- Specimen book for Buddy August 24, 2010
- New release! Buddy: the sans companion to Contenu August 24, 2010
- Classes mess up Opentype Glyph generation August 9, 2010
- A history of the alphabet August 9, 2010
- Going after the look of old fonts? Not likely August 7, 2010
No, this is not a step by step. It’s a discussion of the realities of dealing with publishing in the second decade of the 21st century. Specifically, I want to talk about dealing with graphically intensive books in multiple channels.
One of the Linked-In groups I’m in has been debating the role of XML in “future-proofing” documents. They are mainly coming from employment at large publishing houses with hundreds or thousands of legacy books—many from before the e-reader age, many from before the digital age entirely. That’s not what I am talking about either.
This is redesign not conversion
That’s the first thing you need to accept—like it or not. There is no way to convert a typographically excellent, graphically intensive book from PDF to ePub. There are too many limitations with ePub. Here’s a list of the things you’ll need to get rid of as you make the conversion:
- Fonts: All you have to work with are a limited portion of the originally limited Web palette of fonts
- Vector graphics: at this point you need to convert everything to JPEG.
- Anchored graphics: Everything must be inline.
- Columns: This is all single column stuff.
- Nested styles: You’ll need to hand format run-in heads with character styles
- Styles in general: Depending on who you use to distribute your masterpiece, you’ll probably need to convert to the H1-6, p, ol, ul choices of HTML [I'm thinking Kindle here].
It’ s a very different way of thinking
I keep on hearing that some types of books will not convert. That’s not true. What is true is that some designers are not willing to work within the given limitations as we wait for our options to improve. For one of my new bloggin acquaintances, I made a couple of comparison pieces [PDF vs. ePub] this morning. I thought you might want to take a look and see what I had to change. Yes, the ePub version is hideous. But, it is selling as well as the PDF version—though the printed version is still outselling both.
The PDF sample • The ePub sample
Does this miss the mark for you?
What experiences are you having that suggest my choices are bad or wrong?
Adding anchored objects can be a little tedious. One of the most painful aspects of making anchored frames to hold illustrations, sidebar notes, or headlines is the tediousness of the repetitive filling out of the anchored object dialog box.
The simple solution is to make those settings in an object style.
Then all you do is place the object as an inline graphic and hit the shortcut to convert it to an anchored object and to offset it where you need it. Or place it, hit the shortcut and then insert it into the text where you need it. It will automatically be anchored and offset as you designed it.
Let’s make a style to automatically offset a frame into the sidebar area next to the column on a single column page
Make a new Object style with all the options turned off . Turn on Anchored Object and set it up like you see below. We’re assuming a four-inch column on a 7.5″ wide page. You can adjust to fit your page size.
Basic settings for an anchored object
TIP: Once you have your anchored style set up the way you like, save the document you are working on.
Then close all documents and go to the Object Styles palette (with no document open). Choose Load Object Styles… from the Option Menu and add the new object style from the document you just saved and closed. Close InDesign and reopen it to save your new application default.
From then on, all new documents will have this style available. In most cases, all you will have to do it modify the offsets to make it work for any new project.
Believe me, you’ll use this (or your version of it) a lot!
The other day I went through a common scenario> I had a 408 page book set up at 6×9. I found out that I needed it formatted to 4.25″ x 6.88″ for a different printer. How long do you think it took me? It became a 540 page book.
It took less than an hour.
How did it go so quickly?
Everything was formatted with styles including all the graphics. The graphics were all formatted as anchored graphics and object styles.
That hour included checking every page for orphans and widows and fixing all of them. That meant eliminating all paragraph fragments of two lines or less and all paragraph ending sentence fragments of two and a partial word or less.
The procedure
- Turn on Layout Adjustment… under the Layout menu in InDesign
- Change the page size in Document setup… under the file menu
- Change the margins in Margins and Columns… under the Layout menu
- Adjust the paragraph styles, character styles, and object styles
- Proof new layout from page 1 to the end eliminating orphans and widows
Like I said, it took less than a hour to convert a 540 page book. It was really fun. Yes, it was a novel we’re publishing for a new author in Peralta, New Mexico. But it doesn’t take much longer for a graphically intensive book like Practical Font Design.
I ran across this in my Christian professionals group at Linked In this morning. It is a visually exciting presentation to be sure. My only question is:
Can it really be used?
I saw no place to add notes, new crossreferences or any of the other things necessary for a real study bible. I’ve included a scan of one of the pages in one of my bibles to show you what I mean.
It may be that Glo can handle this, but I couldn’t find it in the promo pieces on their fancy Website.
It is gorgeous though—unlike this bible that has actually been used. I’ve got to admit I’m suspicious when they don’t give you the version and the typography looks so bad on the screen. I’m afraid it’s NIT or worse.
My guess is (judging by past history) that Zondervan has it locked down tighter than a drum so it can’t really be used as a teaching tool.
A used study bible
This is the new Lulu version of the 2nd edition of the original Publishing with InDesign released in 2000 for version 1.5.
There will be a createspace version with an ISBN# that should be out in a couple weeks.
The Lulu version has a $7 download. Both of the perfect bound 108-page printed versions are $13.95.
These are training materials for the apprenticeship program here at Radiqx Press. This particular book covers setting up IndEsign for production speed, covering: defaults, styles (all five types), anchored objects, form design, and so on.
There are many reasons. I was talking with one of my friends on Facebook this morning. She wants to get into teaching what she knows. She asked my opinion, and I went into my standard long lament about the state of graphic design and typography education in America. It’s bad, and it has been bad for years.
I first learned this as an art director for one of the largest printing companies in town. One of our greatest difficulties was dealing with design school graduates. This was true whether I was trying to hire a new graphic designer or dealing with a client who was a graphic designer. They had NO practical knowledge. This is why I originally I got into teaching. I felt so sorry for those poor students trying to get work out of college. They were in so far over their heads that you couldn’t even talk to them. They didn’t even know the professional language.
The worst were the clients. You know what happens when a person is responsible and has authority in areas where they know very little — most get nasty and arrogant to cover the fact that they are so ignorant. Obviously, this does little to help them learn what they need to know.
Why don’t schools teach this stuff?
There are many reasons. This is not the place to cover them in depth. If there is an interest, I’ll post on each reason later. But here they are in no particular order:
- Schools are judged by their employment statistics. The problem, of course, is that many (in fact a majority of) graduates freelance so there is no hiring statistic. Around 65% freelance according to the Department of Labor.
- Schools are judged by graduation statistics. Many students only want to upgrade their skills. They got a degree as a fine artist, but could not make a living doing that. They have no interest in a degree.
- Bureaucrats cannot understand creatives. This sounds harsh, but it is absolutely my experience in several schools.
- Schools are controlled by IT. Information technology personnel are running our schools and they are almost completely Windows people or Linux. Neither of those platforms work well for graphics or typography. Even if they did, our industry is 95% Mac.
- Writing skills are necessary. Our basic core skill is typography. Most desktop publishing programs are directed at “artists” not writers.
- Publishers need top end computers and software. Although we can get by with $1500 Macs, we need $2000 PCs to do what we do. Our software is the Creative Suite and that runs around $1000 (unless educational or non-profit rates are available). Schools live on $500 computers and school-wide licenses for software.
- Graphic designers and professional desktop publishers are a rare breed. The highest figure I have ever seen is 250,000 (only a quarter million) nation-wide. Locally, schools are regularly dealing with a dozen students or so. I was blessed to have a couple hundred at TVI in Albuquerque.
- Creatives are not good at working within a bureaucratic environment. Schools rival governmental organizations in organizational complexity and waste. Creative people tend to get very frustrated with meetings, group think, and such.
- Schools are never current. I just left a “lean & mean” school where we could actually approve curriculum changes in less than a year. In Albuquerque, we were working three years in advance. By the time anything is approved, it is seriously out of date.
Hopefully this will give you something to think about… It’s depressing to me.
A journey with an experienced font designer through the creation of a new OpenType font developed for release. This is also part of the training materials for the apprentices of the Hackberry Font Foundry.
That’s the blurb on Lulu. This is the first limited release on my Practical Font Design book. It is limited because it’s done on FontLab 4.6 and FontLab 5 has been out for quite a while.
As you know, Hackberry Fonts is a low-budget operation so David has simply not had the capital to invest in the latest version of FontLab. When that happens, we will be releasing a major effort (probably with ISBN#s and everything). However, I’m not sure we’ll bother with ISBNs there either because it makes the books twice as expensive for little added benefit to the reader.
We believe the book is helpful to graphic designers who are thinking about dipping their toe in the waters of font design.
For some reason, I’ve gotten on mailing lists to look over books for publishers with the hope, on their part, that I’ll blog on their books. One of the books I received recently is another one from Princeton Architectural Press. At first glance it seems to have little to do with what we do here at Radiqx. But I think I should mention it, because I enjoyed reading it, and because you may need it at some point in your career.
The Wayfinding Handbook (what signage has become)
This is a small, inexpensive book that shares the knowledge necessary to get involved in very large, expensive projects to help people find their way around public spaces. For most of us (small design firms) these projects are far beyond our capabilities. These are multi-disciplinary jobs with close involvement of the architect or planner of the space, the governmental or corporate management, the builders, and the sign fabricators.
That being said, there are many times when a smaller entity needs a sign or several and this book can help a lot as you conceptualize the design and prepare your proposal. This book does not have design or production specifics. What it does well is give you a very good handle on the questions that need to be asked, the scope of the solutions needed, and most importantly aspects of your design that need to be satisfied to make your solution truly functional for the client and the people your client serves.
From my point of view as a book designer, the book is very pretty. It is surprisingly easy to read considering that the book designer made it as difficult as possible by using sans serif body copy, and what appears to be the limitations of page layout by Quark—horrible hyphenation, flush left copy in a tightly gridded book, and other issues like that. That being said, the book design is consistent with the topic and feels very corporate, institutional, and professional.
My only real complaint about the book is that it is such a brief overview of an immensely complex type of project. All the sections were very brief, offering overviews with no real depth. Many times I found myself wishing for more information. The book appears to be designed as a textbook for a two or three credit course as part of an architecture degree. It would do that job very well.
All of that being said: it is a good read, carefully designed for beginners in this field, a thorough overview, and a good-looking book at an excellent price (Amazon is listing it at a little over $16 today). It is definitely worth adding to your design library.
I was sent David Barringer’s book There’s Nothing Funny About Design to review. It was an interesting read. First, let me say that if I hadn’t been asked to read it, I never would have done so. It’s for a world I do not inhabit.
This is an intellectually stimulating, very entertaining read
Of course it is. It won the 2008 Winterhouse Award for Design Writing. This is an award out of AIGA for writers about design who are under 40. Already we can see bigotry. The bias is certain. This is intellectual stimulation for academically trained designers [or those who wish they were].
For me it was an interesting voyage of self-examination. First of all, it brought back memories of my school days where I was taught (in all seriousness) that the life of an artist is a journey of a hero of mankind. We were taught that artists are the prophets of mankind, leading the rest of man [& woman] into new truths, promoting and developing the evolution of the species. I know, what drivel!
I really believed that crap. It took me many years to recover from that ego-centered view of life [and many would argue that i have not been successful yet].
The funny thing (in the sense of saints sitting in the corner laughing uproariously at how ludicrous it all is) is that if I were as talented & witty, I could could have written this book. In a very real way, this blog is intended to do for a Christian designer what Barringer does for a worldly designer. So, he didn’t focus on issues I consider important. That does not matter. What matters is who he is. If you like who he is [and he is very likeable] his writings will inspire you, entertain you, and help you develop your potential.
Hopefully, my writings here will do the same for you if you like who I am. All I can do is follow the lead of the Spirit. All Barringer can do is follow the lead of his mind—and that is very entertaining. But the basic truth is: good design cares, based on the character of the designer.
I have released a small line of Good Design Cares products: T-shirts, bumper stickers, mugs, and mousepads. I hope you like them.
So, why do we do the things we do? I certainly hope that your answer is not “because I want to”. It would be nice to be able to assume that we are all doing what we do because of a higher level of motivation than that.
But Solomon had it right… Again I am reminded of Oswald Chamber’s statement that you can always tell who the true believers are by the fact that they are sitting in the corner laughing uproariously at how ludicrous the whole situation is.
So, what do we do when we’re not sure what He wants done?
That’s the bottom line isn’t it? Right now, I am not so gracefully sliding through a period (it’s been a couple of years now) where I am entirely dependent on His lead and I’m not hearing anything. Now I am busy. Of course, I am busy — aren’t we all? But what am I doing with my time?
The phrase that keeps running through my mind is “occupy until He comes” but I have no idea where that comes from or if it is scriptural. The basic idea is to keep busy — idle hands are the devil’s play thing, and so on.
James talks about it a little: James 1:25
But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing.
But I do not want to be so busy that I miss the still small voice if He chooses to speak in that manner (and He certainly has in my past).
’tis a puzzlement…
How do you choose the projects you work on?
This would seem to be an important and fundamental question. Obviously, we pray and seek His guidance. We discern the best we can and do what we think we should. However, we need to be constantly on guard as our flesh is a self-centered thieving liar who cannot be trusted.
Hearing the Lord
This is the key of our entire life on the planet. There have been many teachings on it. Let’s summarize quickly. How do we hear the Lord?
- He can speak directly: audibly or internally. Here the problem is discerning the source of the speaking. As you know, there are three sources to our thoughts or internal communications: the Spirit of God, the Creep, and the flesh. Determining who’s talking is not always easy.
- He can use scripture. Here again we need to be careful because not all scripture applies to the project at hand. “Kill the Philistines” may apply to your sales tactics. Again, what led us to that scripture we are certain applies.
- He can use circumstance. But again, our response to circumstance can be Godly, fleshly, or worse. The circumstances may be guidance from God, an attack of the enemy, or the result of our sin.
- He can use other people. He is not limited in his guidance. He used a donkey to speak to Balaam. We are in an age where we need to be very careful of our sources. This is the time of the great shaking, beginning with the church.
Bottom line: be careful!
The operating scripture, as far as i can tell is found in Phillippians.
Philippians 2:12
Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only as in my presence but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, 13 for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.
The key is probably verse thirteen. As I recall, one of the translations says, God works in you both to make you willing and to make you able. We need to rely on this, trust him in this, but never take it for granted. We really do need to work out our salvation with fear and trembling, awe and reverence, care and devotion.
So, why bother?
Only because we believe that He has a plan and that He knows what He is doing even though we do not.
Do the best you can to follow Him. Even Jesus said [in John 5] that he only did what he saw the Father doing. If that is good enough for Jesus it should certainly be a goal of ours.
Do not be caught following your own desires, that way leads to death.