Hi. I am a student at Heartland Community College in Normal, Illinois. I am researching the different kinds of writing involved in graphic design and am contacting you with the hope that you might answer the questions written below.

Thank you,
Carrie Burtis

Hi Carrie,

On behalf of the busy graphic designers at O'Reilly, I'll attempt to answer your questions.

Bonnie Allen

1. May I have your full name and your official title?

My name is Bonnie Allen. I'm the senior copywriter in the Marketing Design Group at O'Reilly & Associates, a company that publishes computer books and provides other information services such as Web resources and conferences. Our department does all the print advertising, catalogs, and conference materials for O'Reilly. We produce brochures and even whole booklets on specific technologies. In fact, anything that's printed (aside from the actual books we publish) is likely to come from our department.

2. What are some of the specific kinds of writings that are involved with graphic design? For example, creation ads and body copy. Any others?

We use ad copy, descriptive copy about our books or services, and copy meant to educate people on technical topics.

Much of the text for our book catalogs is already written, usually by the editors, product managers, or marketing representatives for the individual books (you can see some of it in the book descriptions found through our online catalog). Ad copy may come from the product managers or we may be asked to write it. Before I came here, some of the designers wrote the ads; other times they used "generic" copy and maybe put an individual spin on it for each ad. Some of our most effective ads are simply quotes from satisfied readers. Our technical brochures are mainly in the form of articles by our authors or Web writers.

3. What are the forums that you write for?

I'm not sure what you mean by "forum." Our department mainly produces printed materials, though I have written some articles for the O'Reilly Web site and our designers have produced Web banners. Retail catalogs go to book dealers; direct mail catalogs go to a mailing list of our customers; ads appear in technical magazines like Dr. Dobbs and Linux Journal, and in journals that book dealers read. Conference promotion goes to mailing lists of people who are likely to be interested.

4. Who are the intended audiences of the different writings?

Retail ads and catalogs are intended for book dealers, libraries, and schools.

Direct mail ads, brochures, and catalogs are for people who are involved in the computer technologies we write about--programmers, computer users, system administrators, information technology managers.

Copy about conferences is intended for our direct mail list, previous conference attendees, and, probably, people in computer industries.

5. What are the purposes for each of the writings?

The purpose of our retail writing is to convince book sellers that our books will make money for them. The purpose of our direct mail writing is to convince customers that our books will be helpful to them. We promote conferences and our online resources and produce technical brochures as an outgrowth of our corporate mission, which is to be "the premier information source for leading-edge computer technologies."

6. What is the conventional length for each of the different writings? Please be very specific.

A one-page ad may have a headline and body copy ranging from a one-sentence tagline to 120 or more words of copy. I'd say average copy length is around 75 words. Catalog copy depends on how much we highlight a particular book. A direct mail catalog may feature a book with a whole column for the book cover and copy--up to 325 words, a half column--up to 150 words, or about a third of a column--some 65 words. Of course, these are rough guides, and not all books have exactly this amount of space. Direct mail catalogs may be some 40 pages long. Retail catalogs tend to feature bigger pictures and less copy.

7. What happens to them after they are written? What is the approval process? Do you have to take into consideration that when you are writing for a client, it may have to be approved by a supervisor or another employee before it is presented to the client?

We are somewhat like an independent advertising agency, except that we are in-house. Our "clients"--O'Reilly's marketing, Web, and conference departments--submit projects for price estimation. Our products have to go through several layers of approval. The writer (moi!) and copyeditor review the copy, our associate manager and manager review the whole product, and the client (perhaps the marketing director, too) gives final approval. And of course, our clients need to get approval from their managers for the cost.

Sometimes we write for our international marketers. That may involve being sensitive to British usage and spelling or idioms that may not translate well into French or Japanese. I wrote one ad that went to France, got translated, and came back for us to place inside our ad in French.

8. What kind of voice do you use for each? For example, formal, technical, fun, exciting . . . . Do you use different voices for different clients? How do you determine the voice you use?

Since our "clients" are all from O'Reilly, I'll talk about audiences rather than clients. Our approach varies slightly depending on the book or service we're promoting and the likely reader. But we also have guidelines that apply to all of our writing. We try to keep our writing as direct and conversational as possible. I'd say we are seldom "formal." We consider a sense of fun to be an asset, and the best writing generates some excitement about our product, but not by using lots of hype and exclamation points! Rather, we try to convey what's good about the product in a way that naturally generates enthusiasm. Our core customers tend to prefer understatement.

9. What grammatical and stylistic considerations must be followed? For example, would first person be permissible in one kind of writing and not another? Also, is sentence structure taken into consideration?

The only time we use the first person is when the president of the company or one of the marketing people is addressing an audience directly, as in a letter to be included in a catalog or brochure. ("I've been thinking about the future role of Java . . .") We use the second person in direct mail advertising to establish a sense of conversation with our customers. We also get more technical with them. ("With this book, you'll be able to configure, troubleshoot, and maintain a Unix-based LAN.") We talk about our products in the third person if we're talking to a retailer. ("System administrators will appreciate this book's clear, step-by-step approach to setting up the most common kinds of networks.")

We try to follow the guidelines of books like Strunk & White's The Elements of Style--be clear, straightforward, and grammatically correct. Avoid unnecessarily long words, passive sentences, too many modifiers, and vague praise with nothing to back it up. ("You should buy this book because it's really great.") Because O'Reilly has a reputation for well-written books, we try to maintain a high standard in our marketing writing as well.

I hope this answers your questions. Good luck in your studies.

Sincerely,
Bonnie

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