The best of Manual, User Guide, and Form design.

Yuriy Sklyar

Author, Artist, Designer, Maker.

Inspirational post which highlights some of the best manuals from various industries, while touching on some important points for each one – enjoy!

Looking to design a manual or a user guide? Get in touch.

Illumivision manual

This manual takes on a simplistic graphical approach with minimal copy to explain ideas – because sometimes you just wish IKEA manuals would be a bit more ‘wordy’.

Parental child approval forms (COPPA)

Parental forms were re-designed and re-written from legal perspective to be more concise and more user-friendly + official Tinkercad keyboard shortcuts. I did all the form design and re-writing. Internal corporate lawyers confirmed compliance. These forms are downloaded by millions of students, their parents, and teachers in order to onboard children under the age of 13. Last time I checked, Tinkercad was around 25M users strong.

Modular Magnetic user guide

Instruction manual for www.modularmagnetic.org — an open source 3D printed home design playset by Yuriy Sklyar. Manual uses enticing product photography along with in-app screen captures to guide the user along the build process.

Bunk Bed with no Screws manual

This manual takes on a simplistic graphical approach, similar to that of IKEA, though uses color to tell the story. Bunk Bed with no Screws is an open source furniture design project by Yuriy Sklyar.

Glyphicons handbook

Glyphicons is a collection of web [font] icons, and as such, the manual picks up on a lot of cues from this particular industry. It’s also not shy about utilizing the product and making it part of the overall design. Download handbook (PDF)

Long blocks of text are split into smaller columns for better usability.
Actions/steps are easy to notice and follow,
Numbered lines of code create make it unmistakeably clear that you are indeed looking at code.
Folder structure design makes it easy to distinguish the folder section from the rest of the manual copy and graphics.