Over the last twenty five years considerable changes have been see in the shape of Technical Publications departments. The traditional roles of the technical author and technical illustrator have changed dramatically, but have we now got to the stage where the technical illustrator is no longer required?
When I first started in a technical publications department there were clearly defined roles and departments within the technical publications department. The technical authors creating the words, the typing pool, the illustrators within their studio and the make-up artists. As time has gone by these roles have changed significantly and some died altogether. The advent of technology and software has meant the end for the typing pool and the make-up artist if not extinct is definitely on the endangered list. Is it now the end for the Technical Illustrator?
The traditional technical illustrator would have been college trained and produce isometric pen and ink illustrations, obviously mistakes and amendments were very difficult to correct or implement.
The first real change was the introduction of the PC and drawing software such as Adobe Illustrator and Corel Draw. The traditional illustrating skills of how to construct isometric illustrations were still needed, so the only change for the technical illustrator was the PC replaced the drawing board, pen and ink.
With the PC becoming more powerful and common in the workplace Itedo produced the first specialist illustrating software “Isodraw”. This could be argued as the first step in software replacing the trained illustrator, with a bit of training on the software non-illustrators could now produce simple isometric illustrations. However, the role of the technical illustrator was still safe.
The next threat was from the drawing office with the general availability of the 3D modelling software. This software made it possible to automate the process of creating isometric illustrations. The saving grace was that the illustrations produced by the 3D modelling software were not of the same quality and the cost of the software made companies reluctant to use it for technical publications. These model files could be imported into visualisation/animation software such as 3d studio max and 3d viz. The resultant CGIs and animations were more of a threat to graphic designers than technical illustrators.
The biggest threat to the technical illustrator came ironically from the first ever software designed specifically for technical illustrators, Itedo released “IsoDraw Cad Process”. It is now possible to import native 3D model files into IsoDraw Cad Process which can totally automate the production of illustrations. Therefore anyone trained on the software can now generate the illustrations required.
As if this wasn’t bad enough the modelling software costs have dropped to that similar to IsoDraw Cad Process making it readily available to the technical publications department. As many of the modelling software programs now incorporate rendering engines, this has made it possible to create animations and photo-realistic CGIs that are possible to update by modifying the 3D model file, thus making the production of animations a cost effective option.
So has the technical illustrator died? You could say he’s definitely dying, but as long as companies are still reluctant to allow the Technical Publications department or outsource company access to the model files and they continue to send photos to be traced, the technical illustrator is still alive, just.