#Storyboard quick format manuals#
#Storyboard quick format full#

Like steel girders make up the framework of a new office building, the storyboard serves as the visual structure on which the elements of your visual technical communications project are laid out and organized. Creating a Framework to Organize the Project This provides opportunities for specific feedback and approval, helping to minimize rework after you begin production.

#Storyboard quick format full#

Create the storyboard first to allow the stake holders to visualize the full project. So if you have to go back and remake any part of complex project, you waste valuable time and effort.

#Storyboard quick format manuals#

Like complex manuals or comprehensive help systems, creating a visual technical communications project, requires long hours, diligence, and great patience. A storyboard visualizes the project as a whole and in sequence to provide the roadmap during production.A storyboard serves as a framework on which to place and manipulate all the elements.A storyboard provides a visual outline to solicit feedback, review and approvals.Benefits of Using the StoryboardĪ storyboard requires its own level of effort within the overall technical communications project, but there are significant benefits to be gained from the extra effort: Take a look at the Resources list at the end of the article for links to more information on creating storyboards. Technical communications teams understand the importance of accuracy, and accuracy in defining visual concepts is no different. Storyboards range from simple hand drawn stick figures on scratch paper, to extravagantly detailed full-color artwork, or they can be created using photos or cutouts from magazines, anything that helps accurately represent a particular scene. Introduction to the Technical Communications StoryboardĪccording to Wikipedia, “ Storyboards are graphic organizers in the form of illustrations or images displayed in sequence for the purpose of pre-visualizing a motion picture, animation, motion graphic or interactive media sequence.” It helps organize the pile (or the idea that could become a pile) of videos, photos, audio clips, and documents according to a logical sequence that can be aligned with text or audio. Storyboards help you organize before you begin to develop your presentation, video tutorial, animation, simulation or web-based training, by putting it into a format that allows others to see the sequence of your presentation before you begin production. You’re probably familiar with at least some the tools to create presentations, tutorials, videos, animated instructions and other technical communications projects There is one fairly low-tech tool to help organize and structure your multi-media project-the storyboard. But, we need feedback before we invest the time producing our project, or we may find we’ve gone down the proverbial rabbit hole and missed the intended goal of the project. We can settle on a concept, a delivery method, and come up with ideas for visuals and copy points. A multi-media technical communications project requires not only creative skills, but organizational skills as well.

As technical communicators, we’re often assigned to projects that appeal to more than one sense-words, visuals and sounds-to convey a message.