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We're in the CS6 window: New InDesign by May
From Adobe’s webpage: “If you purchase Creative Suite 5.5 or a Creative Suite 5.5 component between March 26, 2012, and June 30, 2012, you qualify to receive a complimentary upgrade to the equivalent...
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FontLab 5.1 breaks OpenType feature files from FL5 and earlier
I'm finally getting some time to work on a font. I went to compile the OpenType features and it would not work. A major scary warning opened. I asked the FontLab forum and this is what they said....
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Sizing your type
The major point to remember is that all letters of a given typeface and a given size fit into rectangles that are the same height. We’re spending a lot of time on this because it is an important...
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I like reading in my new iPad (a major surprise)
Here's a quote I read from Baldur Bjarnason's latest post this morning "I haven’t touched my Kindle since I got my new iPad. Reading on it is just so much nicer. The screen has neatly removed any...
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Font families: weights, widths, italics, and/or obliques
Font families Over the years, font design has developed groups of fonts that are obviously variants of the same basic font. They are called font families. These families can have differences in weight...
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Using styles enables global control of your book's typography
Today I'm mentioning the basic structure of typography. There is one concept which enables typography as we know it in modern book publishing. This is the concept of styles. These styles are contained...
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If you care about your readers, write in InDesign!
The greatly expanded and rewritten Writing In InDesign Second Edition has been released Buy it Now! Versions available so far Spiral-bound premium workbook $19.99 7x10 perfect-bound paperback $17.99...
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Margins matter more than you think
Make the margins bigger | I love typography, the typography and fonts blog. The I Love Typography blog is often over the top. Even as a typographer who has focused his career on type—both font design...
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Column width is one of the most important choices in page layout
Be very careful with your column choices—especially in books. (It's the main reason blogs are so hard to read.) Your focus must be easy, comfortable readability. Generally, the asymmetrical...
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Anathema! Double spaces and double returns
What follows is an exempt from my new release, Writing In InDesign Second Edition. ******************************** Typography determines reader reactions It goes far beyond your font choices—important...
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Link to the Adobe Online PDF files for CS5.5
Anna-Marie gave us this link in Design Geek for the online help PDFs for CS5.5
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Space, space and a half, or double space? None of them!
Space, space and a half, or double space? None of the above! This is why we use leading instead of spacing. Spacing is old typewriter terminology. The three options listed above were the only ones...
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Control your word spacing with tabs and fixed spaces
Tabs and fixed spaces Spaces cause many other problems for people trained in typewriting. On a typewriter, the spacebar is a known quantity. This is because every character in monospaced type is the...
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The dashes: hyphen, en dash, and em dash
5. Hyphens, en dashes, and em dashes The next major change we need to discuss is dashes. Typewriters only have one—the hyphen. Type has three—the hyphen, the en dash, and the em dash. All three have...
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Getting your quote characters right
6. Real quotes and apostrophes Here is another place where typewriters are limited by the lack of characters. All typewriters have is inch and foot marks. Quotation marks and apostrophes look very...
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Digital books designed in InDesign look nothing like what they look like in...
I posted this feature request to Adobe today at: ******FEATURE REQUEST****** When I am working on the design of an ebook, either ePUB or Kindle, InDesign does not come close to showing me what it will...
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Book design: Are you in control? Should you be?
For the past two decades, I have taught digital publishing skills. For the past fifteen years I have written and published books, both traditionally and on-demand. I have taught skills to present...
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Can your readers read your book? Readability is important!
8. No ALL CAPS As mentioned in the underline section, setting letters in all caps is the other way to emphasize words on a typewriter. Typesetting has many more options like italic, bold, bold italic,...
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Professional letterspacing makes a big difference
This is one of the areas where word processors simply cannot cut it. It also separates the excellent designers from the merely fashionable. I wrote a post on The Skilled Workman this morning on the...
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Careful of hyphens and eliminate widows and orphans
Hyphens are a real issue. I posted on The Skilled Workman about this today. A larger issue is dealing with widows and orphans. People cannot even define them without arguing. A widow is a short...
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Lists are a true reader service
One of the differences between book writing and blog posting is the use of lists. Blogs use them a lot more the normal books—even more than non-fiction. They are something a reader looks for when your...
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Setting up your own business
This is something all creative people face. You need to cover this earlier rather than later. I posted a more complete analysis on The Skilled Workman this morning. If you have not covered this issue...
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I'm writing elsewhere except for font design
I've mentioned this before, but I'll remind you. Writing in Blogger is more pain than I can tolerate at this point. I'm doing all my blog posting on my two WordPress blogs: The Skilled Workman: This is...
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The small choices really matter: 1st line indents
My Wednesday typography posting on The Skilled Workman today is about one of your major choices in book typography. As you know the base upon which your pages are built is the normal body copy...
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It's all moved to The Skilled Workman
I thought I better note again that this blog has moved to The Skilled Workman. Writing in the Blogger interface has become so uncomfortable and limited that I needed to eliminate the aggravation. Today...
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