I began Electronic Media Design to expand my interest in online content development that helps small local businesses. I always held an interest in the Internet and online content. By developing websites, designing business cards, and creating marketing literature, I was able to expand my technical writing skills to other areas of content development.
History
My first technical writing job involved researching and writing instructions for service manuals, creating graphical illustrations, and developing technical documentation for training courses. Later, I expanded my experience into information architecture, photo editing, and graphic design to support friends, family, and the occasional customer.
In January 2005, I started EMD and applied my skills to help people get their businesses on the Internet by providing web hosting and development services. As my skills and new forms of content development had evolved, I became interested in instructional design and training development. In 2007, I broke from my technical writer role and landed my first instructional design position developing training materials and delivering Instructor-Led Training courses. With that evolution came an influx of new exposure to multimedia and content development tools. These exposures inspired me refocused my business on what I enjoy the most—the design, structure, and presentation of content for online consumption.
What I Do
I work with fellow industry professionals to create content for online and print presentations. These solutions include business and technical documentation services and training materials for companies that require professionally developed content which include:
- Authoring training materials.
- Editing video and audio.
- Developing graphical elements.
- Designing business and medical forms.
- Writing technical documents.
My services produce user-centric content delivered via Internet-based technologies accessed with PCs, laptops, and mobile devices. I also recognize that offline media is a vitally important form of communication, so I provide services to fulfill print requirements. My goal is to provide content solutions that improve communication, look good, and present well online and on printed media.
Experience
My exposure to the manufacturing, telecommunications, medical, and information technology industries has allowed me to develop many professional relationships and serve many audience types, systems exposure, and tools to deploy content. My content development experience includes:
- Job aids
- Websites
- Infographics
- Assessments
- Service manuals
- PowerPoint training decks
- Audio and video production
- Web-Based training modules
- Facilitator and student guides
- Software and hardware user manuals
Exposure to the many information types creates a wide variety of skills to pull from and apply various approaches to a content delivery project. My Content Development Toolbox consists of programs from Adobe, Articulate, Microsoft, and TechSmith.
Content Development Toolbox
Many tools are available to produce content and publish it in a format for your audience to consume. I use the latest development tools to create modern and technology-compatible information products. Here is a list of my current programs. This list is by no means affiliates me with the tools—I just use them all the time.
Articulate Storyline 360—for developing web-based training modules installed on a website or learning management system.
Articulate Rise—for rapid development of dynamic, responsive eLearning content that can be used on any device.
Techsmith Camtasia—for producing audio and video presentations and applying special effects to still photographs and illustrations. These video outputs are published on web sites or embedded into web-based training modules.
Techsmith Snagit—for capturing screenshots hosted in user documents or training manuals.
Microsoft Word—for authoring narrative scripts, storyboarding, and training materials for instructors and students.
Microsoft PowerPoint—for developing training decks for trainers.
Adobe Photoshop—for creating graphic design and modifying images and photographs used in the content.
Adobe Illustrator—for creating illustrations, logos, and infographics used in the content.
Adobe InDesign—for creating business and medical forms, job aids, and other miscellaneous page layout projects.
Adobe Acrobat—for creating PDF documents.