Category Archives: Writing In InDesign

Formatting basics: making a beautiful book which is comfortable to read

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Before I get started with the basics of formatting I need remind you about the goal: a beautiful book which is comfortable to read. You need a customized set of styles to enable you to keep your book consistent and give you global control over the entire book as you format. This is only possible if you first understand how to design paragraphs. I will help you through the basic set up of styles (to implement your … Continue reading →

Dealing with bleeds & crossover images

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Bleeds A bleed is needed when you produce a design where the ink goes to the edge of the paper. (On-demand printers will normally not allow type to come any closer than .375” or .5” from the edge of the trim size.) Printers and printing presses can never print to the edge of the paper. The ink or toner will run off and build up on the back side of the paper. This will not only ruin … Continue reading →

Picking an appropriate size for your book

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Document size [page size] In traditional publishing, there were many more options. This is one reason why traditional publishing costs so much more. Virtually all traditional printing is custom work—to meet the needs of the individual designer & various paper and press sizes. We give up some of that freedom to control costs as we move into on-demand printing. For my purposes here, I am talking about Createspace and Lulu. For the on-demand print publisher, many costs … Continue reading →

Font classifications: the lowest common denominators

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A practical list The four basic classifications of all type are: Of course, most of the so-called Decorative fonts are serif or sans. As you can see above, Abiquiu Fiesta is basically a sans serif. Miscellaneous would be a better term. We’ll start with the majority: serif typefaces. Way more than half of all font designs were serif fonts. This overwhelming majority has been diluted a bit by the outpouring of fancy and widely varied scripts in recent … Continue reading →

Starting at the beginning: Document Setup…

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This is the dialog box which opens when you choose New from the file menu or type Command+N. Many of the choices found in this dialog box are based on your experience. I’ll use my current choices, just so we can talk about the issues involved. The first choice is that I always start with print chosen as my intent. There are many reasons for this. But I can state it simply as I start out. Print … Continue reading →

Setting up your book to be read: page layout

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Page layout basics One of the more daunting aspects of book design for the inexperienced is page layout. Most people have Word experience and as I have said countless times already—Word cannot do professional page layout. In fact, it is worse than that because Word’s feeble attempts give you bad habits and poor expectations—which must be corrected. Many settings have to be covered for every document. Many of these are set up as you go through the … Continue reading →

What skills are needed to self-publish?

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What skills do you need? The idea is that InDesign can be learned and you can become comfortable enough with the software so that it becomes an extension of your creativity. For example, as I started this chapter in the Writing In InDesign book, I hit the shortcut to set my headline. This started the chapter on the next odd page (which is the norm). When I wrote the headline and hit the Return key, InDesign changed to … Continue reading →

An InDesign default paragraph-character styles set

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Setting up an InDesign default paragraph-character styles set as you begin using InDesign THIS IS A PRACTICAL STEP-BY-STEP PROCEDURE FOR WHAT IS DESCRIBED IN ALL MY INDESIGN PRODUCTION BOOKS SINCE 1996. IT’S CURRENTLY CHAPTER 22 IN: Book Publishing With InDesign CC We are going to set up the styles shown in the book. This will give you actual experience in setting up styles. Plus you will begin developing your own personal set of styles—which will become the … Continue reading →

Drop caps

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Drop caps One of the typographic devices used to indicate the beginning of a story or chapter is the drop cap. In this use, the first letter or letters of the first paragraph is (are) made large enough to be three, four, or five lines of type tall and inset into the paragraph. The first-lines of that paragraph are tabbed around the letter or letters. First of all, this is very easy with page layout software. InDesign’s implementation … Continue reading →

Benefits of the new self-publishing paradigm

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There are many benefits of the new self-publishing options. I’ll cover the financial at the end. It is very fast! One of the real changes in the new paradigm is the speed with which you can release books, booklets, posters, and so on. If you have proofed copy that is ready to format, you can get it published and released in a day or so. The limitation is only your formatting speed. With the techniques and workflow … Continue reading →