Technical Marketing Project: lecture notes on production

Today'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. 

NOTE:  Since our class meets online, you won't be printing a hard-copy version of your document.  Nevertheless, the items we're covering can easily be adapted to meet the needs of PDF documents, since those in our target audiences will often print their own copies of our documents.  

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 prett  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?