On Dec 22, 2011, at 6:20 AM, Stan Halpin wrote:
> All I know about Indesign is that it is a part of an expensive Professional
> software package. And I shoot Pentax and so have never felt that it was
> appropriate to use Professional software.
All I know about it is that it is the alternate listed on blurb to their
booksmart software, and I was able to get a copy very cheaply.
> However, I have designed or assisted in design of 6-8 Blurb books and thus
> have thought about the process and encountered many of the pitfalls at least
> once. So, some general comments.
>
> First, I think your black border around the swordfish is probably there on
> many other pages as well. The other black lines just don't show up well on
> the black backgrounds as it does on the yellow background of this page. It
> looks as though the image is not filling the frame, and the black line is the
> empty space.
Except that when I move the image, so does the line. I may be missing
something because sometimes when I delete an image a rectangle with a cross
stays behind.
> Most of your images are full-bleed. When they are presented opposite smaller
> images (e.g., leaf and coiled rope near the front) the second page looks
> unbalanced to me. It works well on your copyright and facing page, given the
> use of text to balance and fill the gaps. {Meg and I get into this every time
> we work on a book. She wants the image frames to be uniformly aligned
> top-left, sometimes top-center; I generally prefer centering the image frames
> on the page.)
There are some cases where I agree that it doesn't work well. I'll see what I
can do about them.
>
> I understand the concept of "content balancing" the images on facing pages
> and through successive pages in the book so that there is some unifying
> "theme" but I think you over do it. E.g., with the two high-contrast shots of
> eagle and of two dancers. I think I would have trouble examining and
> appreciating the individual images because I would be processing the story
> you are trying to tell by that juxtaposition. Particularly since only your
> Dancer theme has more than two images to represent it. So my question is
> whether you want these images to be appreciated in their own right, or is it
> the theme's that matter? If Images is the answer, I would either scramble the
> image positions somewhat so that the pairings are not so blatantly
> in-your-face, or I would go with blank even pages. Which would eliminate the
> issue of slightly different size images facing one another.
When I did the book last year, I struggled to keep it within 40 pages. This
year I'm paying the 80 page price, and only have about 60 photos, so I can
definitely spread things out a bit more
>
> I don't know how the flow from Indesign to Blurb works, so the following may
> or may not be an issue. But you've laid out a Copyright page that doesn't
> look like Blurb's template in Booksmart and doesn't have comments about
> Blurb. So when you flow your work into Blurb, will you wind up with a second
> Title/Copyright page?
I don't think so, I think that they'll just add their logo page at the end.
>
> stan
>
> On Dec 22, 2011, at 5:16 AM, Larry Colen wrote:
>
>> First of all, let me say that when it comes to being intuitively obvious and
>> easy to use indesign sucks.
>>
>> I've managed to crunch through the worst of the issues and put together a
>> first draft for the contents. I still haven't done the cover.
>>
>> I'd appreciate feedback, particularly if suggestions for what to do, are
>> accompanied by how to do it.
>> For example, the photo of the swordfish sculpture is surrounded by a black
>> line which I seem to be completely incapable of making go away.
>> None of the other pages, with a similar layout seem to have the same problem.
>>
>> Likewise the lack of page numbers, titles or a table of contents can be
>> attributed to either artistic simplicity, or the fact that I'm totally
>> clueless about how to do so, and don't have a lot of time to waste trying to
>> figure them out.
>>
>> If you'd like to have a look, and tell me what I did right, or wrong, I put
>> the pdf at:
>> http://red4est.com/lrc/books/lrc_2011_0.pdf
>>
>> The more I do this, the more I admire and appreciate the job that Mark has
>> done on the annual.
>>
>> --
>> Larry Colen [email protected] sent from i4est
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
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