Insignificant Wranglings

Today’s plan:

• Review Golden Section and a few tools
• Review Typography calculator
• One last wrinkle
• Creating a Master Page in InDesign

Review of Production Concepts: Basic Book Design

We’ve spent the last few weeks working on InDesign and the technologies we need to produce a book. Now we need to think a bit more about the conceptual elements of a book, down to the nuts and bolts. Before we can design our pages, we need a better sense of what has to be designed! So I turn to a wikibook on Basic Book Design.

This book contains short chapters on:

• Characters per line, suggests 65-70
• Leading: space between lines of text, spacing, line-height (note that leading is usually more than font size)
• Justification
• Page Size
• Margins

I will ask you to consider all of these things as you design the master page in InDesign for your poems.

Golden Section for Layout

Last class I introduced the Golden Section for helping to layout pages and thinking about spacing. Today I want to go over that one more time, and introduce a few other resources for designing your books of poetry.

Up first, a short video on using the Golden Section and Rule of Thirds to design a birthday invitation. We can apply the principles here to your cover designs (and back cover designs).

Up next, a short tutorial on how to set up a grid in InDesign. Our Abode tutorials have all involved working from templates, so I wanted to talk about creating a document guide from scratch and setting up a new document. Let’s walk through that together.

I found another source to help us understand the conventions of a typical book of poetry. a href=”http://www.artbookbindery.com/self-publishing-a-poetry-book.php”> It recommends a page size of 5.5 x 8.5.. Previously, we read a recommendation of 6 x 9. Remember that we are publishing a hardcover book (and will eventually create a cover for the book that includes a front, spine, back, and inner flaps). It also details margin size and bleeds based on book size. Finally, it offers advice for top of page headers (and, if you look, most books have these!).

Here is a very short tutorial that suggests you center a poem on the page based on its longest line. I would say that I don’t recommend putting more than one poem on a page unless they are very short. Note that this is something you will have to do for every page–it is not something that you can do in advance. But it only takes about 20 seconds to do, and will improve the balance and feel of your pages.

At some point, we might want to convert inches into points (pt). Though if you put inches into an InDesign box, it will by default convert it into points.

Golden Section and Typography

I wanted to review how the Golden Section can help with typography. I found a very nice modular calculator that allows you to select your scale and input different measurements. This site allows you to put in a base font size, and get a range of other sizes for headings, subheading, or smaller text (such as headers, page numbers, introductions, or notes).

To make the most of this calculator, we can check back in with the Art Bookbindery site to learn about advised font size. I think 10pt is going to look *really* small, but it might be suitable if you are working with epic poetry. Things to consider–does your work include footnotes? If so, you can use Phi to divide the page, making a space up top for poetry and a space down below for notes (see the link re: headers above). It also gives advice regarding font choice.

Regarding font choice, you should probably have different fonts for the headings and the body text. You can find SO MANY sites that offer interesting font combinations (and, if you know your text font, try a google search like “complimentary font for [font name].”

We’ve also got to adjust the leading, the line height (the box under text size in InDesign).

One Last Constraint: Typographic or Layout Experimentation

p>I have one final wrinkle for your book design–and that is that you do something interesting typographically. Interesting is intentionally ambiguous here; as I say in my writing classes, anytime someone uses the word interesting, they aren’t done thinking yet–or they could use more precise words that explain *why* something is interesting.

I’m leaving that up to you. But I wanted to share some “interesting” ideas.

First, to the poet E.E. Cummings (1894-1964). Cummings was a modernist poet who took interest in the typographical dimensions of his poems. Let’s read the introduction to one of his masterworks, “Is 5.” Let’s look at some of his poems.

Of course, Cummings was in some part limited by the technologies of his day (the typewriter). What other experiments or elements could he play with today?

Davis’ Breaking Up [at] Totality.

a href=”https://www.google.com/search?q=Interesting+book+typography&espv=2&biw=1276&bih=682&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjz-ZL94p_LAhVFJR4KHS6lA2sQ_AUIBigB&dpr=1″>To Google for typography.

To Google for layout.

I ask that your book establish a pattern that plays with typography, layout, etc. in a way that distinguishes it from other books and helps it stand out among the crowd.

Today’s Task: Setting Up a Master Page for your Poems

Using these tools, your research into book design (measurements), our Adobe Classroom in a Book, and other resources you might search on the Internet, I want you to spend today’s class creating a master page for your poem layout. Your master page should have a design grid. You should calculate the size of your textbox, the page margins, etc. Fill your master with some dummy text (think about Poem Title vs. body text). Remember that if you are doing a long poem, then you will have to put in line numbers!

Here is a very short tutorial that suggests you center a poem on the page based on its longest line. I would say that I don’t recommend putting more than one poem on a page unless they are very short.

Here is Adobe’s tutorial for getting started with Master pages.

Homework

Focus on formatting your book–complete your master page, get some poems in there, consult the Adobe InDesign textbook for help with page numbers or tables of content, etc.

Next week we will talk about covers in class, and I will talk about the PowerPoint presentations that will detail your design choices and show the class your finished product. NO: you will not have to print out copies of your book. YES: you should design the book as if it were going to be printed, rather than as an eBook.