Is The Role Of The Technical Illustrator Dead?

Is The Role Of The Technical Illustrator Dead?

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The past 25 years have seen extraordinary changes in technical publications departments. The functions associated with technical author and technical illustrator seem to have altered considerably but are they equally needed now. It could be that the technical illustrator may be a dying vocation.

When I began my career being a technical author these two roles had been clearly identified.

The words required were being produced through the technical authors and recorded through the typing pool and the technical illustrators making drawings as well as plans. All of this was then brought together by the make-up artists. Since the years have gone by these functions have altered significantly and some have disappeared entirely. Advances in technological innovation and software have eliminated the actual need for the typing pool and also the make-up artist is really a rare and endangered species. Is the role of technical illustrator going to become an additional of those disappearing breeds?

Usually the technical illustrator would've been college educated and so they would create their isometric drawings working with pen and ink. Errors and any required amendments would certainly be very difficult to put into action.

The first visible change came with the development of the Personal computer and easily accessible software program such as Adobe Illustrator or Corel Draw. The actual expertise continued to be exactly the same, the technical illustrator even now required to understand how to construct isometric drawings however their work tool now consisted of a Personal computer as opposed to drawing board, pen and ink.

With the Personal computer growing to be a lot more powerful and typical in the office Itedo developed the very first specialist illustrating software program "Isodraw". This could be argued as the first step in software program replacing the qualified technical illustrator, with a bit of training about the software program non-illustrators could now produce easy isometric illustrations. Nevertheless, the role of the technical illustrator was still safe for the time-being.

The general accessibility to 3D modelling software program provided the next threat to the technical illustrator. This made the procedure of generating isometric illustrations practically automated. Fortunately for the technical illustrator the software costs were exorbitant and the quality of the images were not the same as professionally produced isometric drawings so firms had been reluctant to begin with to use the software program. Nonetheless, these design files could be imported in to visualisation/animation software such as 3d studio max and 3d viz creating them really helpful. Nonetheless, the resulting CGIs and animations have been much more of a danger to graphic artists than technical illustrators.

Ironically the first ever software program created especially for technical illustrators created the biggest threat to their existence. Itedo introduced "IsoDraw Cad Process". The development of illustrations could be totally computerized simply by importing native 3D design files straight into IsoDraw Cad process. This means that anyone trained on the use of the software program application could produce the illustrations needed.

And to complicate matters, the expense of the software program had fallen considerably making it easily obtainable to businesses watching their net profit. Since a lot of of the modelling software applications now include rendering engines, this has made it possible to create animated graphics and photo-realistic CGIs that are feasible to update simply by modifying the 3D design file, as a result making the production of animated graphics a cost efficient choice.

So has the technical illustrator died? He is definitely on the endangered list but until firms are willing to permit technical publications departments access to their design files as opposed to sending photographs for being traced then the technical illustrator will survive although his days might be numbered

About the Author:
Matt has worked as a technical author and illustrator for over 25 years following an apprenticeship in Electrical Engineering with one of the major UK rail companies.

Further information about technical publications can be found at



Article Originally Published On: http://www.articlesnatch.com


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