I spent much of last weekend designing a book in iBooks Author. It was a horrendous experience. But then the application wasn’t designed for my use. A book design tool for amateurs giving away free books First of all, I must mention that the process of dialing back from InDesign to less than Pages is a huge leap backwards. Like Liz Castro, I was excited about the possibilities suggested by the hype. She found ten reasons why … Continue reading →
The basic parts of type Again, we need some more basic language definitions. Without it, I can not help you in your ministry. You can see above how the point size of the type relates to the ascender, cap height, x-height, baseline, and descender. More importantly, you get a glimpse of things that are important in the world of typography. This illustration is from an introduction to typography in publishing found in Appendices A & B in … Continue reading →
Things have changed so much in book publishing, that you must understand the new paradigm and why this means you must understand typography. Self-published authors must learn the art of communication with type. This is an excerpt from Writing In InDesign 2nd Edition which will be released as soon as possible. Here’s a link to the 1st edition _________________________________________ Writing within InDesign Here I am again recommending a road less traveled by—not unusual in my life and work. … Continue reading →
If you ever took one of my classes, you know how much I harped on readability—especially the importance of aperture and other page layout factors concerning readability. Aside from the kindness issue (blessing your readers), this is governed by the realities of modern living. Everyone has too much to read. If you give them any excuse, they will quit reading your work and go on to the next piece in their long list of things they have … Continue reading →
In my ongoing effort to separate my publishing/design career from my “real” life as a prophet/teacher in the Kingdom of God, I have updated the Skilled Workman to to bring it more inline with my current usage. The Skilled Workman is the blog of Hannaniah Fellowship For my professional work in typography, font design, and on-demand publishing using InDesign you should go to: Font Design & Typography All I am doing is making official the split which … Continue reading →
When I received my review copy from the author, I was a little concerned. My experience with Christian thrillers has often been boredom. As I started reading it, I was immediately drawn into the story. My only concern originally was that the evil dudes weren’t nasty enough, but they were truly horrid as I got to know them–absolutely ruthless. They were just always laughing and having a good time as they destroyed their targets and wreaked havoc … Continue reading →
Four years into the ebook revolution: things we know and things we don’t know – The Shatzkin Files. I received a link to this from Joel this morning. It’s a good review and an eye-opener, if you haven’t been paying attention. Mike says: “One could say (and I would) that the ereading revolution is coming up to its 4th anniversary since it was late November 2007 when Amazon first released the Kindle. There had been dedicated ereading … Continue reading →
Book Making: Lightning Source vs. CreateSpace again. I’ve always been happy with Createspace. I like Lulu for many things. I’ve never tried Lightning Source, but this leads me to believe I’ve not missed, much.
Continue reading →Personally, I started in Fontographer in the early 1990s and gradually built a little sideline of designing fonts. They were selling a little on Myfonts.When OpenType became viable with the release of InDesign I needed to find something else. My old version of Fontographer would not run in Mac OSX very well. Thomas Phinney, then of Adobe, told me I had no option but to go to FontLab. This transformed my career. I learned how to write … Continue reading →
This is a special limited time offer until October 1, 2011 It is a low-priced, comb-bound 6×9 proofing release. I am selling the downloadable PDF for only $2.99 and the printed book for only $11.95. My hope is that you will read it and give me comments and feedback (and even typos) so I can make the full release for $9.99 and $19.95 in October. here’s the back cover copy: Why do you want to use Fontographer? … Continue reading →