Where are all the illustrations?

There is now - and there always has been - a dramatic difference in the cost of paper publishing using colored ink compared to publishing using black ink. In one hand I hold a 300 page black and white pulp fiction novel, dripping with badly drawn characters. In the other, I hold a 300 page guide to Renaissance Art, dripping with beautifully drawn images by the great masters. Significantly different production costs? Absolutely.

Also, there is now - and there always has been - a correlation between page count and cost. On one hand I hold a 100 page novella. In the other, a 700 page 'Everything you ever wanted to know about computer networks but were afraid to ask'. Significantly different inventory and shipping costs? Definitely.

The costs of increased page count and the costs of increased color usage have always limited the extent to which paper publishing can be used to illustrate certain visual things. Take knots for example. You may be familiar with the phenomenon of the knot-making illustration where everything makes sense in picture 1, then picture 2 but then picture 3 jumps straight to some highly complex configuration which does not obviously follow from the pictures that precede it.

As a kid in the boy scouts, this used to drive me nuts. I'd try to follow a diagram to make a Lineman's Loop[1] for example and end up with the rope equivalent of a handful of spaghetti. Back then I had a big problem thinking in three dimensions. Some would say I still do.

Recently the knotty problem of impossible-to-read knotting diagrams has re-entered by life in the form of Scoubido[2]. Some kids around here are big fans. In trying to decipher the instructions, I have found that my problems are actually worse than when I was a kid. Not only do I find the diagrams impossible to decipher, but I also have trouble reading the leaflets without a magnifying glass.

Magnifying glasses aside, maybe I am the only person in the world who has trouble following a sequence of diagrams. On the off-chance that this is not the case, I would like to make a suggestion to the world. Please, please, please take advantage of the publishing vehicle known as the World Wide Web.

The Web makes the cost of publishing in color versus publishing in black and white essentially a non-issue. Moreover, the Web handles volume just fine. Do you need 25 separate diagrams to properly illustrate how to perform some complex manipulation? Then use 25 separate diagrams.

This only makes economic sense of course if the costs of producing each illustration are reasonable. Hand drawn diagrams are out for a start. What to do...

In my mind's eye I see a device, about the size of a domestic microwave oven. In it you place an object and press the button marked "scan". Out the far end pops dozens of digital photographs of the object. Photographs taken from all angles in full color at the press of a button.

E-Bay sellers would love such a gadget. 360 views of every trinket and gadget in your virtual shop window.

Frustrated followers of black and white knot diagrams printed in 6 point type like me would love it too.

[1] http://www.realknots.com/knots/sloops.htm



[2] http://www.scoubiguide.co.uk/

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