Some companies provide their technical writers with design specs and guidelines.
But what if you are a “lone writer,” an independent contractor working out of your home office, or an employee who is asked to come up with a corporate design guideline?
Here are seven time-tested design recommendations culled from my 20 years of experience as a professional writer, page layout and information designer:
1) Keep it simple. Limit your design elements to the following components:
a) Title b) Product/Service photo or image c) Company logo d) Footer
2) The cover should include (if applicable) version or release number, as well as the document number.
3) Footer should include date of release, copyright and confidentiality (if any) information.
4) Leave as much white space as possible for the eyes to rest. Some technical writers ruin their cover by including too many photos, drawings and figures on tghe same page in order to create a “masterpiece”. Using only those colors pre-approved by your client will protect you against possible future objections.
5) Leave out your name unless specifically requested by the management or the client. Anonymity is a normal default condition in technical writing and communication. Technical writers, besides being paid well, also enjoy the feeling of helping others accomplish technical tasks at the cost of remaining anonymous.
6) If you have a lot of text and graphic elements on the cover page do not center them like most amateur designers do.
The natural sweep direction for the eye is from upper-left down towards bottom-right. A comfortable reading experience is guaranteed by placing your text and drawings along that diagonal.
HOWEVER, if you have just a little text and a single image, then it’s okay to center your page elements since there isn’t much to read and stress the eyes. But that’s a special case and not the rule.
7) Select three or four harmonious colors and limit yourself to those only. Don’t forget: if one image is enough to convey the main idea of a document, then don’t use two. If two are enough, then don’t use three, etc.
A technical document cover should never have ten or twelve colors unless it’s a document about colors.
Go with safe traditional tones even when your color palette is limited to only a few colors. Blood-red letters on a pitch black background might be a great color choice for a punk rock web site but that combination does poorly on the cover of a technical document.
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