PANDUAJI.COM: December 2011

Last week I get a college assignment to create an e-magazine, because it is only collected as a pdf instead of a print out. At least the lecturers know difficulty boarding school boys are almost evenly distributed throughout Indonesia. Making a digital magazine is not much different from the way of making ebook, because the same concept:

a magazine or publication design is not about text and images on the page. It is about emtpy and white spaces on the page.

From some ebook that I have made, I would like to share some tips in the workmanship of an ebook / magazine and so on. There are several things to consider before doing it. This will greatly affect the speed and quality of the layout design. Here are a few things to consider in doing layouts.

sample of ebook

THEMES. It is very influential with the form design, because after all we want is not possible to make a layout that deviated from the theme. For example, a magazine to give our children an adult magazine layouts. Do not ever do it.

CONCEPT. After finding a suitable theme, create the concepts for magazine. For example the local culture, because in recent years, this issue most using an various sector. Maybe with batik patterns or how that could highlight local culture

REFERENCES. As Picasso said that the GOOD artists copy, Great artists steal. At least this is what has been practiced by Apple and Windows computers. Currently there is no inspiration, no harm in seeing a reference, but must not copy and paste from the reference, but develop for the better result.

DRAFT. Themes and concepts we have created, then we create a draft layout. The draft here is not directly created in the software publishing, but it is advisable to first depicted on a sheet of paper. Why? From my experience when making an ebook without a draw in the draft and directly doing in front of the computer the eyes quickly tired, especially with the design being viewed less good, so it tends to make themselves easy to stress and a more rest. This reduces the effectiveness of the time. Unlike the ebook I have created draftya first, becomes much faster and the result also much better:).

PALLETE. The draft has been matched 100% and now time for us to execute on software publishing. In each of the supplied software publishing features color palette. In my opinion, understanding color palette is available in every publishing software. So, we make the colors that we will use in an ebook / a magazine. So we do not need to set one by one color for each element, because we have created from scratch, just call us anywhere we need. It is used to avoid differences in color that we really want the same color, rather than bother to match the RGB / CMYK / Hexa better advantage of the palette. Is not software designed to facilitate our work;)?

pallete color

STYLE. Do not think only web pages that have a style called CSS. A page layout also requires a style that set the font type, font size, line height, spacing etc.. To create a layout of less than 10 pages does not matter, but if for a book with up to 100 pages? Want to set the font type, etc. one by one? Therefore make it a habit to use paragraph styles and character who seems to already exist in all software publishing. Once again I emphasize, is not software designed to facilitate our work;)?

Style Manager for Character and Paragraph

Layering. While working be a layouter can certainly be associated with images, text and so on. Especially for design magazines, quite a lot of things that need attention. Few tips from me, it is better to use existing facilities at the software layer publishing. There is a facility down, up to raise or lower the level of the object, so the position of the object is above or below. However, by using the layer, we can sort out where the background is not necessary anymore diotak especial place, where the vector images, text, etc..

layer on software publishing

examples of the layer that I use on a software publishing

Maybe it was the advice I get from the experience create layout for my ebook. Maybe you can add other tips and trick for creating a layout design be better?

For publishing software, i using Scribus :). I'm so sorry about my english isn't good. I want learn english with creating this blog. Please inform me whenever any word there is wrong :)

Thank