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Proposed Style Guide Articles

Shan Carter edited this page Aug 29, 2018 · 1 revision

How writing and drawing diagrams differ

An overview of why it's hard to tell stories with pictures and why it's different from writing. Attempt to give context for the other techniques, why do we care kind of thing.

Author: Shan Carter

How to use color

Author: Zan Armstrong?

Looking good versus thinking good

Often the first thing you notice about a diagram is "that looks great!". But mimicking this first-glance, professional visual style is actually pretty easy and not actually that helpful. It's what happens next that's hard.

Author: ?

How to control visual attention -- gestalt, pre-attentive stuff, techniques for guiding the reader through a diagram.

Controlling and guiding your reader's visual gaze is a subtle art.

Author: ?

Visual dynamic range. The forest and the trees.

If you want to grab someone's attention, use the brightest red! But wait, later you might need to make something more important. How do you know when to choose the loudest option versus the minimally effective option. Using color to highlight something now means you might not be able to use it in later diagrams if you want to keep consistency. There is a tension between maximally effective local strategies and what is best for the diagram or collection of diagrams as a whole. Because people see the whole diagram first, but we often create the diagram from the bottom up, this is particularly tricky.

Word and Pictures together -- scott mccloud, comics, etc.

How words and pictures differ, how they are similar, how they lean on each other and work together.

Author: ?