This article uses a historical perspective to describe the development of the profession of technical communication through three ages: Brass, Beige, and Glass. I compare this development to the growth of the academic discipline and both to the explosion of noninstitutional technical communication—the growing body of tactical technical communication that happens outside of organizations and institutions. This leads me to describe today as the Golden Age of technical communication. I conclude that we should broaden the scope of technical communication and spread it as a set of skills valuable for everyone to learn.

A decade ago, I was struck by the realization that almost all of the scholarship in our field focuses on the technical communication that happens within organizations, or that is produced by organizations to engage with their members, constituents, or customers (Kimball, 2006).In our scholarship, pedagogy, and practice, we regularly assume that the basic unit for consideration, the scope, is some sort of formal organization: a corporation, a government agency, or an institution.This organizational assumption has come under increasing scrutiny by others, as well.For example, Clay Spinuzzi's influential work has gradually expanded the frame beyond the organization to more flexible and temporary alliances.In Tracing Genres through Organizations: A Sociocultural Approach to Information Design (Spinuzzi, 2003) and its more applied follow-on volume, Topsight: A Guide to Studying, Diagnosing, and Fixing Information Flow in Organizations (Spinuzzi, 2013), Spinuzzi focused primarily on communication networks and conventions within organizations.But, more recently, in All Edge: Inside the New Workplace Networks (Spinuzzi, 2015), Spinuzzi broadens his focus beyond the organization, ironically by looking at something smaller: the projectbased team.In other words, Spinuzzi's work seems to have begun with assuming the organization as the proper unit of study but has shifted to consider more contingent and nimble arrangements that cross-organizational boundaries.Of course, the organization is still an important unit of scope.Yet the organizational assumption obscures a larger view of the technical communication performed by millions of people each day on their own, working outside of, between, and even counter to organizations.This kind of technical communication existed long before the organizational assumption, but it has grown tremendously with the opportunities afforded by the Internet for people to share technical information for their own purposes, rather than on behalf of institutions.In effect, everyone who enjoys access to the Internet is now a potential technical communicator, sharing what they know about technology with the entire world.With services like YouTube, Instructables, and web forums, anyone with only a small investment in money or technology can share with users across the world the kind of information that has traditionally been the product of professional technical writers employed by corporations or government agencies.(For a more detailed discussion of this trend, please see Kimball, 2016.)These new technical communicators find a ready audience in the many people interested in knowing "how to do" something, but not "how to become" something.Examples abound, but here's a personal one.The bearings of our washing machine burned out.As it loudly tried to shake itself apart, my wife and I cast about for what to do.In previous decades, our options would have been slim.We could take the machine apart and try to diagnose and repair the problem ourselves.Naturally, our ignorance made us reluctant to take that route.We could hire a repairperson, but likely at great expense.We could simply buy a new washer, at even greater expense.Finally, we could seek formal training and become appliance repairpersons.However, such training is difficult to come by, even more costly, and slow.We would likely run out of clean clothes before we learned enough to fix the machine.And, ironically, we would likely have to learn a lot of information about fixing other kinds of machines, as well as the professional values and standards that would allow us to participate

Many books, designers, and design educators talk about visual design principles such as balance, contrast, and alignment, but with little consistency. This study uses empirical methods to explore the lore surrounding design principles. The study took the form of two stages: a quantitative literature review to determine what design principles are mentioned most often in discourse on design, and a card sorting exercise to explore the relationships designers, design educators, and design students saw among the most common design principles. Along with the card sorting exercise, I used pre- and post-exercise surveys to gauge how participants felt and thought about design principles and their use in design practice.

Digital Media Revisited: Theoretical and Conceptual Innovation in Digital Domains is a testament to the pace of thought in new media studies. Published only 10 years after the launch of the Web, th...

In this article, I examine a historical information graphic—Charles Booth's maps of London poverty (1889–1902)—to analyze the cultural basis of ideas of transparency and clarity in information graphics. I argue that Booth's maps derive their rhetorical power from contemporary visual culture as much as from their scientific authority. The visual rhetoric of the maps depended upon an ironic inversion of visual culture to make poverty seem a problem that could be addressed, rather than an insurmountable crisis. This visual rhetoric led directly to significant features of and concepts in western societies, including the poverty line and universal old-age pensions (social security).

Abstract This article examines two cases of technical documentation occurring outside of institutions. Using a framework derived from de Certeau's (1984) distinction between strategies and tactics and Johnson's (1998) concept of the user-as-producer, I analyze communities surrounding Muir's (1969) How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive! A Manual of Step by Step Procedures for the Compleat Idiot and Champion's (2000) Build Your Own Sports Car for as Little as £250. These communities engage in tactical technical communication, especially in the form of technological narratives that participate in broader cultural narratives about technology.