NM bound

This weekend I'll be on the road heading to Santa Fe, NM to attend the upcoming CIDM Best Practices conference.

I'm looking forward to the conference, meeting up with some old friends, and hopefully learning a few new ideas and concepts about the art of Corporate Publishing.

Instructional Comics - Google Weren't The First

As part of the on-going online discussion about the impact and usability of the Google Chrome comic, fellow blogger Tom Johnson asked me if I had more samples and references for comic book style documentation.

As I mentioned before the "technical comics" I've done to date have been more like illustrated white papers than "how to" instruction manuals, but over the years I have come across a few examples of instructional comics.

Perhaps the best known among the comics creative community is the work done by pioneering graphic novelist Will Eisner for the US Army. Between 1951 and 1972 Eisner produced the P.S. Magazine - The Preventative Maintenance Monthly for the army, which combined comics, instructions and some great artwork covering a whole range of army equipment and procedures.



(The Virginia Commonwealth University has a complete digital library of PSM available online.) He also wrote and illustrated an document known to the US army as "DA-Pam 750-30 - The M16A1 Rifle - Operation and Preventive Maintenance" - but generally referred to as "Treat Your Rifle Like A Lady."




Other examples I've come across include:
- Emergency Roofing
- Playing the accordion.

And there are things like aircraft safety instruction cards (the ones in the seat backs) and numerous instructional notices (like this one about using your cell phone on the subway) that use comics iconography and techniques.

Wanna Be A Tech Writer..

As someone who has more than a passing interest in both The Beatles and the world of Technical Writing - I just had to share this...

The Google Chrome comic - why it didn't work.

Yesterday I spent a fair amount of time talking with a prospective client about a project involving the use of sequential art to convey some very technical information.

In short, he wants to use the medium of comics to tell prospective engineers why it would be cool to work on the projects his organization is responsible for. (And having heard what projects they are – I can confirm it would be VERY COOL to be involved in almost any capacity).

I walked him through the process I use to develop and produce promotional comics and various options for delivery etc. based on budgets, audience and so on.

During the conversation the “technical comic” produced by comics guru Scott McCloud in support of the launch of the new Google Chrome browser was discussed.



My client had loved the idea, checked out the links, started out to read the McCloud comic and after about six pages he had glazed over, skim read a few more pages and not actually finished it.

His concern was that he was not alone in this reaction, and because of this was wary of citing the Google comic to his budget holders as a way to justify his own project.

Even with the added incentive of professional interest, I must also admit that I found the Google Chrome comic difficult to finish. No one else I have spoken to since has actually read it the whole way through.

Why? Because despite the “novelty” of the method of presentation, they didn’t stay engaged in the subject matter.

Today I came across the following quote from Scott McCloud in an FAQ.

Who wrote the script?
The engineers, for the most part! I helped conduct interviews with about 20 engineers who worked on the project, then adapted what they said into comics form. Some paraphrasing, lots of condensation, and one or two late drop ins, but basically it was a very organic adaptation and I had a lot of latitude.

And perhaps there lies the problem.

There is no single voice and no narrative.

Let me say that I greatly admire McCloud. He knows more about comics storytelling and structure than I ever will. I constantly reference his classic work “Understanding Comics” in producing my own work, and in various papers I write, or presentations I give, on communicating.

But I’m amazed with the Google project, because the lack of narrative seems like a basic omission from such a high profile project.

Whenever I produce a promotional comic I always try and include a central character that the reader can empathize with, along with a story (more often than not something light and fun to off set the heavy technical jargon) to guide the reader through the points being made.

As I’ve often said before, all communication is a story and technical communication needs it just as much as fiction.

I’m not sure what audience the Google Chrome comic was aimed at. While it was great to see comics used in such a high profile way, did anyone consider the implications and impact of the fact that the very use of the comics medium would expose it to a wider audience than first intended?

I bet you don't think you're this bad...

I'm not sure if this is genuine or something put together as an example of extreme technical jargon - whichever it still provides one of the best demonstrations of the need for clear concise communications in presenting technical concepts.




You may not think that your company or industry jargon is this bad, but try a little exercise. Take a white paper, or sample page of documentation and show it someone (family or friend) who has no experience of your industry and ask them to read it. See how many words and phrases they stumble over.

How far do you spread the message?

Yesterday afternoon I spent some time posting sample art from an upcoming comics project on my personal blog as well as in a publicly accessible Facebook photo-album, and making sure I mentioned it on Twitter.

Part way through the exercise my wife asked me "Why are you doing that. Shouldn't the publishers be doing it?" On the face of it it seemed like a fair question, but experience has quickly taught me that publishers with hundreds of books to promote can only focus on a select few, and you can't count on yours being one of them. The more marketing you do for yourself the more advance interest you can build and, hopefully, the greater the sales.

Switch to this morning at the WebWorks office, and after reviewing some figures I sent an email to one online distributor of software asking them to remove our product listing from their website.

The two events didn't seem related, but over lunch today I began to think about it.

Last night my underlying philosophy was that "the more marketing the better." The more online exposure I could get for my upcoming project the more awareness it would build for both the project and myself as a writer. So more is good? - Yes

This morning, when I looked at the product listing online at the site in question I saw that the product and company descriptions were years out of date. They obviously had no real understanding of our market, or what business issues our product helped solve, never mind its actual features and functionality. When I looked back at the records I found that they were one of a large group of on-line software distributors who had been signed up "en-mass" several years ago. The philosophy had been the same as mine the previous night "the more web presence the better." So more is good? - In this case - No.

So many distributors had been signed up that no-one was (or could practically for our size of company) manage them all and keep track of how we, and our products, were being represented. The ones that produced steady strong results got noticed and managed. The ones that only produced occasional sales didn't. The result is that those neglected listings were soon sending the wrong messages.

So what's the connection? Having a philosophy of spreading your message far and wide over the Web can be a great one. In today's Web2.0 world viral marketing is one of the strongest marketing tools available. BUT.. you can should only spread the message to places that you can manage. If the message gets inconsistent and diluted it doesn't take long to become worthless.

Story Quotes

A couple of great quotes about the power of stories in business that I came across today.

"Good leaders are good authors of stories that include everyone else."
- Gerhard Gschwandtner - SellingPower.com

"Stories give us context, and context helps everyone understand."
"Stories wield special power because they can be translated into something visual. When we hear a story we see it too, and the visual image becomes something that sticks in our memories long after the words have fled."
- Harry Beckwith & Christine Clifford - You Inc.: The Art Of Selling Yourself.

Now Twittering..

Just a quick note to let you know that if you feel so inclined you can know follow my random thoughts on a variety of subjects via TWITTER at http://twitter.com/gothamajp

Emotional Warning Light

I’ve long been an advocate of the advantages of using a controlled authoring vocabulary in producing technical documentation. The concept of one word = one meaning is central to this concept and is the underpinning of standards such as Simplified Technical English (STE).

In short ambiguity can lead to mistakes, or in extreme cases even cause fatalities. But one thing I hadn’t thought about before is that as well as considering the literal meanings of the words and phrases used, we should also consider the emotional and psychological impact.

It was an article by veteran racer and motoring journalist Denise McCluggage in a recent (16 June 2008) AutoWeek magazine that opened my eyes on this subject.

Denise’s article discussed the impact of the “CHECK ENGINE” warning light common in most vehicles today.



By all the rules and principles of controlled authoring that’s a perfect valid warning statement. Clear, concise, using simple words with well defined meanings.

But as Denise points out it has the potential for two distinctly different emotional impacts.

For a typical car guy (like me) the response to the “CHECK ENGINE” warning may be “rats I need to take the car in to the dealers at some point, where they will do some minor adjustment and charge me an arm and a leg for it.” After a few go-arounds when the car doesn’t do anything untoward they may even ignore the warning altogether.

But for a female driver the response to the “CHECK ENGINE” light may be concern that the engine, the thing that makes the car go, is about to fail and leave her stranded at the side of the road. Her reaction maybe that that warning could lead to something that will put her in a potential life-threatening situation.

As Denise goes on to point out the “CHECK ENGINE” light really means that “something might be amiss with the emission system and you should really have it looked at next time you are in the shop for routine maintenance.”

So the choice of words is not as good as I first thought it was. Maybe it should read “Emission Controls Service Due.”

In short this article made me realize that as well as making sure we use the right vocabulary we should also be taking just as much notice of technical context and audience psychology.

Preparing technical communication is not just about passing on knowledge, its also about the emotion with which the message is received.

Business and Storytelling

Anyone whose spoken to me for more than a few minutes will quickly find out that my passion is story telling. In fact I believe that ALL business communication, be it in sales, marketing, technical publications, white papers, reports, even simple emails, is simply different forms of telling stories.

Sitting on my desk next to me is a book with the great title Whoever Tells The Best Story Wins. I'll be honest I wasn't too impressed by the actual content - but I keep it on my desk so that every day I see that title.

Today doing some business plan research I was looking for examples of the ultimate in business story telling - The Elevator Speech.

What's an Elevator Speech - the idea is that if you are riding in an elevator and someone asks "What does your company do?" - you can answer before the elevator ride is over. In other words you can tell your business story in less than thirty seconds.

That research lead me to the video below.

The video has some good pointers on composing a good Elevator Speech - but what really caught my attention was the idea of a CEO using the job title "Chief Storyteller." - That's a job title I think we should all adopt, at least in spirit if not in practice.