As part of the January event of STC’s Intermountain Chapter on visual communication, I demonstrated my favorite things about Adobe Illustrator. The idea was that you don’t have to be a graphic designer to use Illustrator for some decent graphics. Since the attendees were stuck watching me, I’m posting these items for them to go back and refer to.

Here are the main things I talked about. (Warning: I may not be using standard Illustrator terms here.)

I use Illustrator CS4 at work, so my demo and this post also use that version.

Gradients and Gradient Tool

Gradients give a nice three-dimensional look to graphics without a lot of effort. To get a gradient:

1. Draw an object.
2. With the object selected, click the gradient fill in the toolbar.

   

3. Change the colors in the gradient using Gradient palette. Click and drag colors from the Swatches palette into the handles in the Gradient palette.

   

4. Add handles by clicking just underneath the gradient slider in the Gradient palette.
5. Change the way the handles affect the gradient by clicking a handle (bottom) or a location point (top) and dragging it horizontally.

   

6. Remove a handle by clicking it and dragging downward.
7. Toggle between a linear gradient and radial gradient using the dropdown box in the Gradient palette.
8. Change the direction or severity of the gradient by selecting the Gradient Tool in the toolbar  and then either clicking and dragging on or around the object or manipulating the bar that appears on the object. 

   

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In technical communication circles, we sometimes take ourselves on snipe hunts. Our quarry: getting people to read our documentation.

How do we design it to be attractive? How do we write in a friendly and compelling voice? How can our diagrams be more interesting? How can we turn our documentation into entertainment?

A More Relevant Question

I think we’re past the point of no return in this area. People will read if they want to, but they generally don’t want to read documentation. (Unless maybe you’re including an engaging back story in the manual for your computer game or providing documentation for open source developers so they can be productive in their volunteer efforts.)

This isn’t to say that the questions I asked earlier aren’t important. Nevertheless, I think they’re secondary to the real question.

How do I write for someone who will spare near-zero attention for my material?

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