Tue, Apr 02

InDesign continues

Today's objectives

  • Review InDesign
  • Images: Sizes, formats, links, resolution
  • Text wrap
  • Guides and grids

Resources

Samples

Download the sample files Samples.

Grids

Exmaples of grids

Book recommendations

While there are many good online resources, learning about typography requires reading printed books. Here are a few:

Free! Erik Spiekermann's Stop Stealing Sheep & find out how type works is in a new editon and is a free download sponsored by Google fonts. Spiekermann is opinionated, direct, sometimes grumpy, and almost always correct. Well written and accessible for beginners but valuable for all.

Ellen's Lupton's Thinking with Type is recently revised, and covers many newly added topics like non-latin alphabets and accessibility. Highly recommended

Most technical and practical, InDesign Type: Professional Typography with Adobe InDesign, 4th Edition covers how to use InDesign's powerful but sometimes daunting type and layout controls. Worth every penny

Robert Bringhurst's Elements of Typographical Style is what I refer to when I want to end an argument about type (or start one.) Opinionated (notice a trend), sometimes quirky, but brings a poet's love of language to typography, something many style manuals lack. Strictly focussed on printed text, such as books.

In-class task

Download the sample files In-class sample task Using the completed version on the pasteboard as a reference, reconstruct the document in InDesign. Pay attention to type size, leading, and layout. Use guides for accuracy.

Assignments

Assignment 8: InDesign

Using InDesign, use the text and images provided to create a short publication.

Download images and text here. Assignment files

You must use all the text provided in the file iceland text.docx, and as many of the images as you choose, with a minimum of one image per page. For every image you use, include the appropriate caption from the captions.txt file. There is no maximum or minimum number of pages.

You may only use a maximum of two font families - one serif and one sans-serif. You may crop images but not otherwise modify them.

All text must be black, except for any text superimposed on photos, which may be black or white. All text must be easily readable. Body text should be between 9 and 12 points.

Use a simple publication grid. I recommend a simple multicolumn grid .

You do not need to fill the entire page - white space is almost always a good idea. Correct use of paragraph styles, parent pages (master pages) and page numbers is required.

How to submit:

Use the "Package" function in InDesign to create a folder containing all the required files, and then use the "Compress" function in MacOS or the "Send to Compressed" function in Windows. You can access these by right-clicking/control-clicking on the folder you want to compress.

Then, upload to Brightspace by 6 pm, Mon, Apr 08 the resulting zip file as YOURLASTNAME_assignment8.zip

To create a .zip archive: Press and hold (or right-click) the file or folder, select (or point to) Send to, and then select Compressed (zipped) folder.

Notes:

  1. Read the text carefully before attempting to lay it out.
  2. Consider sketching layouts on paper (as simple boxes) before working in InDesign
  3. If you need to refer to the original; the source is the Wikipedia article on Iceland.
  4. Check to make sure the fonts you choose support all characters in the text. (Hint: Icelandic uses characters not found in modern English)
Late assignment penalties

For this assignment, late submissions will be penalized at 10% of the total mark (that is, if an assignment is graded out of 10, you will lose 1 point per day, starting on the due date.)

A 1-hour grace period after the assignment due time will be given to avoid any technical issues related to internet speed resulting in late assignment penalties.

The best approach, however, is to submit work early.