Araldo is a headline font with spunk for today. I needed something with a little life for my new book production group: Biblia Serif, Dreatha, and now Araldo. This new font family is doing well for me. Biblia Serif and Draetha are both excellent book production font families. In other words, they are not memorable. In fact, if they do their job well, you don’t even notice them. But as I mention in the flyer to the … Continue reading →
This is just a quick note about some free font design resources which provide good typographic knowledge. I’m mentioning this because a large portion of my readers don’t come out of a professional graphic design or typographic background. These things are often not known by authors whose background is mostly found in Office and free design apps. The longer you work in page layout, the more important fonts and font design become for many if not most … Continue reading →
The new InDesign update arrives with more than just a bunch of fixes. It gives us new controls for shading and borders in consecutive paragraphs. You can now export a document as individual page PDFs. There are several other things which might interest you. You can find them at Adobe’s What’s New page. Dealing with consecutive paragraphs As you probably recall, if you had shading or borders applied to consecutive paragraphs, you were forced to have a style … Continue reading →
I’ve been fighting the stupid Kindle argument more and more lately. Kindle remains stupid, as far as formatting is concerned. Kindle’s immense list of things which cannot be done remains. Worse yet, they continue to strip out a lot of stuff. I’ve come to do a Kindle version with: HTML lists: InDesign does an excellent job of typesetting lists with custom indents and special bullets. They work fine in ePUBs with embedded fonts, but Kindle ruins them. … Continue reading →
I’ve waited a long time to write this: InDesign CC 2018 adds borders to shading! This is one I’ve been pushing for over the past decade or so. I was excited when they added paragraph shading. I never could understand why the borders weren’t added at the same time. Regardless, the InDesign team added them for this update. Finally, we have a good sidebar solution for ePUBs This has always been a major hassle in ePUB design. Sidebars simply don’t work … Continue reading →
With this final release, InDesign CC Book Production, Putting the book together, my video coursework for book production is complete. This course removes the difficulty and relives the complexity of producing excellent quality, professional books. This is a very practical course. There is a lot to learn, but none of it is very difficult. It is very complex though. It is the goal of the course to make the complexity easy to understand and relatively simple to execute. If you have … Continue reading →
Today, my first course of book production has been released. I’m building video coursework for using InDesign to produce books on Udemy starting with basic typography. Actually we start with the very beginning, where you must choose: Book size Margins Column width And more This first course of book production lays a solid foundation This is the largest lack in most self-published books today. Much of it is not the fault of the author or designer—it’s the tools they are using. … Continue reading →
I’m working on new video coursework about using InDesign for publishing. The first course is concerned about book production getting started understanding typography. My concern is reaching my target audience which is you. I’m writing for an elusive niche—people like yourselves who understand the value of the typographic power of a tool like InDesign. As a font designer, I am very much aware of the fact that no software can build typographic communication as well as InDesign with … Continue reading →
Self-publishers trade publishing dreams need excellence to provide better hopes. There are realistic, if remote, possibilities of being picked up by a “real” publisher. But only if you can demonstrate excellent sales, a sizable following, or ongoing usage (like coursework, regularly scheduled seminars, and the like). I thought the image of Victorian woodtype might help drive home the concept of tradepub being a step back to a time which really doesn’t exist any more. Traditional publishing as we … Continue reading →
Yes, I said that InDesign CC 2017 whimpers in under the radar. Version 12.0 has very little for me. Your usage may vary. But, this is all a normal part of the process as software matures. And, have no doubt, InDesign is matured—the best in the field. To restate things, InDesign can now do almost anything you need. It’s been that way for me since CC 2014. The result is that the engineering team adds features which apply to smaller … Continue reading →