Hot answers tagged book
7
Wow...it looks like you're not getting a whole lot of help here.
I'm a graphic designer operating a design company here in Japan.
To get you to where you're trying to be, I recommend using any "Mincho" typeface. That's the serifed variant in Japanese typography. If you have some Japanese fonts installed on your computer, they should have the name "Mincho" ...
5
Without a tablet or touch device, your best bet is to use vector graphics. I mean, some pretty incredible drawings have been done using mice and trackballs, but it takes a lot of time and patience to develop the kind of control you need for drawing on such devices. If you're doing raster drawing though, you're better off just spending $40-50 to get an entry ...
5
Maybe a design magazine at the lighter end of the market would be a better place to start? I don't know what's available in your region but I find Digital Arts, Computer Arts and Digital Artist all to be good, broad-ranging in focus and very accessible.
(make sure it's a magazine like those I link to that are for people who do design, illustration and ...
4
I'm not entirely sure what you are asking, but it sounds like you want to be able to retain the text of the book in a format that is flexible, and have some (relative) longevity to it.
Based on that, you're going to want to try and find the most basic and universal file format you can that will give you the features you need.
.doc/x is a fine format, ...
4
Your best bets would be "The Non-Designer's Design & Type Books" by Robin Williams, and "Before&After, Graphics for Business" by John McWade (in that order). They cover the mistakes, but also the core principles you should keep in mind while you work.
Both are very approachable, well-written, simple and full of the kind of excellent design wisdom ...
4
Lèse majesté is offering solid advice. My own recommendation on where to start would be to find local evening classes in drawing. There are several levels of skill to master: knowing how to see (not as obvious as you'd think), knowing how to draw, and knowing how to draw with a tablet.
In most countries there are the equivalent of American community ...
4
Paraphrased from the Chicago Manual of Style (15th edition; section 1.105 - Separate versus consecutive pagination): the decision for whether page numbering continues or begins anew in a subsequent volume rests with the publisher. They recommend that a publication with two volumes with a combined index at the end of the second volume would be easier with ...
4
The Geometry of Design is not about the web specifically but it is a great book on proportion systems in layout and product design in general.
For what it's worth, phi is not the end all proportion. There's a lot more value in considering standard view port sizes or the proportions of the screen. The beauty of phi has been most notably exploited in the ...
3
Duplex printing is a function of your printer and it's associated drivers and software. Indesign simply prints pages. It is the printer's job to duplex them if it has that capability.
The Brother MFC-J6910DW specifications do state it will duplex. You simply need to tick the option in the print dialog. THere should be an option for "2-Sided" or "Duplex" in ...
3
Could be the all-to-common scam of getting you to submit work (for free), then they want you to pay for the book. Basically, they do a very small run for the people that submitted work.... it'll never be seen by anyone else. They elude to it being an "artist directory" of sorts, but it generally isn't. They make their money by selling the books to those who ...
3
It's tricky to make a recommendation. You say "booklet", which implies a small project, but I assume if it's successful you won't stop at one. Here's the thing: no matter what software you use, you're faced with a significant investment of time learning to use the application, and from a practical standpoint I consider that a very important consideration. ...
3
Seems like we don't have any Japanese users active here, which is a shame because that's a great question any typographer might need to answer. I've had Chinese to typeset (only a character or two at a time, in an English translation of "The Art of War"), not yet any substantial quantity of text. I would assume you'll receive the text from the translator in ...
3
See Philip's comment. LibreOffice is just not a tool for book design. It is a tool for book authoring, and lacks almost all the tools necessary to design a book.
On the subject of book design, there are some quite competent articles on About.com, and a fairly good two-part video tutorial here: (Part 1) (Part 2)
Keep in mind that there are two quite ...
3
As for the exact combination of dropshadows, gradients, colors, and the like, it's like @DA01 said in his comment: that's as much about style trends as anything or an attempt to maintain branding or a templated design within a given publication.
The style of an infographic depends entirely on your target audience.
Developers of presentation and ...
3
Speaking from experience of reading books to my three sons, which are now five years and below.
I must add that this may apply mostly to younger kids and elder toddlers. However, I still think the below holds true for nearby ages as well, in many cases.
Likewise, I'm also considering making children's books, and these are the main things I would consider ...
3
There's not much to it. Wikipedia sums it up well:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_ratio
Keep in mind that in the context of graphic design, it's somewhat of an arbitrary building block. As such, it seems to be abused much more than used meaningfully.
Barring nothing else to go off of, staring with the golden ration isn't a bad thing. Just don't let ...
3
I would have to recommend Doyald Young's books. If you don't know who he is, you can check out a short documentary of him and his work: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8_tOrJHIr8
http://doyaldyoung.com/books.html
2
If you're interested in the visual treatments applied to plotting data, then pick up the Tufte books:
http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/
He's the 'godfather' of data visualization from a graphic design perspective.
Will he have specific data to explain visual design trends? Probably not. Sometimes a visual treatment is simply a trendy thing to do, ...
2
While Indesign or XPress would be decent tools to use.... Actually, for text books and manuals I highly recommend Adobe Framemaker. Few have ever heard of Frammaker but it's been around for many, mnay years. It's specifically designed to handle book content that has a great many internal references and call outs such as technical manuals.
2
I've used an prefer InDesign for book layouts (300+ pages). The Page Masters, Paragraph/Character Styles, and grep styles are pretty easy to use and provide great control of your formatting. I advise setting up your master pages and styles before getting to far on the project to be able to most efficiently apply your formatting.
As Mentioned ...
2
I think taking art classes and studying the basic principles of drawing would be most helpful. If anything I'd suggest books on drawing.
80%+ of design is not in the software used, it's in the aesthetics.
If the interest is purely in the software... that's not really design. But you can certainly get him books on the applications.
2
Hmmmm, you say "He doesn't quite understand what the term Graphic design means..." but also "He expressed interest in buying a book so he can become a good graphic designer". I wonder if he wants to be a graphic designer, or you want him to be?
Seems a little early for a book on graphic design -- at that age, I think a practical approach is far more likely ...
2
Yes, absolutely. Either of those programs will give you complete flexibility over where you put the diagrams and how they're sized, how the text does or doesn't wrap around them, the font and indents of the code sections, headers and footers, how pages break, and so forth.
Word is for writing letters and legal documents, not for page layout. Illustrator ...
2
In such cases I follow the recommendations of the Chicago Manual of Style, which suggests that back matter folios should be set using lowercase roman numerals following consecutively from the front matter in the same volume.
Yours is an unusual case, but the Chicago recommendation is the one I've seen used most often. Another convention for appendices is to ...
2
Each vendor can be different, you should generally adjust to the vedor requirements. Chances are it's the CreateSpace automated processes which caused issues with vector graphics. There's no such animal as a "450dpi" vector image since vector images are resolution independent.
In general, vector art is better. But if asked for a tiff, by all means supply ...
1
Most big box book stores will have a large(ish) discount art section and there's usually 2 or 3 anatomy/life drawing books to be had for about $10. Pick one up.
If you are really serious about pursuing it further, lots of local colleges and some larger community education centers will have life drawing courses semi-regularly where they bring in models for ...
1
A most excellent resource would be "Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain" by Betty Edwards. I myself and a few other friends have graduated from "cartoons" to very realistic depictions of human anatomy using the techniques she promotes. Actually, our cartoons have become better as a result of her applications. Also, it can be lots of fun rather than ...
1
I would recommend Mellel. It is not free, but it is cheap. I like their approach. The only way to style the text is by creating character styles and paragraph styles that you then use throughout the document. It is how you should work in all word processors, but many, notably Word, tempt you to work in wrong ways that are confusing, cumbersome, and give an ...
1
What's the final delivery method? Print? digital - epub - webpages? all of the above?
For print... if you're looking for fairly cheap on the Mac, you could use Pages. It's not overly robust but will handle most general needs. Then there's always Word/OpenOffice/NeoOffice as well.
FOr digital, ebooks are basically html files merely packaged together. You ...
1
"What's the best software for writing"
That's a much different question than what the best question for page/document/book layout is.
For writing, it's your personal preference. Whichever word processor gives you the features and flexibility needed to write. As long as it can export into a file format that a page layout software can use, you should be good ...
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