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The Tools: Information Design ENG 260 Business And Professional Writing Medaille College - Fall 2011 this page rhetorical analysis | guidelines for folder and file naming document design | visual design file formats | Toolbox: portable apps | file transfer protocol (FTP) other Tools pages text | graphics | data | print documents the Internet web | style sheets | audio | presentation slides | video

Rhetorical Analysis

What is your report's audience, purpose, and likely usage of the information?

career opportunities for professional writers

job ads: Technical Writer, MTC Software, Lockport, NY USA

Working closely with both the Product Development and Support Departments, you will take responsibility for writing and editing technical documentation for MTC Software products. As you master the use of our software, you must individually develop and update online HTML Help, Product Training Documentation, Sales Promotional Materials, website and video clip media that is well written, presented, and communicates efficiently to the end-user. When creating, updating, and enhancing the documentation, the Technical Writer will adhere to format, content, and style guidelines, giving consideration to usability and ensuring accuracy, consistency, and quality.

How much do these jobs pay? Learn more at Salary.com

Guidelines for folder and file naming

Brookhaven National Lab's File Naming Conventions & Directory Structure 

Websitetoad's File Naming Conventions

Document Design

DocSymmetry.com's A Visual Guide to Document Design and Layout

Bastoky Design's Fundamentals of Document Design

arranging text, graphics, and images to engage (attractive) as well as inform (accessible) the reader

Document Parts

Body text - typography

fonts create interest and organization.

serif, sans serif

text, headings, captions, header/footer

accent, emphasis - relative size, relative weight, font style

symbols and formulas

Summary (abstract)

your report reduced to about 1/10 of its length

ideally, replaces reading the report

used for database retrieval

you will also use it as the text for the voice-over for your video

Headings and Subheadings

break up sections of text

organize the content

small chunks of text are easier to read than long stretches of unbroken text

typography and position, size and relative size (to body text and to each other)

Lists 

numbered or lettered implies order

bulleted

Tables

compared lists

headers and captions

titled above; roman numerals -- ex: Table I: Year-by-Year Batting Averages

comparable numbers right or left justified; non-comparable items centered

Graphics

Informational graphics

figures: charts, pictures, etc.; their numbering (Arabic), titling (below), and captions -- ex: Figure 1: Pie Chart of Expenditures

call-outs: key sentences "called out" of the text, that is, enlarged, surrounded by colored box; font often changed

sidebars: related information set off by lines or colored boxes

Decorative graphics

bars and banners

buttons and bullets

Structural / wayfinding text and graphics

running headers/footers

spacers, white space, rules (vertical and horizontal lines)

section / chapter divisions (often white space, i.e., a "new" page)

Front / back

Front matter

title page, copyright, abstract/summary, forward, table of contents

Back matter

references, index, appendices

Notes

Parenthetical -- in the text

Footnotes -- at the bottom of each page

Endnotes -- at the end of the document

Sources and citations -- MBA, APA, Chicago, and other style manuals; links

Principles of Document Design

Attractiveness and Accessibility

Is it attractive to look at? How easy is it to find information in it?

These two umbrella principles cover everything below. If you have options, ask, Which looks better? Which makes it easier to find information?

Readability and Contrast

density -- how much information per square unit -- loose and relaxed <--> crowded and tense

organized, easy to read and aesthetically pleasing

Elements: background, text, headings, white space, graphics (decorative and navigational), lists, tables, graphs/charts, boxes (call-outs), images

Attributes: size, shape, color, position

Contrast draws your eye into the page, guides your eyes around the page, and creates a hierarchy for your information

Consistency and Repetition

patterns unify a document by maintaining and repeating the same design element attributes within a document.

consistency unifies the document because it makes the pages look the same, predictable, doesn't draw attention to itself. Too many different design patterns can look amateurish and be hard to read.

a consistent design pattern pulls all the parts of the document together which ultimately leads to clear communication.

Positioning and Alignment

lines of text, paragraphs and images

left, right, center, full justified

creates order and looks more professional

Relative Emphasis

call attention to important words

make the page more interesting

bold, italic, underline, quotation marks, different font

all capitals IS PERCEIVED AS SHOUTING!

Paragraph Spacing and Indentation

either indent first lines of paragraphs - more traditional
or
don't indent but put extra space between the paragraphs - cleaner, more contemporary look

indent a whole paragraph

numbering systems

lists, bullets points

Visual Design

Elements and Principles

how the elements relate to each other -- how to decide

color

emitted light vs reflected light

primary colors: ink - CMYK vs light - RGB

depth of one pixel: 256 vs 16.8 million

RGB, HSV, HEX

background color, text color

fonts

Wikipedia's Typeface

a coordinated set of glyphs designed with stylistic unity. A typeface usually comprises an alphabet of letters, numerals, and punctuation marks; it may also include ideograms and symbols, or consist entirely of them, for example, mathematical or map-making symbols. The term typeface is typically conflated with font, which had distinct meanings before the advent of desktop publishing. These terms are now effectively synonymous when discussing digital typography.

When type was set with metal, font came in trays. Now, they are computer files containing scalable outline letterforms.

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) - The not-for-profit organization at MIT led by Tim Berner-Lee that develops interoperable technologies (specifications, guidelines, software, and tools) to lead the Web to its full potential.

units of measurement

height is measure by "point", abbreviated pt. How tall is the tallest glyph?

With the advent of desk-top publishing point and the dominance of John Warnock's Adobe, a point is defined as 1/72 of the anglo-saxon compromise inch of 1959 (25.4 mm). It is approximately 0.0139 inch or 0.3528 mm. Twelve points make up a pica, and six picas make an inch.

width is measure by "em" or pixel, abbreviated em and px -- how wide is each glyph?

download fonts

dafont.com

fonts.com

Font Freak

Boxes

W3C's Box model

ascii text options

File Formats

the table below simplifies some of the complexities and nuances to focus on what we will use for this course. For example, it lists only raster image extensions (.jpg, .gif) and omits vector images (.png, .wmf)

more complete list of file extensions - alphabetical | by file format

style sheets - specify the following for your .txt file

text, headings, lists (bullets), placeholders for tables, graphs/charts, boxes, images

learn more on the case page - ASCII text report

Toolbox

Portable Apps

You are going to put a collection of software applications in your project folder (or on a USB drive). Compared to the expensive proprietary software that comes with your classroom computer, this software is freely available. In addition, residing solely on your desktop or USB drive (even though it is displayed on a desktop monitor or laptop or other device), these applications are portable.

In other words, you can take this USB drive to any computer with a USB 2.0 port and do everything for this course. Being smart, you have a second USB drive and you keep them synced, or backed up to each other. When you want to show me what you have done, you give me one of the USB drives, which has the further advantage of physically separating your back-up files. Meanwhile, you can continue working on the USB drive that you kept.

Note: if you have a USB drive with ScanDisk's U3 software on it, you are going to have to uninstall it before you proceed any further.

Stick a USB drive into the USB port on your desktop PC. At PortableApps.com, download the Suite Standard and install it on the USB drive.

If you don't want all that software (see left), for purposes of this course, you need to download these portable apps into your project folder:

KompoZer - web editing

FileZilla - file transfer via FTP

Audacity - audio editing 

PSPad - text editing (optional)

If you want to, instead of or in addition to this, use a USB drive, then when you stick that USB drive into a computer, it may produce this menu (left) on its own or you may have to navigate to it. Depending again on the host computer, it will probably take a little longer for the portable apps to open than it would if the apps resided on the host.

When you add other portable apps to your USB drive, they will be listed on the left. You can uninstall those you don't use.

Note the built-in file structure on the right: documents, music, pictures, etc. You can use this or make/add your own.

The Suite Standard comes with the following apps to get you started. You can hover your cursor over them to learn more. The links below will take you to the Portable Apps page specifically for that software. There, you will find help for installing and working with that app as well as a link to the software's web site. Searching for any of these app names plus "help" will get you started if you have trouble or want to learn more.

ClamWin Portable - antivirus

CoolPlayer+ Portable - audio player

KeePass Password Safe Portable - password manager

Mines-Perfect Portable - game

Mozilla Firefox, Portable Edition - web browser, bookmark manager

Mozilla Thunderbird, Portable Edition - email, rss reader

Mozilla Sunbird, Portable Edition - calendar/tasks

OpenOffice.org Portable - office suite
   - Writer (word processor), Calc (spreadsheet), Impress (presentations), Base (database utility), Draw (drawing)

Pidgin Portable - instant messaging

Sudoku Portable - game

Sumatra PDF Portable - PDF reader

More, much more

This is your USB drive, so you can download anything else that you would like. The content of these four sites overlap, but by using all of them, you aren't going to miss much.

PenDriveApps.com

"This site is a resource for the review of portable Freeware and Open Source Portable Software Applications that can be run directly from a USB device. By installing any of these portable applications to your USB flash pen drive, iPod or other portable device, you can bring your applications, tools, software, personal settings and files with you to use and run from on any available Windows client computer. Some work with Macs, too, and others work with both."

USB Soft's Apps

MakeUseOf.com's 100 Portable Apps for your USB stick

App-Stick's Free Portable Applications

FTP - File Transfer Protocol

File Transfer Protocol is the most common way of moving files around the Internet. If you've downloaded music or other files, you have probably used it without knowing it.

For our class, FTP is how you will get your reports to the server. You should download the FileZilla client software and install it on your personal computer.

What is it?

Freedom of the press is great ... if you own a printing press. Recently, the copy machine has given almost everyone the ability to publish. Even then, if you're going to do any mass communicating, you need a distribution system, for example, a fleet of trucks. If you're filling those trucks with paper, you need something larger than a copier. For starters, you need a lot of money. The Buffalo News recently put in new presses that cost in the tens of millions of dollars.

Those days are over. Now, the barrier to entry in the content publishing industry is practically zero. One key component, the delivery truck, so to speak, is free: FTP or File Transfer Protocol software.

Skills

moving files over networks

Upload files such as HTML text files and image files from your desktop or laptop onto the Ricci Street server in North Carolina that will serve them to any browser that requests them.

Download programs and other files from servers on the Internet onto your desktop or laptop.

hostname: tolearn.net

username: mba600

password: geek13

This will take you directly to the toLearn.net/eng260/ folder. If you click on f10, you should see student names, including yours. Open your lastname folder. FTP into that folder.

FileZilla Tutorials - Using FileZilla | text | video