TracyC's blog

Yesterday's readings addressed the use of images. As I’ve mentioned a number of times this semester, images function in pretty much the same way as does text – to communicate information to a target audience in ways that reflect the topic, the immediate writing situation, and the individual, team, or company/organization sponsoring the document.

I’ve
read your reactions to, and questions about, the Technical Marketing Presentation Project,
and after spending these past few hours thinking about them, here
are some responses. These are designed not only to answer questions that have been raised, but also to guide project planning and research.

Chapter 25 of our text covers items related to desktop publishing and graphic design (which I'll refer to here as document design).  Although you'll be working with information presented on 8 1/2" X 11" pages, it's important that you take advantage of the many design elements commonly offered by desktop publishing software.  Yes, Microsoft Word can be considered a desktop publishing program -- and many of the updates found in Word 2007 considerably expand Word's range as a desktop publishing program.

This week's class sessions focus on the use of visually-oriented items within your white papers.  Yesterday's readings focused on incorporating graphics, while today's emphasize document design features -- so I'll consider these items here in that order.  Blog 8B, which I'll post later today, will look at document design strategies.

Some examples of graphics commonly presented within white papers:

This past Friday, we began the first of a series of units related to research and the white paper. We'll focus here on research and audience analysis. Before beginning to gather information for your white papers, it's essential that you do some background investigation on your target audience. After all, the audience toward which you direct your white paper -- and the position that you'll argue -- will directly influence what kind of information you present, and how you present it.

To gain better understanding of white papers and the White Paper Project as a whole, we should further examine the white paper genre, its history, its constituent sections, its audiences, and its goals.

History

This week's readings explore the open source movement, its origins, and how it relates those proprietary
options more recognizable to us -- namely, Microsoft and Microsoft products. Here are some issues/questions we will consider at some point during the course of the White Paper Project: