This coming Friday's activities focus on production of technical marketing documents. 
As you might have gathered, there’s considerably more involved with
production of a technical marketing document that simply creating the document
and printing it.  Remember, professional
presentation of a hard-copy technical marketing document is key to successful
completion of this project because this is the form in which your target
audiences will see the document. 

We’ll cover the basics of
document production, as well as a couple of more specialized processes that
technical writers in professional settings can be expected to work with.

Before getting started, here
are a few basic questions to ask yourselves:

• What
  kind of document are you working with, and what kinds of information will
  be contained within?  Are you working with a double-sided
  flyer with one or two images, a few blocks of text, and a product
  specifications table – or with a multi-page booklet with several images,
  several blocks of text, a page or two of color swatches, and a product
  specifications table?
• What’s
  the size of the paper to be used?  Many technical marketing documents
  involve 8 ½ X 11 sheets – but some use 11 X 14, 4 X 6, 5 X 7, or 5 X
  8. 
• How
  many pieces of paper?  If you have a six-panel brochure, you’ll
  use one sheet of paper, front and back. 
  If you have an eight-page booklet, you’ll use four sheets of paper
  – unless your document also folds, in which case you’ll actually use one,
  perhaps two sheets of paper.

The answers to these
questions will help influence other decisions you make regarding your document.

We can now look at
production, in terms of five basic categories: 
paper, color, file types, printing/binding, and distribution.

What kind of paper
will you use?

Color.  Most paper is white; however, other colors include
buff, blue, green, and pink.  Keep in
mind, though, that photographs don’t tend to look as good on colored paper as
they do on white.

Coating.  There are two types of paper that can be used
for technical marketing documents: 
coated and uncoated.  Laser paper
is coated, as is glossy paper. 
Photographs and illustrations look sharp because the ink used to
represent them isn’t absorbed into the paper. 
Uncoated paper – used for newspapers and cheap catalogs -- has a more
rough finish, and it tends to absorb ink.

Finish.  For most technical marketing documents, the
finish is smooth.  In some cases, though,
technical marketing communicators go with antique or fabric-like paper, for
effect.  With these types of paper, text
might not look as clean and illustrations may look choppy – in which case,
color is going to play a more important role because writers and designers must
account for these types of paper soaking up more ink.

Weight.  Paper is graded according to the weight of
500 sheets in a standard size (generally 8 ½ by 11).  Laser paper, which most students use for this
project, is 24-pound.  But there are
other weights, which are especially suitable for certain kinds of documents.  Book paper, which is coated or uncoated, can
weigh between 30 and 120 pounds, and is suitable for brochures, booklets, and
postcards.  Text is a higher-quality
paper that’s often used for annual reports and magazine inserts.  Common weights are 70- and 80- pound.  Cover stock is heavier, still, and typical
weights are 60, 65, 80, and 100.  This
type of paper is often used for postcards, but can also be used for book covers
and business cards.  Keep in mind that
the heavier the paper, the more it will cost – and likely, the more it will
cost to print.

Other considerations.  When choosing
paper, also keep in mind strength, thickness, brightness (how light reflects),
and opacity (“see-throughness” of items on the other side). 

How much color will your
document use, and how dependent on color is your document?

There are two types of color
used within technical marketing documents: 
spot color and process color. 

Process color is used for
full-color images, such as what you might see in magazines – or technical
marketing documents for vehicles.  It
consists of four separate, transparent inks – CMYK colors (cyan, magenta,
yellow, and black) that overlap each other. 
Spot color, on the other hand, involves one color for each area on which
you want color.

Process colors are defined
by what percentage of each color is used within a combination.  For example, the color blue.  Lighter shades will likely have more cyan and
yellow than magenta and black.  Darker
shades will likely have more black and magenta than cyan or yellow.

Whether you use process
color or spot color, tints will likely play an important role in your technical
marketing document.  Tints are
percentages of color.  For accent areas,
feel free to retain a tint setting for 100 percent.  However, if you’re using background color on
a page containing text, or within an isolated text box, you might want to
consider lowering the tint – unless white text will display well on that darker
background.

Color matching is also
important for this project.  If you’d
like to maintain consistency with a logo, or with colors used on other pages,
be sure to write down the CMYK values and then you can choose those exact
settings when applying that color elsewhere.

IMPORTANT:  You can’t mix process color and spot color;
if you use process color for one item, you must use it for the entire document!

In terms of printing,
four-color process is commonly referred to because it’s used for printing
magazines.  But it can also get pretty
expensive.  If you’re working with spot
color, you could easily get away with two-color printing.

What kinds of file
types are used to create the document?

Most technical marketing
documents produced for this project will involve a desktop publishing program
such as Publisher or InDesign.  You
likely will have also used Photoshop for your images.  Images tend to be saved as GIFs or JPEGs, but
some graphics are saved as TIFs or as bitmaps. 
JPEGs are higher-resolution, and are especially suitable for
photographs.  Bitmaps are sometimes used
for line drawings, because they involve two colors – black and white.

If you’re using any
nonconventional file types, I would recommend saving your document as a PDF
file before printing, so that what prints is an image of the document, rather
than the document in its native file format.

What kinds of printing
and binding processes are required?

Here are some questions to
ask, as you get ready to print your document and prepare it for distribution:

• Will you use a consumer-model, or business-model
  color laser printer – or will you take your file(s) to a copy shop or
  professional printer?

• Will you print on one side of the page only, or
  will you need to use a printer that accommodates duplex printing?

• Will you use staples, a three-ring binder, spiral
  binding, or a more specialized binding process?  Will you need to fold your
  document?  Will you need partial
  perforations for tear-off pages?

Document distribution
and audience access

Here are some questions to
ask, regarding your finished hard copies of the technical marketing document:

• How will the document be displayed?  On a table?  Inside the product?  Within a specially-designed holder?  On a display or kiosk produced by the
  retailer?  On a hook?
• What will audiences do with your document?  Stick it in a purse or pocket?  Lay it flat alongside other
  documents?  Place it into a
  three-ring binder?