|
previous tutorial |
ACG Home |
Instructor Home |
Class Home |
list of tutorials |
- Typography and layout guidelines (based on The Makeover Book, by R.C. Parker)
- Is the page surrounded by adequate white space? Is the number, measure, and spacing of columns adequate?
- Layout -> Margins and Columns
- Are heads and subheads surrounded by adequate white space?
- Object -> Text Frame Options
- Have you eliminated excessive white space within heads and subheads?
- Paragraph palette, Kerning and Tracking fields (also, Command + Left or Right Arrow keys)
- Have you redesigned pages that were too symmetrical, balanced, uniform, static?
- Were spreads designed as spreads, rather than just as pairs of disconnected pages?
- Is the choice of typefaces readable, appropriate to the subject, and distinctive?
- Do type size and style reflect the relative importance of each text element?
- Are typographical attributes (face, style, size, leading, alignment, indentation) used consistently?
- Does each page — and the publication as a whole — have a clear structure?
- Is every "event" within the text highlighted by an appropriate marker (subhead, callout, caption, header, footer)?
- Does your design break up long stretches of text?
- Did you test the effectiveness of different devices, such as pull-quotes and/or initial caps (Paragraph palette, Cap Depth and Number fields)?
- Have you replaced or supplemented hard-to-grasp facts and figures with meaningful graphics?
- Are graphics contained within the design grid, and logically sequenced?
- Are captions properly related to the graphics?
- Did you eliminate text gaps and improper line breaks around text wraps?
- Are graphic enhancements (rules, boxes, shaded backgrounds, reverses) used where needed to add dynamics to the page?
- Did you refrain from overusing graphic enhancements where they clashed or canceled each other out?
- Is spacing consistent — between lines of type, paragraphs, subheads, rules?
- Did you weed out "typewriter habits" from your text?
- This includes hard returns at the end of lines, blank lines between paragraphs, extra spaces after periods, space runs instead of tabs, straight quotes and apostrophes, two hyphens instead of an em dash, paragraph indents created with tabs or — worse yet — spaces.
- Some of these are handled in the Text Import Options dialog (turn on Show Options in File -> Place)
- Are widows and orphans gone?
- Paragraph Palette menu -> Keep Options
- Did you adjust hyphenation so that word breaks do not impair legibility?
- Paragraph Palette menu -> Hyphenation
- Did you review hyphenation and justification, to improve the appearance of body type?
- Check for problems such as hyphen "ladders", and rivers and lakes (excessive gaps within text).
- Paragraph Palette menu -> Hyphenation, Justification.
- Did you proofread after the program's spelling-check, to catch words spelled correctly but misused?
- Did you include all necessary information?
- Is the information arranged as standard book elements, and in the proper order — front matter, body, back matter?
- Plan ahead so your project remains manageable
- Make sure that your typography and layout decisions are implemented as style sheets and master pages. This will make revisions faster, prevent inconsistencies, and allow you to take best advantage of cross-publishing features.
|
previous tutorial |
return to top |
