A technical instruction manual

Exhaustively researched and created by Brad Kirsch and Blake Anderson

 See the Page as a Grid
Organize the space of a page
Grids are extremely good tools to help keep
a page neat and organized, and ultimately
help the reader know 3 things:
1) Where they are in the document
2) Where they need to go
3) How to get there
Grids bring predictability and predictability is
crucial to any technical document.
If your work is well organized and predicta-
ble, readers will easily be able to navigate it
and find the specific information.
Create a Defined Look
When using a grid, you can easily and effec-
tively define and separate sections of your
information.
Grids can also make a page more aestheti-
cally pleasing, helping to initially draw the
reader in.
Using grids can make your documents more
immediately recognizable while bringing a
valuable sense of unity, balance, and pro-
portion.
A Planning Tool
Grids can be effectively utilized as planning
tools.
Using a grid to make a rough sketch of what
you want the final product to be like before
actually starting to design can be extremely
helpful in making your job easier.
Planning with grids helps you (the designer)
see pages as a unit of composition as op-
posed to just a single page.
Flexibility
Grids are very versatile and dont always
have to be rectangular and symmetrical.
Once an initial grid layout is in place you can
bend and break it to help fit your idea of
what you want the page to look like.
Using a grid can also create space to add in
pictures or helpful visual aids if you feel they
are needed in your design.
Using Active Space
Designers begin to use white space actively when they start to see both
the positive (ink-filled) and negative (white) spaces on the page. White
spaces conveys a lot about a document: what type it is, how it should be
approached, and what must be read and what can be skipped.

White space can also as a stylistic tool. The arrangement and style of textual ele-
ments on a page can either inhibit or invite readers into a document. An inviting
document tends to be open and expansive, with text defined into blocks by white
space, headings that are separated by spacing, text that is set with a little extra
space between each line, and visual elements that are bordered by white space.
Many readers avoid intimidating, dense texts.

In many kinds of text, there really is no need to cover the page with ink.
Much designed text an ink-to-space ratio of less than 50%.
A visual style, with plenty of white space on an attractive grid, is the ticket.

White space can be either active or passive: passive white space is defined
incidentally by the space left over as the text takes shape. Active white
space, in contrast, intentionally defines the shape, organization, progres-
sion, and readability, of the text itself. Passive is accidental; active is inten-
tional.
 Lists
Lists are highly visual and ordered text structures that are usually spaced from
the main body text.
They organize parallel ideas into easily referenced and readable forms. We make
lists everyday for various purposes, and are accustomed to reading information
in list form.
Lists can be arranged in many forms, a few being:
General arrangement: Items or tasks are listed in no specific order.
Hierarchical arrangement:: Items are listed in order of importance.
Chronological arrangement: Steps are listed in a specific order they must be
completed in.

Examples
General Arrangement Hierarchical Arrangement Chronological Arrangement

Wash the dishes Lab Kit 1. Open garage door

Take out garbage Calculator 2. Enter the car
Vacuum Textbook 3. Start the car
Clean the bathroom Notebook 4. Back out of garage
Dust Ruler/Protractor 5. Drive to destination

Visual cues like numbers make the order of the sequence in hierarchical and
chronological lists unquestionable.
Always make an effort to convert information into a list structure when you
can as it goes a long way in helping the reader easily understand the ideas be-
ing presented.
 Understanding the Face of Type

While writers discover how to use software to manipulate type features,

they also develop awareness of typography's role as both an aesthetic and
structural element. As they learn to talk type on its own terms, they gain
respect for its influence on the page.

Writers accustomed to writing essays with flat text surfaces and

undistinguished type find themselves loose in a candy store when
they discover the typographic variation available today on most
word processing systems.

Typographers have a whole language for talking about

type, some of which is displayed in this diagram:

serif ascender

cap height Quiet Elephants x-height point size

counter baseline descender serif

A type family is the sum of all variations of a single typeface. These variations include widths,
slant, and styles bold, regular, underline, and light. The most identifiable changes in type fami-
lies occurs in serifs, x-heights and counters. Our Quiet-Elephants take on different appearanc-
es on the subtle levels when the typeface is changed:

Quiet Elephants 14pt. Palatino

Quiet Elephants 14pt. Times
Quiet Elephants 14pt. Bookman
Quiet Elephants 14pt. Bodoni