amanda@intercon.UUCP (05/30/89)
In article <GJB.89May30004100@pluck.cs.brown.edu>, gjb@cs.brown.edu (Greg J. Brail) writes: > It seems errors of the > X-Acto knife have been replaced by errors of the mouse. There also seems to be a tendency for people to "learn PageMaker" and then promptly forget that X-Acto knives exist. Evidently, they look at this nice, perfectly aligned page coming off the Lino and just can't bear to take a knife to it, even for a simple correction. They also spend hours and hours trying to get "effects" off the computer that would take less than a minute to do by hand or with a little simple camera work. Grumble. -- Amanda Walker <amanda@intercon.UUCP> InterCon Systems Corporation
howeird@hpwrce.HP.COM (Howard Stateman) (06/09/89)
chuq@Apple.COM (Chuq Von Rospach) writes: >It's pretty easy to get the first 50% and be able >to lay out a book or a technical report that isn't ugly (these are, by the >way, the easy parts of graphic design). There's a big difference between >laying out a 50 page technical report and laying out a magazine, or an >advertisement, or any of the complicated projects. There is a big difference >between a publication who's design purpose is to not be so ugly people >notice it and a publication that is designed to attract and focus attention. When I was doing it for a living, it wasn't the design which got harder when the publication became more complex, it was the coordination of the facilities/staff/schedules which took more care. Just like an engineering project :-). In fact, the more I think about it, the more it seems to me that the bigger the book, the easier it was to design. You get your format standardized, and from then on it's pretty much plug-and-go. My confidence in circuit design is not at the point where I could say whether a big design gets easier as it gets bigger or not. I've mostly done interfaces, where you figure out a basic layout, and plug stuff in, then tweak till it's as close to perfect as you can get for the price. Any comments from you circuit designers out there? -------------------------------------------------------------------- |Howard Stateman, Hewlett-Packard Response Center, Mountain View, CA | |howeird@hpwrce.HP.COM or hplabs!hpwrce!howeird | |--------------------------------------------------------------------| |Sysop of the Anatomically Correct BBS (415) 364-3739 | --------------------------------------------------------------------
chuq@Apple.COM (Chuq Von Rospach) (06/10/89)
>When I was doing it for a living, it wasn't the design which got harder >when the publication became more complex, it was the coordination of the >facilities/staff/schedules which took more care. Just like an engineering >project :-). Definitely. When I was doing 100 copies at 20 pages at the copymat it was easy. It's even easier at apple, where you print out the masters and give them to the A.A. and let them worry about getting 100 copies for the meeting Friday.. (hee-hee). When OtherRealms hit 60 pages, offset, it became a major operation to get all the masters together, laid out, pasted up and to the printer in time to meet the opening he reserved for me on the press so I could get it back in time to get them labelled, stamped and mailed. What I do now is pick a mailing date, then start working backward -- so many days to label, so many days at the printer (add in the two that he invariably runs late), so many days of pasteup, etc, etc. To mail an issue on June 30, I need to have masters to my printer no later than the first week in June (maybe June 10), which implies that all the material needs to be in early enough to let me have the masters ready. OtherRealms these days works on a six week lead time, and that works mainly because a lot of my material comes in even earlier and allows me a chance to hack on it in spare moments. (I should note that it doesn't *have* to be six weeks. I could, for instance, get two or three day turnaround from my printshop. But then I'd be a priority job instead of a fill job and add 25% to the printing costs. I could use a mailing service to handle labels and postage issues, but that'd cost money, too. and etc...). >In fact, the more I think about it, the more it seems to me that the bigger >the book, the easier it was to design. You get your format standardized, >and from then on it's pretty much plug-and-go. Definitely. Once you settle on a general format, it's plug and play through the rest of the document. I can lay out 28 pages of OtherRealms, including art and all the graphic aspects, in about three days -- *if* the text and art and stuff is ready. If I'm doing an edit-layout-proof-fix-proof cycle on everything, it takes a lot longer. At the same time, I've been designing some collateral materials, like flyers to hand out at conventions, and a two page unfolded flyer is driving me completely batty -- because I don't want it to look like all the *other* two page unfolded ugly flyers that litter the convention tables being ignored. And because there *are* only two pages, there's no room for error like there is in OtherRealms, where I can fudge page 12 a bit and the continuity will help me past the glitches. And having hacked on this stuff for about four years, I can point to my recent business card fiasco. It's amazing how much garbage you can create in 2x3 inches... Chuq Von Rospach =|= Editor,OtherRealms =|= Member SFWA/ASFA chuq@apple.com =|= CI$: 73317,635 =|= AppleLink: CHUQ [This is myself speaking. No company can control my thoughts.] You are false data. Therefore I shall ignore you.
amanda@intercon.UUCP (Amanda Walker) (06/12/89)
In article <32341@apple.Apple.COM>, chuq@Apple.COM (Chuq Von Rospach) writes: > Definitely. Once you settle on a general format, it's plug and play through > the rest of the document. I can lay out 28 pages of OtherRealms, including > art and all the graphic aspects, in about three days [...] Yup. Print production is something that should be pretty easy for someone with an engineering background to pick up, as long as they're willing to listen to the printer before they object to something :-). > [...] And having > hacked on this stuff for about four years, I can point to my recent business > card fiasco. It's amazing how much garbage you can create in 2x3 inches... Kind of like programming :-). One thing that I wanted to add to this discussion before it goes back into hibernation is that I don't think any of us are claiming that someone with no professional experience in publication design *can't* do competent work. I mean, I fall into that category myself, more or less. What tends to annoy me are the people who think that a computer-based document preparation system is *all* they need... -- Amanda Walker <amanda@intercon.UUCP> -- "Some of the worst mistakes in history have resulted from trying to apply methods that work fine in one field to another where they don't." -James Hogan
howeird@hpwrce.HP.COM (Howard Stateman) (06/16/89)
alex@rata.vuw.ac.nz (Alex Heatley) writes: >2. Justified type is harder to read than than ragged right. > >Could someone cite a study giving this conclusion? All I've ever seen is >arguments along the lines of less eye movement with ragged right vs >arguments of constant eye speed with justified text. And when I look to >the publishing world -- the books I read are justified, the newspapers I >read are justified, many of the magazines I read are justified. To me this >results in several possible conclusions: I won't list his conclusions here. In 1973, when I was layout editor of The Daily Astorian, Astoria, Oregon, we did a reader survey, based on one which was done a year or two earlier by the AP, Washington Newspaper Publisher's Association and Oregon Newspaper Publisher's Association. As a result of the survey, we changed our typefaces and our column width. I never received a written copy of the results, but my publisher read them to me so forcefully that I will never forget them: 1. The preferred typefaces were ALL sans-serif. (we switched to bodoni) 2. The preferred justification was full justification (as opposed to hanging right) with no hyphenation below 6 characters. That is, if the word had 5 or less characters, don't hyphenate, wrap it to the next line. 3. The preferred column width was 18 picas. This really stuck in my mind, since it was an oddball number. At the time, our news columns were 10 picas, our editorials were 24. We didn't widen our columns to 18, but we did go up to 12. We did make our editorial columns 18, though. But as I have posted earlier, it's all in the eye of the beholder. -------------------------------------------------------------------- |Howard Stateman, Hewlett-Packard Response Center, Mountain View, CA | |howeird@hpwrce.HP.COM or hplabs!hpwrce!howeird | |Disclaimer: I couldn't possibly speak for HP. I know too much. | |--------------------------------------------------------------------| |Sysop of the Anatomically Correct BBS (415) 364-3739 | --------------------------------------------------------------------
chuq@Apple.COM (Chuq Von Rospach) (06/17/89)
A couple of interesting books people interested in this discussion should be
aware of. Roger C. Parker has published what is the defacto standard for
desktop publishing design, "Looking Good in Print" (Ventana Press). It's
basically an entry-level reference to design ideas -- "this is leading. this
is hyphenation. this is why white space is good." What sets it apart from
all the other "Desktop publishing is neat! Gee wow!" introduction books is
that he sits you down and shows you how various things interact, how things
look when you set things up in certain ways and what happens when you tweak
it. When you finish this book, you'll know enough to avoid the serious
mistakes and keep from making things look amateurish.
He's just released a new book, "The Makeover book" (Ventana press, $17.95,
ISBN 0-940087-20-0). He takes a number of existing projects and
publications and runs them through a face-lift, explaining why the various
redesigns and changes were made and what effect they have. I'm just starting
to read it, but so far it's fascinating. The idea of the book is to take
a person from being an adequate desktop publisher to being a decent desktop
designer and help them learn how to use graphic design to their advantage.
Chuq Von Rospach =|= Editor,OtherRealms =|= Member SFWA/ASFA
chuq@apple.com =|= CI$: 73317,635 =|= AppleLink: CHUQ
[This is myself speaking. No company can control my thoughts.]
You are false data. Therefore I shall ignore you.