Communicating Design


Book Description

Successful web design teams depend on clear communication between developers and their clients—and among members of the development team. Wireframes, site maps, flow charts, and other design diagrams establish a common language so designers and project teams can capture ideas, track progress, and keep their stakeholders informed. In this all new edition of Communicating Design, author and information architect Dan Brown defines and describes each deliverable, then offers practical advice for creating the documents and using them in the context of teamwork and presentations, independent of methodology. Whatever processes, tools, or approaches you use, this book will help you improve the creation and presentation of your wireframes, site maps, flow charts, and other deliverables. The book now features: An improved structure comprising two main sections: Design Diagrams and Design Deliverables. The first focuses on the nuts and bolts of design documentation and the second explains how to pull it all together. New deliverable: design briefs, as well as updated advice on wireframes, flow charts, and concept models. More illustrations, to help designers understand the subtle variations and approaches to creating design diagrams. Reader exercises, for those lonely nights when all you really want to do is practice creating wireframes, or for use in workshops and classes. Contributions from industry leaders: Tamara Adlin, Stephen Anderson, Dana Chisnell, Nathan Curtis, Chris Fahey, James Melzer, Steve Mulder, Donna Spencer, and Russ Unger. “As an educator, I have looked to Communicating Design both as a formal textbook and an informal guide for its design systems that ultimately make our ideas possible and the complex clear.” —Liz Danzico, from the Foreword




Document Design


Book Description

The technological revolution of the last ten years has radically changed document designers' materials, processes, and tools of the trade. In short, choices about everything from typography and color to planning and production have changed -- even multiplied. The first new text for the college market in ten years, Kimball and Hawkins' Document Design assumes from the start that students are working online to produce a fuller range of print and online documents, designed and delivered differently in a digital world. Through practical, accessible advice and examples, Kimball and Hawkins lay out the array of elements and choices that document designers need to consider, all in the context of a rhetorical framework that allows students to see the effects of those choices. The only text to integrate a range of theoretical perspectives, visual perception, visual culture, and visual rhetoric, Document Design teaches students to think more critically about their own design decisions and to keep usability in mind every step of the way. True to its message, this artfully designed text practices the principles it teaches and is sure to become a reference that students will keep.




Living Documentation


Book Description

Use an Approach Inspired by Domain-Driven Design to Build Documentation That Evolves to Maximize Value Throughout Your Development Lifecycle Software documentation can come to life, stay dynamic, and actually help you build better software. Writing for developers, coding architects, and other software professionals, Living Documentation shows how to create documentation that evolves throughout your entire design and development lifecycle. Through patterns, clarifying illustrations, and concrete examples, Cyrille Martraire demonstrates how to use well-crafted artifacts and automation to dramatically improve the value of documentation at minimal extra cost. Whatever your domain, language, or technologies, you don't have to choose between working software and comprehensive, high-quality documentation: you can have both. · Extract and augment available knowledge, and make it useful through living curation · Automate the creation of documentation and diagrams that evolve as knowledge changes · Use development tools to refactor documentation · Leverage documentation to improve software designs · Introduce living documentation to new and legacy environments




Advanced Game Design


Book Description

In Advanced Game Design, pioneering game designer and instructor Michael Sellers situates game design practices in a strong theoretical framework of systems thinking, enabling designers to think more deeply and clearly about their work, so they can produce better, more engaging games for any device or platform. Sellers offers a deep unifying framework in which practical game design best practices and proven systems thinking theory reinforce each other, helping game designers understand what they are trying to accomplish and the best ways to achieve it. Drawing on 20+ years of experience designing games, launching game studios, and teaching game design, Sellers explains: What games are, and how systems thinking can help you think about them more clearly How to systematically promote engagement, interactivity, and fun What you can learn from MDA and other game design frameworks How to create gameplay and core loops How to design the entire player experience, and how to build game mechanics that work together to create that experience How to capture your game’s “big idea” and Unique Selling Proposition How to establish high-level and background design and translate it into detailed design How to build, playtest, and iterate early prototypes How to build your game design career in a field that keeps changing at breakneck speed




Landscape Architecture Documentation Standards


Book Description

SUPERB EXECUTION RELIES UPON RIGOROUS PROJECT DOCUMENTATION A project will only be built as well as it is documented. This publication focuses on the key documentation needs of the landscape architectural design and construction documentation process. That includes both "design documentation" and "construction documentation" as well as all that which occurs in the transition from one phase to the other. Documentation requirements include those components necessary to explore and define design intent, logic, physical proposals, and ultimately, the specific components included within construction and bid documents. Discover how proper documentation facilitates every stage of the design process from pre-planning to construction, and leads to a highly resolved built outcome. Understand the principles behind these documentation practices. Implement best practices specific to each documentation phase and drawing, from title block and cover sheet design to soil plans and plant protection. Organize keynoting systems, cross-referencing and interdisciplinary coordination amongst multiple consultants and vendors. Study sample project documents from a leading landscape architecture firm to better understand the elements and benefits of complete and well-coordinated project documentation. These standards have been time-tested by over 150 designers at the industry leading landscape architecture firm Design Workshop, reflecting a range of project types, including parks, streetscapes, urban spaces and over-structure construction. This guide shares the methods behind the success, to facilitate exceptional built outcomes through principled documentation practices.




Interface Design & Document Design


Book Description

User interfaces and supporting documentation are both supposed to help people when using a complex device. But often, these forms of support seem to come from different worlds. User interface designers, document designers, and researchers in both interface and document design share many goals, but are also separated by many barriers. In this book, user interface designers and documents designers from Microsoft Corporation and from Apple Computer, plus researchers from several universities try to bridge the gap between interface design and document design. They discuss opportunities for closer cooperation, and for more integrated and effective help for users of modern technology.




Visual Composing


Book Description

For courses in Document Design, Information Design, Visual Communication, Visual Rhetoric, or Desktop Publishing. Moving beyond a how-to book, Visual Composing: Document Design for Print and Digital Media explores the best practices in document design and why these practices work. Chapters consider the five criteria that contribute to effective visual composing (clarity, unity, usability, tone and aesthetics) and how these elements balance to form visually attractive and usable documents. Numerous examples illustrate relevant principles and exercises allow students to both evaluate and design documents. Covering both print and digital media, it presents the research behind best practices and gives students a more sophisticated understanding of why certain design principles are recommended.




Modular Web Design


Book Description

User experience design teams often suffer from a decentralized, blank canvas approach to creating and documenting a design solution for each new project. As teams repeatedly reinvent screen designs, inconsistency results, and IT teams scramble to pick up the pieces. Pattern libraries only go so far, suggesting general solutions to common problems instead of offering concrete, specific design treatments. At times, documented solutions turn into a costly mess of unclear expectations, unrealistic goals, and abandoned work. Enter components, each of which represents a chunk of a Web page. Designers can produce wireframes, mockups, or markup far more efficiently reusing components based on an established design system. Rather than limit innovation, components enable designers to render solved design frameworks quickly and to focus on the problem at hand, drastically improving the quality and rate of production. In addition, teams develop a deeper baseline for collaboration, a platform for governance, and a structure for useful and predictable documentation. This book defines the role of components and why they matter, maps out how to organize and build a component library, discusses how to use components in practice, and teaches a process for documenting and maintaining components.




Landscape Design Documentation


Book Description

Publisher description




Vectorworks for Entertainment Design


Book Description

The first book in the industry tailored specifically for the entertainment professional, Vectorworks for Entertainment Design covers the ins and outs of Vectorworks software for lighting, scenic, and sound design. With a detailed look at the design process, from idea to development, to the documentation necessary for execution, Vectorworks for Entertainment Design will encourage you to create your own process and workflow through exercises that build on one another. The text stresses the process of developing an idea, visualizing it, and evolving it for presentation, documentation, or drafting. The author focuses on both the technical how-to and the art of design, giving you the tools you need to learn and then use the application professionally. Fully illustrated with step-by-step instructions, it contains inspirational work from Broadway, major regional companies, and non-theatrical, entertainment design.