Category Archives: Christian Design

Black and white often provides focus

Skilled Workman Posted on by

Throughout my life as an artist/designer I have been struck with how black and white often provides focus. It’s  beautiful visual decision, but it tends to be more difficult than color. Elegance and simplicity are very hard to achieve without being stark and lifeless. The painting on the left is the first one I painted after I met Jesus in January, 1974. Being left-handed, it reads from right to left. The simple exuberance of leaving the chaos … Continue reading →

Almost time to go. Maranatha! 

Skilled Workman Posted on by

Almost time to go. Maranatha! I had a little fun with a spring-time t-shirt. Here’s a link. I’ll add the graphics below. Of course, it’s Zazzle so you can use the designs on anything. Front: Over the heart Back: covers the back I pray you have a blessed Passover/Easter feast. He is risen!!!

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Book Production Charges are often ridiculous!

Skilled Workman Posted on by

I received this post today from GoodReads purporting to give reasonable figures for editing and page layout for books. The table is from the original blog posting. While these may be common charges for freelancers living in large cities, they only serve to show how far out of touch the bi-coastal publishing industry has gotten. Let me give you some idea of what we are talking about here. I just finished a non-fiction book today with 124,000 … Continue reading →

The new flat UIs or the Emperor has new clothes

Skilled Workman Posted on by

We all remember the story. A king is scammed by cunning tailors to walk around naked. The new iOS7 and Mavericks [OSX.9] are clear examples of this type of thinking. The lemming designers, like the Weather Channel, are beginning to run around proclaiming the wonders of the new kingly style. As you can see below, shutterstock claims the lemmings are going wild for the new style. Hey! The emperor is naked!!! Fashion which forgets about the reader … Continue reading →

Author beware! You are responsible to make good choices

Skilled Workman Posted on by

Dave Bricker posted a long article today about the dangers of publishing without knowing the expenses and requirements of book production. You need to read the article if you are ignorant of the scams perpetrated on authors. Most publishers you run across with a quick Google search as you start your hunt for help will be vanity houses seeking to scam the author. There are countless people lusting after your production money This is where you need … Continue reading →

Choosing a companion sans for your body copy

Skilled Workman Posted on by

Use a companion font for the heads & subheads This font family needs to be carefully chosen. It needs to have enough contrast to the body copy font to make the heads stand out. But it must have the same, or a very similar, x-height. This way you can use it comfortably for things like run-in heads, where the first few words in a paragraph are used as a contrasting low-level subhead. Your family choice should probably … Continue reading →

New Release! “How Do I Make The Next Book Better?”

Skilled Workman Posted on by

This is the plaintive question I get every time after I have set up, formatted, and uploaded a book for a new author. It is also one of the most common questions I see while socially networking. Buy $2.99: How Do I Make The Next Book Better? There are three basic underlying concepts 1: Producing a print version of your book 2: Dealing with the size of your production budget 3: Producing a manuscript which can be easily … Continue reading →

Contrary to common opinion, InDesign CC has helped ePUB export a lot

Skilled Workman Posted on by

In the ePUB world, it is amazing how much bad press is given to InDesign. In fact, the coverage given to coders and developers of ePUBs matches the hype received in the media by Obama. But we won’t go there. I just received yet another posting in an author group I am in this morning. The writer stated that InDesign does not handle embedded fonts in ePUBs well. This is simply untrue. In fact, InDesign ePUB export … Continue reading →

DPS in trouble: people do not like digital magazines

Skilled Workman Posted on by

I’ve been saying this for a long time, but now stats are surfacing to show my point. Dead Tree Edition has a good article on it showing that only 25% of tablet users prefer digital magazines over print. That means three-quarters of tablet users prefer print. My point is that DPS is a dead-end for Adobe. It is one of those “you did a wonderful job of making something I really didn’t have any need for” type … Continue reading →

The new Self-Publishing Handbook is released!

Skilled Workman Posted on by

My handbook for the new breed of self-publisher is out! Why do you need to read this book? As I have become involved with the amazing variety of the new breed of authors—self publishing pioneers, it has been stunning to watch and listen as they discuss the problems they are having because they are working in Word. If they are dealing with quality issues, Word rarely has an answer. In fact, it’s sad to see that there … Continue reading →