Meet the February 2019 Technical Communication cover artist: Lindsay Blankenbeker.
Lindsay began her undergraduate degree at Kennesaw State University in the Fall of 2010, where she completed most of her core curriculum. She had trouble choosing a major in which she could apply her love for people and her love for creativity. She decided to take some time off from school to decide what she wanted to do with her life. She worked full time in the hospitality, dental, and medical fields for several years, but always knew she wanted to finish her undergraduate degree.
While Lindsay was working, her love for people of all ages and walks of life grew, and she learned first-hand of the struggles that many people encounter when dealing with technology. She would often find herself helping older coworkers and patients operate software that was outdated or that was difficult to navigate for those who had not grown up in a digital-based world.
In 2017, Lindsay decided to finish her bachelor’s degree and discovered a new undergraduate program at Kennesaw State University: Interactive Design. This program of study fit Lindsay’s passions and future career goals perfectly. A few semesters later, Lindsay is now excited to be graduating in 2019 in a field that she loves.
Lindsay heard about Technical Communication’s cover competition while taking a Visual Design class at KSU. Her professor, Leslie Hankey, encouraged her students to submit their digital artwork portraying one of the topics given. Lindsay chose “finding your footing in the world of developer docs.” To Lindsay, this was a topic that referred to the importance of communication within teams of people. If communication between clients, designers, developers, users, etc., is not executed properly, it is likely that the overall goal of a project may not be met as intended.
The challenges for Lindsay in creating this digital artwork were interpreting the given topic, communicating that topic to readers to the best of her ability, and using a static two-dimensional illustration to communicate the topic. Lindsay wanted this message to be displayed in a direct and simple way that both veterans of the field and newcomers could understand.
Another significant challenge was using Adobe Illustrator to create this illustration (as requested by her professor), as Lindsay had little prior knowledge of this program. Lindsay took the time to learn Illustrator well enough to create a digital illustration that she hoped would translate successfully for the intended audience. Her inspiration came from real photographs that she traced in Adobe Photoshop and then made into an illustration in Adobe Illustrator.
To view the February 2019 issue of Technical Communication with Lindsay’s cover illustration, please visit www.stc.org/techcomm .
And, as a reminder, the deadline for upcoming submissions to the cover competition is 1 June.
For the August 2019 issue, (a special issue on transmedia), we invite cover illustrations on the subject of transmedia, participatory culture, and digital creation.
For the November 2019 issue, we invite cover illustrations on the subject of collaboration in technical communication across cultures.
Cover illustrations might be diagrams, drawings, photographs, collages, infographics, cartoons, comic strips, or brief graphic narratives.
For either issue, please submit your cover illustration (approximately 20×20 cm or 8×8 inches) as a high-resolution (300 dpi or better) jpg file by 1 June 2019 to tceditor@stc.org with a brief explanation (100-200 words) of how your illustration addresses the cover subject. A five-member international jury of specialists will organize anonymous review of the submissions and choose each issue’s cover illustration. Honorable mentions will be published inside the journal.