Document Design: A Guide for Technical Communicators

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.

MILES A. KIMBALL is an associate professor of English at Texas Tech where he teaches Technical Communication. His scholarship includes work on visual design, visual literacy, and visual rhetoric; the history of technical communication, including the development of information graphics; online portfolios and other pedagogical tools, and cultural theory. He is the author of The Web Portfolio Guide (Longman, 2003).

ANN R. HAWKINS teaches courses in Bibliography, Book History, and Textual Studies at Texas Tech. Named a 2004 New Scholar by the Bibliographical Society of America, Dr. Hawkins has held fellowships from the Bibliographical Society of America and the Folger Shakespeare Library. She received the James Davis scholarship to fund work at Rare Book School (Virginia) on ÒTeaching History of the Book.Ó In 2005, Dr. Hawkins also received a grant from the Helen Jones Foundation, funding a traveling exhibit and presentation on book history.