- 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
One of the interesting things about the new paradigm of publishing is the lack of exclusivity. As I publish works for Radiqx and clients, I am continually struck by how many places I normally release things. My norm now is to start with Lulu, then do a Createspace version, then make an html version for Kindle, then a Word version for Smashwords, an ePUB version on Lulu for iPad, a PDF of one of the versions for Scribd, and others yet to be discovered.
Part of this is to see what sells and who checks it out, and what action develops. This is all in flux as far as I can see. So far, Amazon are doing the best [both CreateSpace, and Kindle], closely followed by Lulu—but these results are changing weekly. As far as traffic is concerned, Scribd seems to do the best. But, Smashwords has more people checking out samples. It is a real interesting mix. As far as I am concerned, it is much more interesting than my old relationships with a giant publisher back East somewhere.
It takes constant redesigning
This is where InDesign and the Creative Suite 5 in general, really shine. InDesign CS5 has really helped out the workflow. Some sites require separate insides and covers (Lulu & CreateSpace), some require HTML (Kindle), some require ePUB (iPad), some require Word (Smashwords), some work best with PDF (Scribd). They all take specialized designs. However, with layout adjustment turned on and a complete set of styles (paragraph and character) set up, all of this goes relatively quickly.
Of course, “they” all say you must get into the code. But you should know of my code challenge by now. If it requires code [beyond HTML and CSS], I’m not going to do it. My hope (and constant feature request) is that some app in CS6 will enable me to drop the need to be constantly playing with HTML and CSS also. Already, I am using Dreamweaver CS5′s CSS dialog boxes to edit my CSS—even for my WordPress templates.
It’s a brave new world
I’m really having fun learning to work in this new world. I’m gradually finding friends and sources of help. Liz Castro and Joel Friedlander regularly offer good advice on their blogs, for example. It’s really going to be interesting to see where it all goes from here.
The book is available through Lulu now—Amazon and the rest are coming soon.
This revision includes the new features for CS5 that apply to formatting with styles.
Again, most of the revisions are geared toward making InDesign work smoother and more efficiently in your workflow. I’ve been surprised, as always, by how quickly I’ve become addicted to the new version. It’s a really strong upgrade again.
New in CS5
- Simplified object selection and editing
Do almost everything with the selection tool
Direct access to the content of frames - Live Corner Effects.
Adjust corners individually in layout view - Easy grid placement
Generate grids with arrow keys: while adding objects - Track text changes
Only works in story editor - Paragraphs that span and split columns
Make your lists into automatic multiple sub column listings and so on - All-new Layers panel
Reconfiguring grouped objects: simply drag objects from one group to another in the Layers panel - Document-installed fonts
Automatically install packaged fonts (only works for OpenType and TrueType fonts), but it works great! - Live captions
Generate static or live captions automatically: from image metadata. - Gap tool
Give drag’n'drop layout control of grids and multicolumn layouts - Multiple page sizes
Page Selection tool - Interactive documents and presentations
- Animation panel; Object States panel; Timing panel; Media panel; Preview panel: New panels help you add rich media to Page layouts
- Integrates with CS Review
Online proofing,commented, and reviewing. Excellent resource: but it costs extra by subscription after the first year - InDesign CS5 pages to Flash CS5 with greater fidelity.
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.
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.
InDesignSecrets » Blog Archive » Eliminating the White Box Effect.
This has been an ongoing problem ever since we started using InDesign: drop shadows that look fine on the screen but which develop a white box in back of them when output. As you can see it is an easy solution, use either overprinting or CMYK. Who’d've thunk it?
Here is an article from Creative Pro by Michael Murphy on the use of nested styles. He is a marvelous teacher, so I assume that the article is exceptional. I haven’t read it, because I have written similar things. But you should check it out.
Every book I seem to use nested styles more. The ability to add custom formatting to the beginnings of my paragraphs is too titillating to me. I tend to use this option too much. But it is an amazingly powerful option