On Mon, 2003-09-29 at 08:51, Sandip Bhattacharya wrote: > > Another question. The art of document layout and document styles in > publications seems to be diffrent profession altogether. Is there any > resource which can be looked at to find out more about this field? > > - Sandip
very good question indeed, sandip. the art of document layout, *incorrectly* called desktop publishing, is a specialised profession altogether. the art is called 'typography'. typography, and its application, page-composition, cannot really be taught. it can only be caught. disciples of typography through the ages have worked with existing masters, observing and learning on-the-job. the new age of misinformation has led to a new class of people, who pay thousands of rupees to learn a software package like pagemaker or quark or indesign, and are then misled into thinking they have acquired the art of typography when in reality they have reached at best, the level of 'typesetting', that too through software packages that impose their own severe limitations and introduce several new anamolies. in the opensource world, a programming language, called TeX, created by donald knuth, to tackle the 'typesetting' of mathematics, stumbled into the domain of typography. TeX gives you far more professional tools for typesetting, and allows for ways of achieving several advanced techniques of typesetting. however, it just cannot teach, or codify, typography. which is a pure art. photoshop does not teach or codify photography. ditto for gimp. at best they recreate a photographer's dark room. you could start with some basic googling on 'typography and page-design' or 'typography and page composition' with a few extra keywords, 'introduction' 'learning' 'technique' beginner, etc etc. hint: the best way to self-learn typography, is to study the classification, birth, design, history, of fonts. where does 'times' or 'helvetica' come from? (i do know of someone on this list who has quite recently conducted a short course on an introduction to digital typography of about 30 classes, of one hour each.) HTH :-) LL _______________________________________________ ilugd mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://frodo.hserus.net/mailman/listinfo/ilugd
