This infographic shows a lot of what goes into a good font. More than that it enables you to talk about it. I do not agree with all of it. But it is very good. For example, for me aperture is about the openness of the c, s, and characters like that. The poster calls the opening of the u the aperture. We’re probably both right. It’s copyrighted or I’d put it in this posting and talk … Continue reading →
As typographers and book designers, we need a minimum three-font family—regular, italic, and bold: Italic is necessary for periodical names and emphasis. Bold is used for proper names and headers. As you saw at the start of this paragraph I used a bold through the colon to emphasize an important point. In my books I use my Bold Sans Serif. But regardless of which font family you choose it must satisfy several basic requirements of book design. … Continue reading →
I thought I’d toss out some gift products with quotes from Writing In InDesign. Here’s the first one: Typography is about communicating with type by Chakham Look at Type Pillows online at Zazzle.com Type is the art of communicating by Chakham View other Type T-Shirts
Continue reading →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 →
How can I make it better the next time? 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 in the FaceBook and Linked-In groups, Google+ communities, and specialized author forums in which I spend time. It is coupled with the question, “How can I get the print version set up?” There are … Continue reading →
As I have been experiencing, learning, teaching, and writing about on-demand self publishing over the past decade or two [I actually started self publishing ebooks in 1993 or 4], one area of book design has slid right past most of the new authors. This is quality. We won’t even discuss how quality dropped in the slide from letterpress to offset. That’s back in the dark ages, pre-digital. Silly person! That doesn’t matter any more. The one that … Continue reading →
Make your book professional with the Contenu/Buddy production group Self Publisher Book Typography & 16 Fonts Only $49.99 or 12 Radiqx house fonts for book design Only $29.99 For self publishers the conversion from Word to InDesign is a huge leap. The goal is a professional look to their book designs, but immediately the problems of typography raise their head. In Word that is not so much of an issue because the typography controls in Word are … Continue reading →
As I have become more social online, the prevailing grief for me is listening to all the new authors whose main problem is that they are using Word. Whether it’s one of my Facebook groups like Christian Indie Authors or Indie Christian Authors, a Google+ community like Christian Authors, or the authors who tweet, the ones in Linked-In groups, or GoodReads groups, and many more, the common lament is, “How do I do this in Word?” The … Continue reading →
This is the first major confusion in typography. Many believe that typography is font choices. They spend a huge amount of time on which fonts to choose, how fonts developed historically, and the reader reactions to these fonts. This indeed is a good portion of typography, but this pursuit misses the entire point. The point of typography is to use words to communicate. Font choices can help—but this is really a small portion of what we need … Continue reading →
Garalde: Garamond 3 This group is named in homage to Claude Garamond and Aldus Manutius. These original serif fonts are exemplified by the work of Claude Garamond in Paris in the early to mid-1500s. Robert Slimbach released a new interpretation of Claude Garamond’s and Robert Granjon’s styles called Adobe Garamond Pro—now ramped up to Premier after redoing the OpenType version. Garamond was the first major type designer. He was not a printer or calligrapher, he was a freelance punchcutter. Along with … Continue reading →