O’Reilly Media Illustration Guidelines

This document will help you understand the procedure for using screenshots and technical illustrations in your project.

O’Reilly’s books and products have a uniform, branded appearance that has been well received by our customers for over 30 years. Unless specifically agreed upon, all drawn figures will be created to adhere to O’Reilly Media’s style and branding guidelines.

Examples of our illustrations can be viewed here.

If you have any questions, please contact us.

Catherine Dullea
Technical Illustrator
cdullea(at)oreilly.com

Sizing

When creating drawn art and screenshots, please keep in mind the size limitations for a printed book. For instance, 16x9 PowerPoint slides will not scale correctly and will result in illegible text.

The maximum figure size for standard O’Reilly “Animal” titles is:

4.8” x 7” (345.6px x 504px)

Please note that the “Pocket Reference” series is considerably smaller.

2.8” x 5.5” (201.6px x 396px)

Regardless of figure size, any text elements cannot be less than 8pt or they will not be legible. Please keep this in mind when taking larger screenshots or creating larger diagrams with lots of visual information, as all figures will need to be resized to fit within a printed book.

Drawn Illustrations

Use whatever method is most comfortable for you when first creating your illustrations: they can be sketched, described in text, or generated using a drawing application.

• Please submit drafts either as PDFs, PNGs, or TIF. Avoid using JPEG or SVG file types.
• If you’re using a Visio, PowerPoint, Google, or other drawing program, please export your files as PDFs or PNG. We cannot use native files from third-party applications.
• Please avoid using third-party logos and icons. Using text labels is preferred.

Screenshots

Screenshots will be processed to ensure correct sizing, and may be slightly darkened/lightened to meet printing specifications.

• Please capture the smallest necessary area when a full desktop screenshot is not required. The less in the screenshot, the more useful it will be for the reader.
• Take screenshots at the highest resolution possible—300 dpi is ideal and we don’t print anything below 150dpi.
• Take screenshots in RGB color.
• Save screenshots as PNG or TIF. Do not save your screenshots as JPEG. This will result in illegible text.
• Keep in mind that unless specified, your book will be printed in B&W. Using subtle colors/shades within exported graphs, for example, will not be distinguishable in print.
• Light mode screenshots are preferable, though we can print dark mode screenshots in moderation (particularly if they do not appear back-to-back).

The following methods are best practice as recommended by our design team for capturing images.

First, set your monitor to the highest resolution you have available (if only temporarily while you are taking screenshots). Here are official Mac and Windows instructions:

• Mac
• Windows

If the program you are screenshotting has a native way to zoom in within the UI, that’s a great place to start!

How to take a screenshot on Mac:

1. Shift + Command + 3 takes a screenshot of the entire screen. Shift + Command + 4 lets you highlight a specific part of the screen to capture.
2. It saves to your desktop as a PNG. Just leave that file as-is.
3. If you need to crop the image, open in an image editing program like Photos or Photoshop.

How to take a screenshot on Windows with PrtScn key:

1. To capture the entire screen, press Windows key + PrtScn. To capture all active windows, press PrtScn. To capture a single window, select the window, then press Alt + PrtScn.
2. All methods copy an image to the clipboard.
3. You can now paste that clipboard image into an image editing program such as Microsoft Paint or Photoshop, where you can crop it if needed. Save it as a PNG.

You may also use the Snipping Tool (Windows key + Shift + S), as explained here.

If you need to add callouts (such as arrows, boxes, or explanatory text) to your images, please include two versions of the image: a “clean” version without callouts, and a version that shows the callouts you want. Our illustrator will use standard O’Reilly fonts and specs to add callouts to the clean file, using your example as a guide.

Naming Your Files/Organizing with a Figure List

A well-organized figure list allows us to move your book through production more quickly and accurately. The figure list should contain the filename, position of the figure in the book, and other information, such as; required callouts, or notes.