Illustrators?

[jacob]

Technical writers do this. It's the same people who write instruction manuals. You can hire such people at about $100/hour. It's mostly software, e.g. Adobe Illustrator, Gimp, Inkscape, and what have you + talent and experience that creates such illustrations. The keyword is "vector graphics". Everything is put together with dots, lines, circles, and arcs. If you look at the above, that's pretty much all it is. The $100/hour is paying for the fact that the person probably already has some valves, barrels, etc. ready [for copy and paste] in the language of such arcs, lines, dots, ... otherwise it's gonna take a bit of time. But that's all it's gonna take. If you can figure out to make it clear already, you don't need extreme talents to draw it, it just takes quite a bit of time to draw it. But who, cares, right? #FIRE

At one point I looked into this (given that I have/had 75% of the skills with the copy-editing and formatting and all) so it seemed like a viable step for me in 2007 for some alternative income. Then non-profit environmentalism happened. And then the ERE book happened. And then quantdom happened, so I haven't really considered it since.

Most people with a STEM background can do a half-decent job of this but if you want it to look this good you'd probably want a pro. Alternatively, if you can design it this well with paper and pencil, I think you have the computer skills to learn how to make it look this good with xfig et al. Likely other kinds of software will work too, but I know I could do it to this level in xfig or similar programs. Several of them are free, but they have a rather steep learning curve.

[C40]

FFJ -- I may be interested in doing (some of?) your drawings for very low cost. I could do as well as the examples you posted, but it would take me quite a while as I'd be learning parts of the software as I go. (Thus, I'd need to use a job or per image cost, not $/hr, unless the $/hr is low)

I've been using Adobe Illustrator for the last few years - but mostly for attractive formatting of text. I want to improve my skills with Illustrator. So, depending on what you need, and how much of it, and how quickly you need it done, this might possibly be a fun thing for me to help with.

[FBeyer]

It seems, to me, that the confusing thing about the last picture is the absolutely horrid interaction with the background.
Since I assume the background is not actually informative, why not grey it out to highlight the important part of the image?

[C40]

Sorry - I meant to respond to this a long time ago.

After thinking about it a bit more, I don't think I should be getting into this. I've been keeping myself to busy so far after quitting and I don't really have or want to make the time for it right now. Also, I'm not good with knots !

[Ego]

There are a few good tutorials on youtube on how to use photoshop, gimp or even paint.net to make an illustration from a photo. As FBeyer said, it involves starting with a good, uncluttered photo. If you don't know how to remove the background, you may want to learn that first. Alternatively, you could post a job on Mechanical Turk and see if you can connect with someone who has the skills.

https://www.mturk.com/mturk/welcome

Also, you might shoot an email to the author of that book to ask if they could recommend the illustrator who did the work you like.