Google's Chrome Comic Book Documentation

Lindsey Robbins — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 18:56:00 GMT

The buzz in the online world the past few weeks is about Google's new Internet browser Chrome. In the Technical Communication world, the buzz is around Google's choice to create a help book to explain Chrome. Why the buzz? Well it was done in comic format. I'm not exactly sure why the rest of the Technical Communication world is up in arms. I thought it was a fun play on documentation and not meant to be the complete resource on *how to* use chrome. To understand this momentous project causing all the rage, I naturally turned to our own Blackbaud Technical Writer, Steve Stegelin. Most of you may not know it, but Steve started his career as a cartoonist and technical illustrator. In the meantime he's done some pretty impressive work (on non-Blackbaud hours). Lately, you can find him several places.

Charleston City Paper - Weekly Cartoon, Blotter, Special Covers
SC Statehouse Report - Weekly Cartoon
Illustrated a Book - I'll Be Sober in the Morning: Great Political Comebacks, Putdowns, & Ripostes
And he even generously donates his time to some in-house projects including designing t-shirts, adding illustrative touches to our quarterly company newsletter, and the occasional greeting card.

In our cube this morning (yup, I'm the fortunate one who sits with Steve every day), I asked him a few questions about this Google Chrome thing. I wanted to get to the bottom of the hoopla.

Lindsey :
Why is this Google Chrome comic such a big deal?

Steve:
While it's obviously a good bit of marketing gimmickry to promote Chrome, I think it's a great method to explain just what makes it so different from the other browsers out there. Having Scott McCloud use caricatures of the various developers and designers to pass along the message also really helps give it a personal voice, which is a bit of genius, making it less about the corporate Google than about the team of individuals working to make Chrome succeed. With the open source-ness of Chrome, communicating in this way really helps promote its "by the people for the people" message. And as a fan of the comic medium, it's actually quite validating to see the format promoted as such a "legitimate" form of communication by a corporation such as Google.

Lindsey:
Who's Scott McCloud and why should we know him?

Steve:
When I first started reading comics, Scott was the creator of the fun indie comic "Zot!" He's since gone on to become the closest thing comics has to a "resident scholar" on the sequential art form. You may've seen his theses as graphic novels: "Understanding Comics", "Reinventing Comics", and "Making Comics." Each is an entertaining and informative analysis of the comics medium, from the role of the reader, artist, and historian/forecaster. In particular, I think "Understanding Comics" is an invaluable read, not just for comics but for any type of communication of sequence to an audience… I find myself applying some of the thought discussed in that book to my own procedural writing in our user guides, to great effect.

Lindsey:
Are you ready to do the entire Raiser's Edge documentation set in comic form? ;-)

Steve:
LOL. That might take a while…

Here's a sample of the book:

From the Doc Side : Chrome

Google's Chrome Comic Book Documentation