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I have paged through the Business book and liked what I saw.
Horton has also written _Illustrating Computer Documentation_, which
I looked through at a bookstore and liked, but the drawback was it
was published in 1991.
http://www.horton.com/html/bookintro.aspx
Browsing these books on Amazon will give you links to other books
that might also meet your needs.
A note on Tufte. I found a use for his books in a slightly different
way. I needed to show coworkers and supervisors the need to redesign
some graphics, and the difference that presentation could make (even
when content was the same). Simple - I used Tufte's Challenger
example. The reason it was successful was my work environment. I
worked out at Vandenberg Air Force Base (in California, between San
Francisco and LA) where the Space Shuttle had been schedule to launch
in 1986. When the Challenger exploded, the launch plans were
cancelled, and a lot of people lost their jobs or were transferred to
Colorado or Florida. The housing market crashed as people just walked
away from their homes as too many people were trying to sell at once.
There are still a lot of people around who remember that the Shuttle
was going to be launched out here, and signs of it still remain at
Vandenberg. The Challenger example hit home for this audience, and
helped show what a difference graphic design can make. May not help
in your case, but it sure did in mine.
Keri Morgret
At 09:10 AM 7/19/2006, Sharon Burton wrote:
I'm looking for a book that explains how to create usable graphics in
technical manuals. I want my writers to learn about shades of gray,
effective color use, contrast, pleasing layout, what constitutes insanely
complex drawings and how to simplify, using callouts effectively, chunking
graphics to show more and more detail, that sort of thing. Examples and
before and afters are good. Product independent is best.
I know about Tufte and his books but they are too abstract for what I need.
Horton and his Icon book is good but I don't know that I can get the writers
to generalize from icons to half page drawings. I did a quick search of
google but there are too many to know what's great.
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