Now What Do I Do?

WOW did I make a mistake today. I am working for a company that publishes textbooks, posters, training materials, and other published items. The professional they hired to produce this material has no experience in publishing. Has access to the entire suite of Adobe products and is preferring to use Word and Powerpoint, even though these are being printed commercially. The products were sent to press without a press proof; “What’s a press proof she asks?”

Recent project, this person’s self-described best work, is a poster with umpteen different fonts, every box has a gradient, with a different color, no borders between text boxes. No style guide rules for grammer or design were followed. So, I tried to offer some suggestions. It was not received well, so I assembled a number of reference sites and sent them over. The strategy was that this would take the “personal” out of the dialogue.

It was like gas on the fire. I started a war, even though I did not actually throw my Chicago Manual of Style. The question is, how bad do we let something that is representing our company get before we speak up. I probably butted in where I did not belong since I am the web developer but holy-cow, we are charging for this stuff.

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Writing 201: Analyzing the Writing Process

Being a writer, I follow a fairly strict process when writing—the same process that I preach about when teaching clients how to write: Pre-writing: planning and drafting; Reviewing: rewriting and revising; and Finishing: editing, applying mechanics, and formatting. I’ve taught this process to many people (including my children). After all, there is a very good reason: it works!

The Pre-writing phase allows you to identify who you are writing for (your audience) and what you want to say to them; to identify the purpose of your writing, to determine the points you want to make and enumerate them; to begin drafting your ideas based on these points to get your thoughts on paper without restriction. This is where the bulk of your writing can take place.

The Reviewing phase enables you to clarify your draft: to embellish your words, to add more details, to tighten up your text, to clear up any ambiguities, to sequence thoughts better, to ensure your text speaks to your purpose, to delete anything that runs astray, to cut off tangents, to sharpen.

The Finishing phase is where you edit: to employ better words, to fix grammatical infractions, to correct mechanical errors, to change punctuation, to format for clarity and understanding.

Imagine my consternation, then—with a bit of a smile—when I received the following analysis of the process my son em- ploys for writing papers (including email and IM) at university.

In his own words… Read the rest of this entry »

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Communications is both simpler and more complex.

Producing communications projects is increasingly becoming both simpler and more complex. It is far simpler in that the functionality in the tools needed to create effective communications have blurred. For example, if you want to create a dynamic, interactive element, Macromedia Flash is an obvious choice but this tool requires considerable effort to develop expertise. Most administrative assistants will be tempted to point out that, on the surface, Microsoft’s PowerPoint can create some of the same elements. The project’s production appears simpler in that the functionality is available on any computer using Microsoft Office.

In fact there are very legitimate, and technical, reasons for using a tool like Flash. Understanding these issues and mastering these alternate digital tools is essential. Going forward we will discuss specific projects, the tools capable of creating these projects, and the relative strengths of each.

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The Pace of Change

I’ve been thinking a lot about the pace of change in the world. Was it only a few years ago that print newsletters were all the rage? I can’t imagine printing a newsletter at this point. Five days and $2,500 to proof and print the thing, all for employees to spend 45 seconds max with it. Forget it. Let us do it in HTML and we’ll email it to them. You could send one out every day if you really wanted to, and they look just as good as the printed ones. And infinitely cheaper. Everybody wins.

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