Adobe Creative Suite's Design Guide or Scenarios instead of Manuals

[Keri Morgret <kerilists -at- morgret -dot- net>]

I just received my copy of Adobe's new Creative Suite (the new Photoshop, 
Illustrator, and InDesign programs). Instead of shipping with printed 
manuals (now a $50 option of the suite), it ships with a 92 page Design Guide.

I like it. But I also wonder the history behind this decision, and if other 
companies are doing the same thing.

I do wish that they wouldn't charge extra for manuals, but I found myself 
reading through the Design Guide before I even started messing around in 
the programs. The design guide goes through six scenarios (making a poster, 
brochure, illustration, web banner, animation, and web site) and how a team 
used the suite of software to make each product. This isn't a deep how to 
for each thing, but it does talk about the tools available in each program 
and some of the options available.

The Guide seems to address something that I frequently encountered when I 
provided in-person technical support. I found that people learned what they 
needed to do to get their job done, but they didn't "go exploring" in the 
software. They didn't know that you COULD do a certain task, so of course 
they never looked up HOW to do that certain task. This Guide shows the 
COULD part of this, and gives you a little bit of the HOW (and also the WHY 
- why CMYK vs. RGB, etc.)

Does anyone have any comments on this? Anyone that worked on this project 
on this list? As I was thinking about this, I wondered if the writers were 
frustrated that they had to produce something with more of a marketing 
angle, or if they enjoyed writing something that people were more likely to 
read. I did send a comment to Adobe that I liked the Guide, and received a 
response ten minutes later thanking me for the comment, and  that "The 
Design Guide was something new for Adobe Creative Suite."

Keri Morgret