Long ago – in the dark ages before personal computers – newsletters were pieced together from narrow columns of typing. If the newsletter designer had extreme patience, rub-off lettering was used for a nameplate. The resulting pages were transferred to an offset press and copies were made. Rudimentary word processing…
Category: Design
Layout, design, and in-house publishing. Includes DTP, digital design, and electronic publishing.
Good in-house publishers know which typefaces they like and can usually tell you why. Great in-house publishers can tell you about the structure of a typeface and how it feels to a reader. You can’t do design work for very long without developing a love for typefaces. A typeface is…
Printers No design is complete until it is in print. There are several types of printer, but as an in-house designer, there are four basic types of printers you should consider. Each technology has its purpose – many designers own two or three printers. In the ideal design office, you…
Designing with Grids Preparing cohesive layouts Design theories are based solely on opinions. If this were not the case, each publication would look like its counterparts. Imagine a world of look-alike magazines – “yuck” barely describes our disgust. Sadly, computer templates and business card mills are creating a homogeneous environment…
Notice that we emphasize software over hardware. The personal computer industry has reached a point where any of a dozen different computer platforms support the same software. The big names in design software, with only one or two exceptions, publish the same software titles for the Macintosh and Windows families…
If you design any document, from an advertisement to a magazine, you are an in-house designer. The term “in-house” means that you do design work for your employer – or yourself – instead of sending the projects to an outside firm. The last decade has seen the number of in-house…
As an in-house designer, you will create a design, convert it into a layout, and eventually print a publication. Prior chapters discussed the terminology, processes, and philosophies of publication design. Now, we are going to explain how it all comes together to result in a publication. Determine Your Message You…
Infographics Infographics, by definition, are informational. Charts, technical diagrams, and maps may be clear to the designer or author, but readers often have difficulty discerning a meaning. Without making a lengthy social comment, most Americans have poor map and chart reading skills. Charts and Graphs Graphs are used to express…
Color is not, contrary to popular belief, a guarantee that a document will be appealing. In fact, some documents look better without color. As a general rule, color should be used on no more than one-third of a page – and almost never for text. Color works best as a…
Commercial Printing printing for distribution After completing a layout, most in-house designers send large jobs out to a commercial printer. While laser printers and affordable color printers are suitable to smaller tasks, professional quality reproductions require hardware that most companies do not own. It is impractical to print 1000 copies…