When explaining relatively complex technical matters — e.g. in a manual, a training document or a technical presentation — the importance of illustrations is often underestimated. Clean, simple, yet effective illustrations, in combination with accurate, unambiguous instructions, make a difference in helping the target audience understand how something works or how they should carry out a procedure.

The benefits of technical illustrations:

• Technical illustrations are often linked with technical writing to demonstrate procedures. In cooperation with the technical writer — yours or ours — we can organize a demo session to photograph the steps required for a particular procedure. Our technical illustrator then combines these photos and the technical writer's instructions into an instructional drawing.

• The use of illustrations in technical writing also helps to reduce the amount of text, which makes the instructions easier to read and understand. And let’s not forget that less text means lower translation costs.

• If your technical explanations are intended for on-screen display — online help, presentations, instruction cd-roms, etc. — animations are the way to go. An animation is like an instructional video, in a way, but it uses the advantages of drawing and it can be made interactive.

And... Nobody wants to deal with warranty claims or repairs due to misinterpreted instructions. So, yes, if technical illustrations can make that kind of difference, they are a big deal, and should be treated as such.