Tools of the Trade
Many information architects come from a design background. Their deliverables are gorgeous, their blogs are pretty - and their presentations are Good PowerPoint (take a look at the IA Summit ones for examples). It’s a little intimidating for me, coming from a development background.
So I’m trying to learn - how to use designers’ tools and how to use them well.
Last week’s discovery was that InDesign is remarkably intuitive. Reading a book and playing with the software a bit was enough for me to feel confident I could create documents. Sure enough, when I mocked up a wireframe and compared it to the one by a designer colleague, all the bones were there. I still need to dissect a couple of good examples to learn nuances: “Oh, you made the shape outline and then put a text frame inside it instead of typing directly into the shape? That makes sense.” But it’s one more tool to have.