- 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
Announcing this all over
You may have seen this already, but it is a major piece of work and probably my most mature and sophisticated set of font designs yet. I finally broke down and spaced them for body copy—so they will work well at text sizes [from 9-point to 12-point] without the need to fiddle with the spacing. The design is a contemporary take on oldstyle serif typefaces using Jenson as the mask. The roots of this design go back to Minister which Monotype says has Garalde influence.
It is very conservative for me. I even went to a small bowl on the lowercase a. What’s the world coming to?
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?
It really helps production efficiency and speed.
Great find! Command+Arrow Key on selected pieces moves 100 units
This shows my ignorance of things like this, but I just discovered a great shortcut built into FontLab. As I have mentioned many times, moving selections right or left is a constant thing—especially while building composite glyphs and letterspacing a new font. One of my irritations over the years has been the internal debate over whether it is more efficient to move components with multiple shift+right arrows or to go to the mouse and shift+drag. I’ve used both over the years, but they are both frustrating.
Again to review, the arrow key moves one unit and the shift+arrow key moves ten units. I just accidently found that the Command+arrow moves the selection 100 units. What a great timesaver!
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I have just added two minisites to the Radiqx site.
There is a section now on Practical Prophecy without speculation.
There is also a new section of the Practical Practice of Walking in the Spirit.
They need to be proofed. If you have time to read the pages in the sections and sent me any typos, I would greatly appreciate it.
Also, if there is anything you want me to write about, just let me know.
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.
Hackberry Font Foundry has released three fonts since the first of the year. They’ve all had a good response, and they’re all on sale until the early April.
Acadami is working well as a book font and on sale until April 2 for $9. It’s up to 38 on the Starlets list of the old site, and 58th on the hot new fonts list on the new site.
Cutlass is just fun and up to 26 on the Starlets list of the old site, and 68th on the hot new fonts list on the new site. It’s on sale until April 16 for $9.
Chunkie is just released today and it goes on sale from tomorrow until early May.
All available on Myfonts.
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!
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.
A List Apart: Articles: Reading Design.
I read this last night. It’s an excellent article on the importance of the content and its presentation. Of course, I like it because I agree with it. But you should find it an entertaining and thought provoking read also.
Among other things, Dean discusses the pressures to focus on the design without ever reading the copy. Don’t do that. Read the article.