chuq%plaid@Sun.COM (Chuq Von Rospach) (09/14/87)
For those that didn't notice before now, I'm back from vacation and the
group is flowing once again. One thing I've notice, and that a couple of
subscribers have written to me about, is that the group seems to have
devolved into a "where can I find X for a Y system" where most of the
requests seem to be revolving around laser printers.
This stuff frankly has little to do with desktop publishing, and can be
better covered in the existing laser-printer interest group (laser-lovers
on arpanet, comp.laser-printers on USENET). So I'm making an arbitrary
decision and starting to send these message back for rerouting to a more
appropriate newsgroup for distribution.
I'm also going to be looking at other information requests and perhaps
suggesting alternate locations for this stuff -- much of the TEX material
really belongs in comp.text, not here.
I would like to see this group shift more towards a design orientation,
discussing not the nuts and bolts of the technology, but what is being done
with the nuts and bolts and sharing ideas that helps us all improve our
work and publications. To start this off, let me toss the following questions
out onto the floor:
Graphic design is a black art, and one that most desktop publishing
people have little background in it to start. Besides formal study, many
publications are designed by people who borrow ideas from existing
commercial publications and fold them into their own vision of their
publication. This leads to two questions.
1) What references have you read to help yourself learn the graphic and
design end of desktop publishing, and how did they help you
(alternatively, which would you NOT recommend)?
2) What magazines and publications do you think are well designed
graphically, and which have you used as source material for your own
designs? What parts and why?
I'm going to defer my answer to the first since my material is all at home
and I don't have access to the names right now, but for the second, I tend
to feel that "Time" magazine is considered to be the state of the art in
graphic design, and there is a lot to be gained by studying how they put the
magazine together (this completely excluded any of the content -- just the
design and layout). My personal favorite as far as designs, however, is
Forbes magazine, which has a very simple and clean layout, very open and
accessible but not too busy (my complaint with Time. It's a very active
page that makes me want to do aerobics while reading). Folks who want to see
how I've adapted the Forbes look will have to wait until OtherRealms #18,
and I don't want to give details until its actually published (because
details have a tendency to change. Fortuantely, with DTP, it is easy to go
and rework parts of a layout globally, which I did last night...)
chuq
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Chuq...You're no fun. You ask what we use to steal design from and
then you tell us the answer.
I use Time as a source for both graphs, artwork and text
composition.
Yes, It can be a bit busy at times, but subtle alterations
can remove this (to some) undesirable artifact.
Richard J. Sexton
INTERNET: richard@gryphon.CTS.COM
UUCP: {hplabs!hp-sdd, sdcsvax, ihnp4, nosc}!crash!gryphon!richard
"It's too dark to put the keys in my ignition..."
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Chuq Von Rospach chuq@sun.COM Delphi: CHUQ
We live and learn, but not the wiser grow -- John Pomfret (1667-1703)