping to report on my current goals of learning XML, XSLT and perhaps some scripting work (FrameScript, JavaScript etc.).
Saturday, December 13, 2008
Friday, December 12, 2008
Communications Templates
As a technical writer, Microsoft Word and Adobe FrameMaker template generation and maintenance comprise the bulk of my design efforts. As with any technical documentation template, the majority of the design elements focus on the text. Any useful technical document relies on effective graphics, but readable text and all of the visual design features that contribute to readable text are the most important aspects of a usable technical documentation template.
Font choice, spacing, character styles, paragraph styles, white space and table formats are some of the text-based issues that must be considered during template design for technical documentation. Unfortunately, visual design elements such as color schemes, HTML code, CSS and video are rarely relevant to Word/FrameMaker technical documentation. My template design knowledge is confined to word processing software only, without much experience in Web templates or templates in other applications. In an effort to enhance my template design skills, I developed a suite of communications templates for a fictitious company, kr3c. kr3c is based in Princeton, New Jersey and specializes in environmentally-sensitive technology programs.
The kr3c templates I developed are available here (select Document Design>kr3c Templates link).
A note or two about the design of each template appears below:
Business Card
All kr3c employees are required to order business cards. The template was designed in Microsoft Visio and incorporates the logo and color scheme of kr3c. The logo is blue; the green elements of the business card reflect the environmental conscience of the company.
Professional Letter
In order for kr3c to communicate with potential customers and vendors in a formal manner (e.g. not via email), kr3c needed a formal letter template. The Microsoft Word template is fairly straightforward, includes the marketing-approved logo and employs a readable font (12 point Times New Roman).
Services Invoice
Any company that sells goods and services requires a standardized invoice template. I used Microsoft Excel to develop kr3c’s invoice template. As I do not have extensive experience with Excel, I required additional development time to organize the formulas used to calculate the Line Total values. Again, the invoice uses the standard kr3c logo and blue color scheme, providing a sense of unity to all of the marketing collateral.
Documents and White Papers
kr3c research and design teams will need to write a substantial mix of customer-oriented documentation and internal-only documentation. The Microsoft Word template allows kr3c departments to easily write all types of documentation. The title page includes the kr3c logo, document title/subtitle, publication date, part number (05-xxxx-xx) and company address. Each page in the template includes a kr3c Confidential Information footer. This footer will be present in internal documentation, but removed when documents are made generally available to the public. The intent is to protect kr3c intellectual property. The template contains a Change History table along with the front matter (TOC, LOF, LOT) that is critical to documentation navigation. Several paragraph styles are embedded in the template, giving document authors the freedom to format text accordingly (Headings 1-4, Appendix Headings 1-4, bulleted list, numbered list, body text, figure/table captions etc.) All text, except for captions and Headings, text is rendered in simple Times New Roman 12 point font. The font is easily read, installed by default on most computers and easily converts to PDF. The font for captions is 12 point Helvetica and the font for Headings is Arial. All of these fonts are plain, vanilla fonts that were deliberately chosen to avoid distracting from the content. The audience for kr3c technical documentation is interested in document content and the ideas the content conveys; elaborate and flourishing typefaces have their place in template design, but they’re not needed in kr3c technical documents.
PowerPoint Presentations
In order to establish a presence in the marketplace, kr3c will need to present ideas at various conferences and customer sites. The look and feel for all of these presentations should be consistent. Consistency informs customers that kr3c employees are on the same page. Much like the documentation templates, the goal of kr3c PowerPoint presentations is to convey valuable information. The visual aspects of the PowerPoint template should not detract from the content. As a result, I designed a minimalist template that uses marketing-approved kr3c colors and a generic white background. The initial slide contains a placeholder for the presentation title and the presenter’s name. The footer for each slide provides a placeholder for the date of the presentation and the kr3c confidentiality statement (again, to protect IP). The second slide contains a Rev. History table with an 05-xxxx-xx part number placeholder (identical with the part numbering scheme in the documentation template). All successful presentations begin by outlining the agenda. An agenda slide is third. For any post-presentation follow up questions, the final slide lists information for contacting kr3c marketing or visiting the kr3c Web site.
Font choice, spacing, character styles, paragraph styles, white space and table formats are some of the text-based issues that must be considered during template design for technical documentation. Unfortunately, visual design elements such as color schemes, HTML code, CSS and video are rarely relevant to Word/FrameMaker technical documentation. My template design knowledge is confined to word processing software only, without much experience in Web templates or templates in other applications. In an effort to enhance my template design skills, I developed a suite of communications templates for a fictitious company, kr3c. kr3c is based in Princeton, New Jersey and specializes in environmentally-sensitive technology programs.
The kr3c templates I developed are available here (select Document Design>kr3c Templates link).
A note or two about the design of each template appears below:
Business Card
All kr3c employees are required to order business cards. The template was designed in Microsoft Visio and incorporates the logo and color scheme of kr3c. The logo is blue; the green elements of the business card reflect the environmental conscience of the company.
Professional Letter
In order for kr3c to communicate with potential customers and vendors in a formal manner (e.g. not via email), kr3c needed a formal letter template. The Microsoft Word template is fairly straightforward, includes the marketing-approved logo and employs a readable font (12 point Times New Roman).
Services Invoice
Any company that sells goods and services requires a standardized invoice template. I used Microsoft Excel to develop kr3c’s invoice template. As I do not have extensive experience with Excel, I required additional development time to organize the formulas used to calculate the Line Total values. Again, the invoice uses the standard kr3c logo and blue color scheme, providing a sense of unity to all of the marketing collateral.
Documents and White Papers
kr3c research and design teams will need to write a substantial mix of customer-oriented documentation and internal-only documentation. The Microsoft Word template allows kr3c departments to easily write all types of documentation. The title page includes the kr3c logo, document title/subtitle, publication date, part number (05-xxxx-xx) and company address. Each page in the template includes a kr3c Confidential Information footer. This footer will be present in internal documentation, but removed when documents are made generally available to the public. The intent is to protect kr3c intellectual property. The template contains a Change History table along with the front matter (TOC, LOF, LOT) that is critical to documentation navigation. Several paragraph styles are embedded in the template, giving document authors the freedom to format text accordingly (Headings 1-4, Appendix Headings 1-4, bulleted list, numbered list, body text, figure/table captions etc.) All text, except for captions and Headings, text is rendered in simple Times New Roman 12 point font. The font is easily read, installed by default on most computers and easily converts to PDF. The font for captions is 12 point Helvetica and the font for Headings is Arial. All of these fonts are plain, vanilla fonts that were deliberately chosen to avoid distracting from the content. The audience for kr3c technical documentation is interested in document content and the ideas the content conveys; elaborate and flourishing typefaces have their place in template design, but they’re not needed in kr3c technical documents.
PowerPoint Presentations
In order to establish a presence in the marketplace, kr3c will need to present ideas at various conferences and customer sites. The look and feel for all of these presentations should be consistent. Consistency informs customers that kr3c employees are on the same page. Much like the documentation templates, the goal of kr3c PowerPoint presentations is to convey valuable information. The visual aspects of the PowerPoint template should not detract from the content. As a result, I designed a minimalist template that uses marketing-approved kr3c colors and a generic white background. The initial slide contains a placeholder for the presentation title and the presenter’s name. The footer for each slide provides a placeholder for the date of the presentation and the kr3c confidentiality statement (again, to protect IP). The second slide contains a Rev. History table with an 05-xxxx-xx part number placeholder (identical with the part numbering scheme in the documentation template). All successful presentations begin by outlining the agenda. An agenda slide is third. For any post-presentation follow up questions, the final slide lists information for contacting kr3c marketing or visiting the kr3c Web site.
Monday, December 1, 2008
Collaborating Online
As the Web migrates towards online applications (Web 2.0), collaboration is becoming a vital aspect of content development. Wikis, CMS, documentation repositories (Documentum) and other distributed platforms enable multiple authors to contribute to a single project. As part of the MS-PTC program at NJIT, I often rely on Wiki collaboration, forums/chats and general collaboration to finalize program projects.
Wikispaces is a shared environment for content development that was used successfully throughout the MS-PTC program, especially for PTC 605. Classmates and I set up a Wikispace that allowed us to collaborate on individual HTML pages, each of which describes a visual design element. Each classmate staked ownership to a specific design element and then developed an initial version of the page. After the initial development phase, other students edited/modified the pages to generate a united Wikispace with consistent font choices, layouts, color schemes and page headings. The process worked and even though the pages initially looked different, they eventually had a similar look and feel. This consistency could not have been accomplished without collaborative editing. The initial version of each page used vastly different layouts, but subsequent edits standardized each page. The end result was that each page looked like parts contributing to a consistent whole, namely a Wiki on visual design.
I think the process of collaborative Wikispace editing worked well and the instructions to make each initial page look like the home page were helpful. Without top-down, ‘template-like’ parameters, the collaboration would have been much more difficult and the unity of the Wikispace would of suffered. I think some initial parameters about how individual pages should be laid out, typography, headings etc. are required at the beginning of any collaborative project. You may argue that such requirements defeat the purpose of an open-source, collaborative environment, but some rules must be in place to ensure a uniform look and feel to the individual pages. Otherwise many cycles are spent wrestling with formatting issues instead of focusing on content.
I didn’t have any issues working with the Wikispaces software, but formatting text and image loading were rather problematic. For some reason, I had trouble enforcing consistency in the headings of my page. I did manage to set my page up within the suggested guidelines (e.g. make it look like the home page) and made some significant textual and layout edits to other pages (copyediting, clarifying/rewriting content, resizing/repositioning graphics).
The end result of the PTC 605 collaboration is a Wikispace that provides a readers with thorough descriptions of numerous visual design elements. The page is http://605.wikispaces.com/.
Moodle is a popular online forum for virtual classrooms. After adjusting some its less-than-user-friendly default settings, I was able to follow coursework and assignments without a problem. Although the Moodle homepage is too busy for my tastes, I was able to follow and participate in course-related discussions. Due to schedule constraints, I did not use Moodle’s chat option, but found that I was able to get all of the information I needed through bulletin board and assignment postings.
For final project collaboration, I relied on the kr3c Wikispace and the Moodle bulletin board. I posted early versions of my project, but haven’t received feedback from classmates. As we close in on the final project due date, I will take a more active role in collaborating/getting feedback on my project and submitting feedback on the projects of other students.
Wikispaces is a shared environment for content development that was used successfully throughout the MS-PTC program, especially for PTC 605. Classmates and I set up a Wikispace that allowed us to collaborate on individual HTML pages, each of which describes a visual design element. Each classmate staked ownership to a specific design element and then developed an initial version of the page. After the initial development phase, other students edited/modified the pages to generate a united Wikispace with consistent font choices, layouts, color schemes and page headings. The process worked and even though the pages initially looked different, they eventually had a similar look and feel. This consistency could not have been accomplished without collaborative editing. The initial version of each page used vastly different layouts, but subsequent edits standardized each page. The end result was that each page looked like parts contributing to a consistent whole, namely a Wiki on visual design.
I think the process of collaborative Wikispace editing worked well and the instructions to make each initial page look like the home page were helpful. Without top-down, ‘template-like’ parameters, the collaboration would have been much more difficult and the unity of the Wikispace would of suffered. I think some initial parameters about how individual pages should be laid out, typography, headings etc. are required at the beginning of any collaborative project. You may argue that such requirements defeat the purpose of an open-source, collaborative environment, but some rules must be in place to ensure a uniform look and feel to the individual pages. Otherwise many cycles are spent wrestling with formatting issues instead of focusing on content.
I didn’t have any issues working with the Wikispaces software, but formatting text and image loading were rather problematic. For some reason, I had trouble enforcing consistency in the headings of my page. I did manage to set my page up within the suggested guidelines (e.g. make it look like the home page) and made some significant textual and layout edits to other pages (copyediting, clarifying/rewriting content, resizing/repositioning graphics).
The end result of the PTC 605 collaboration is a Wikispace that provides a readers with thorough descriptions of numerous visual design elements. The page is http://605.wikispaces.com/.
Moodle is a popular online forum for virtual classrooms. After adjusting some its less-than-user-friendly default settings, I was able to follow coursework and assignments without a problem. Although the Moodle homepage is too busy for my tastes, I was able to follow and participate in course-related discussions. Due to schedule constraints, I did not use Moodle’s chat option, but found that I was able to get all of the information I needed through bulletin board and assignment postings.
For final project collaboration, I relied on the kr3c Wikispace and the Moodle bulletin board. I posted early versions of my project, but haven’t received feedback from classmates. As we close in on the final project due date, I will take a more active role in collaborating/getting feedback on my project and submitting feedback on the projects of other students.
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