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Problem #25: The Basics of Layout
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Tracy and Kristian finally get into some of the nitty gritty of laying out your book and other products for an audience to consume. Though this is primarily a high level overview of how layout programs (like InDeisgn and Affinity) work and "think," it's also a dense exploration of everything from basic concepts to best-practices as you move from the word-processor or note-taking ecosystem into the the brave new world of product layout (or you just start there, like Tracy, cuz she's "crazy!"). This is an episode you might revisit multiple times as you level up your game, and we'll definitely revisit the topic in the future.
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Transcript
Introduction to RPG Layout
00:00:04
Speaker
Welcome to the Designing Problems RPG Podcast, where we explore RPG development and all the intentional and unintentional problems we create along the way. I'm Christian Serrano. And I'm Tracy Sizemore. We're your hosts for this horrifying page
Understanding Layout Basics
00:00:18
Speaker
turner. And this week we're going to talk about problem number 25, the basics of layout.
00:00:43
Speaker
All right, so you and you get all these written words that you have either written or you're going to write. they Believe it or not, Tracy, I'm sure you can absolutely speak to this probably like 100 times over.
00:00:58
Speaker
There is there's a way to approach this though, not just for the sake of getting the content done, but actually getting it ready for layout when that time comes. And it might seem like, well, I'll worry about that later, but it actually does help to worry about it now.
00:01:15
Speaker
Because as you're writing, you're probably going to start organizing things. You're going to be creating headings. You're going to be, you know, italicizing certain phrases. You're going to say C page XXX or whatever it is, you know.
00:01:30
Speaker
um But From our experience, we have some guidelines that I think we can offer that might facilitate things later on when you're getting ready to to do layout or when you're going to pay somebody to do layout for you.
00:01:43
Speaker
um Before we get started, Trace, do you have any additional thoughts? No, it's this is ah this is a big it's a big topic. I think the the point here is that we're going to try to give you an overview of how to think about how layout programs work.
00:02:03
Speaker
Because there is a fundamental difference between them and how you're used to doing things in like Word and Google Docs and stuff like that. And, that you know, from my perspective, I write to layout, which a lot of people think we we're crazy for you You are crazy. I don't understand it. But, um you know, you don't have to do
Writing and Layout Interconnection
00:02:28
Speaker
that. Like ah there there are distinct advantages, but you won't want to do it until you understand how layout works. Yeah. I'll i'll say this. i've i've I've seen the value of it because, you know, you can you as you're writing.
00:02:44
Speaker
you can see how those words are going to fit into the page. Yes. And so there's a lot that matters a lot. There's a lot of advantages to doing that way. Yeah. But we kind of want to back up. and the And the problem that I think we're going to have is that Christian and I are going to forget about some of these fundamental things because we're so deep in the weeds that we forget stupid things that everybody needs to know.
00:03:09
Speaker
But we're going to do our best. We're going to do our best. right. So where do you want to start off? um Let's start off with, I think we're not going to talk about graphic design yet.
00:03:23
Speaker
that's That's later. Or trade dress, which is basically a sort of sub thing of of of, that has to do with trademarking how the book looks, right? That's a whole whole thing.
00:03:36
Speaker
But um we kind of want to talk, I think first thing, When you're talking about layout and you're getting excited about putting it into a book form and and and into a more final form, is it's important, I think, to remember that substance is king.
00:03:56
Speaker
And it's easy to get caught up in the flash. You know, like I want my book to look like D&D player's book with all their crazy, their cool, you know, background on their paper and the texture and the way they've integrated the art. And I want it to be, i want the sidebars to look like this, or I want to look at a Monte Cook Games book and say they've got their little...
00:04:19
Speaker
like informational, healthy do's in the margin, you know, like I want to have a layout like that. That's all fine and great. It is. It's fine and great, but substance is king.
00:04:32
Speaker
And what matters most is how good your writing is and how good your game design is. think, I think that's an important point to bring up before we start getting into this.
00:04:42
Speaker
Yeah. And I, I think they, I think they go hand in hand really because, So if those are the kinds of, like, let's say you want the little sidebar things and and whatnot, and yeah, there might be a visual element that you have in mind that you're like oh, I'm aspiring to emulate something similar to that.
00:04:58
Speaker
um that can inform how you write and how you prepare your document as well. Yes. And so so it's, I don't think they're mutually exclusive. I think they're a little interwoven.
00:05:10
Speaker
um Which is oddly why writing to layout is so awesome. Right. Yeah. But to your point, Really, it's about the product is itself, the the wording, the the writing, the substance.
00:05:23
Speaker
You know, that's that's where it starts, really. Yes. And people will That's what it's about. you know, I heard Chris talk—I think it was yesterday. Chris Landauer is talking about, like, it can look all pretty. We can have all the art we want.
00:05:36
Speaker
But if the writing isn't there and it does't it's not a game that I want to play and have fun, the art doesn't matter right at that point. it'll It'll sell the game, but it won't make me want to play the game.
00:05:47
Speaker
Right. So that's, I think, the first thing. But let's start with assuming you're not going into layout yet, right? And this is Christian's expertise, I think, because I write to layout.
00:05:58
Speaker
Right. I've forgotten what it is to not write to layout. So Christian is used to writing to Word first. So what is your what what how would you start, Christian, as somebody who doesn't know layout programs yet and is still writing in Word or Docs or whatever?
00:06:12
Speaker
So i i'll i' I'll start by leading with the fact that the reason why I i start with Word or any really text editing kind of program or or word processing program is because I do think of content in terms of markup and that comes from an HTML or web design you know background There's a semantic markup that goes along with that.
00:06:34
Speaker
And what do you mean by that? So for example, in HTML, you can mark up your your text. you know There's paragraphs, there's headings, and so on. But there's also things like asides, figures, footers, all those kinds of things. right be at the and the And what that does is it tells the document or any machine reading that document This aside is a sidebar. It is not part of the main content. Or this figure is a, it could either be a table or graphic that is part of the content, but it's not necessarily placed in order per se, but it could be.
00:07:11
Speaker
you know So if you imagine like your old textbooks, right? Where you say, you know, see figure blah, blah, blah. And then somewhere on like the next page, there'll be figure blah, blah, blah, yeah right? Or table, whatever. Mm-hmm.
00:07:22
Speaker
And that's that's really what a figure is. so So that semantic markup has meaning and it chunks the content in a way that, um I don't know, it just helps me think about you know those those pieces of information that are in the document.
00:07:39
Speaker
So um with that is also style. And so we're, you know, while we're not really trying to do style, like we would and indesign in a Word document, we still do styles in terms of like, I want to make my heading ones look distinguished from a heading two, right? So that I can visually see, you know, where things are, are where certain sections are starting and whatnot.
00:08:00
Speaker
um Or I want... you know, whenever I mentioned the title of a book, I want it to look like this so that I can visually see, oh yeah, that's, that's referring to the title of a book. yeah Rather than saying, manually saying, I'm going to make 14 point font and bold it here from my adding heading one. And then I'm going to make a 12 point font and bold there from adding two. No.
00:08:22
Speaker
Right. so so the real power behind, behind styles and while why I'm emphasizing this, it's not just about making it look visually distinct. It's also about being able to control that visual design or, you know, whatever those visual properties in a single place. Yes.
00:08:40
Speaker
So when you apply a style to a piece of text and you do that throughout your, throughout your copy, if I want to change that, I can just change it on the style itself and it changes everywhere.
00:08:51
Speaker
Right. So as ah just to translate, header one, you you select the style and you say, this is the chapter this is chapter one right? and And it's in the style of header one.
00:09:03
Speaker
And then header two, this is the subheader of chapter one. And then we have body text or whatever. These are all styles, header one, header two, body text. in the Word document or in InDesign.
00:09:15
Speaker
You use paragraph styles, right? And so what Christian is referring to is if you want to change the look of header one, you don't actually go to what you wrote in header one, in that header one.
00:09:25
Speaker
You go to the header one style and change the look of that style So that all header ones in your documents now changed to what you changed it to in that style.
00:09:36
Speaker
Exactly. And Christian knows this. I'm just trying to make sure that I i speak as a layman for somebody who's new to it. Because i was new to it at one point and I didn't understand that Yeah, it's and it's a huge time saver. And and ah and it this can come into play. like There are features where you can import the styles that you have in Word into InDesign, whether that's something you want to do or not.
00:09:58
Speaker
um But at a minimum, it helps whoever's doing the layout to then be able to visually distinguish, okay, this is this is the major heading, this is the subheading, this is the second or third level subheading.
00:10:12
Speaker
this is a sidebar right they know they can clearly visually see how to lay out yes in the final product itself as well um whether it's you or or somebody you're paying to do it um so that's so that's why that's important um and and like i said you know sometimes it's even just helpful just to kind of get a visual idea too of of you know okay i want to see how these paragraphs might look you know, with spacing between them, or maybe there's no spacing and it's just the first words indented. You know, you could do things like that.
00:10:44
Speaker
just kind of helps you get a visual rhythm and understanding of what it, what it might end up looking like, you know, down the line.
Exploring Layout Programs
00:10:50
Speaker
And all done with styles. meaning All done with styles, yeah. header one will look like header one, bla blah, blah, blah.
00:10:55
Speaker
But what Christian was just talking about is space between paragraphs. That's a style, too. Right. And um indentation for every every first paragraph, that's a style in the paragraph. That's not a tab that you put manually before you start typing. Right. That is a... right You hit enter, and it automatically indents it for you. A lot of people will do, you know, enter, enter to do a new paragraph with spacing.
00:11:19
Speaker
Right. But in layout, that's going to come in and then you got to make all those adjustments versus if it's a style, then it's just taken it's all care of taken care of automatically. yeah And what matters is not even if you use styles in your Word document, you don't have to but just realize that no matter what you do InDesign slash Affinity is going to use those styles. So whoever's laying out your book is going to have to take out all those extra carriage returns or, you know, the extra extra tabs and tabs, all that stuff has to go.
00:11:52
Speaker
Double spaces. Yeah. All the double spaces, got they got to go. All of that has to go. And so it makes more work for them. And it makes it much more likely that they'll make a mistake because they don't know what ah is happening with what you intend if you're doing it all manually like that. Right, right.
00:12:13
Speaker
And that's true also of bold and and italics. So if if you're doing the control i to to make an italic section in your little Word document, that is not going to translate into InDesign, and whoever's laying out your book is likely going to miss it.
00:12:31
Speaker
So you've got to find a way to show that this and it this is an italic word italicized word without using control I. Right. in ah So for example, in Word, um there might be a um ah citation style.
00:12:47
Speaker
And so if you're referencing the book of a title or the title of a book, you might use that and just tweak it to look like it's italicized or however you want it to look, but it's clearly marked up as a citation or whatever.
00:12:59
Speaker
um Or if you do want to do you know bold and italics for emphasis, use strong and emphasis as their styles for that. yes there's Yeah, their styles. and And they have semantic meaning in that regard.
00:13:11
Speaker
Right. um it It might seem tedious, but actually saves you. and It's a lot easier, actually, yeah when when you when you go through and and do all this. so And that's how it's how these layout programs work, whether you like it or not.
00:13:24
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. That's how they work best, honestly. Yeah. Yeah. Oh my, if you try, if you do it the other way, just becomes a jumbled mess of crazy. Right. Right. Yeah. Good luck trying to go back and, you know, fine tune all those change anything all the changes. Yeah.
00:13:39
Speaker
Yeah. Um, and I think, um, you know with With this, like I said, it's a good visual marker you know for you see your document structure as you're going through.
00:13:52
Speaker
um But I think another thing that that that's helpful too is start thinking about what the art is going to be. like where What you're going to have in a given section of text and you know whether the amount of text you have there is affording enough space for an art piece there.
00:14:11
Speaker
Or whether you think that, um I don't know, maybe maybe that art piece might help emphasize the idea that you're communicating there. And we're kind of getting into like writing with the idea that there's going to be art.
00:14:25
Speaker
But there is something to also like how much text is going to be there. um and And when that art piece is placed next to it. Yeah. but this is where writing in the layout is super helpful it's a beautiful thing because then as you're writing you know you have that place marker there already there's going to be an art piece here it's going to be you know a quarter quarter piece quarter page piece of art you know how much space you have for that page to be able to write in the content that you're writing yeah and and like like christian was alluding to
00:14:57
Speaker
When you start thinking in terms of spreads, meaning the two pages that are open in the book that are right there in front of you, things start to get really a lot different in how how not only how you lay things out, but how you write things.
00:15:12
Speaker
Because it's like, okay, well, I want this interact in PunCluster to be a spread. I think it's about a spread, right? I think i've got and I've got just the right content to do this.
00:15:24
Speaker
And if it's not quite a spread, then maybe I want to put a piece of art in there. If it's not quite a spread, maybe I want to add a little bit more text. Maybe I have something more to say. Or if it's not quite enough, maybe I want to delete. So it just is one page rather than a full spread. when you're writing into layout or when you're editing in layout, this all becomes a huge factor. Yeah. And it also matters where your paragraph breaks are.
00:15:51
Speaker
Yeah. So... Generally, we call them orphans. We don't want paragraphs, you know, spilling over onto another page. Right. was Especially when it's the end of the chapter. Yeah. Well, yeah.
00:16:05
Speaker
But we don't, if if say, it's the end of the spread and you've got two lines of your paragraph that are hanging over onto the next spread... That's got to go. Yeah. Or at least so it most of the time has to go most of the time. So some way or other, you're going to have to either have a paragraph break there or you're going to have to trim your text so that you get those two lines off of that and back on to the spread that you were working on, know.
00:16:31
Speaker
And it's always easier to add content than it is to have to take away. Like if you need to add in like a couple more words to fill it in a little bit more, much easier in my opinion than- Is it? I don't know. I think so. I think when I have like ah you know three sentences I got to get rid of, you know i'm like, how do I cut?
00:16:47
Speaker
like how do it anyway. How do I cut? No, you do it. you do You absolutely have to do it. It's just, you got to think about like can how do I say these these same things in fewer words yeah without losing clarity, right? Yeah. like Yeah.
00:17:01
Speaker
So that's, that's a fun exercise. It is. And you have to do it. have to do it. It is yeah somebody or other is going to have to do this. Yeah. You know? So something I, I also wrestled with early on and and i have my own way of doing this. Tracy, I'd be curious to hear how you do this. um Sidebars, right? When you do have a sidebar in your copy,
00:17:22
Speaker
um You don't have the layout necessarily. Well, maybe you do. Yeah, but if you're writing in Word, for example. But if you're writing in Word, right, you need a way to indicate this is where this sidebar starts.
00:17:34
Speaker
This is where the sidebar ends. Mm-hmm. Now the way i do it, <unk> i'll do I'll actually just insert a line and as a prefix on the heading, I'll say sidebar colon, whatever the heading is.
00:17:46
Speaker
And then I'll do another line at the end of it so that it's it's clearly marked off. And that's just a visual cue for you know whoever's going to do the layout so that they know, oh, this is going to be a sidebar. I'll lay this out in the sidebar design that we created.
00:18:00
Speaker
And the heading is going to be this, and this is where it stops and starts or starts and stops. I don't know. How do you, how have you approached that? I do it um with and encourage others to do it.
00:18:13
Speaker
And I do it by doing a backslash call caps sidebar. Yeah. To say, this is a sidebar, everybody. Right. And so that you can't miss it.
00:18:24
Speaker
It's all caps. It's like, it's not supposed to be there. So it cues me as the layout person, like, well, this is, there's something here I need to deal with. Right. And then I take the text and and with the header or whatever with the sidebar and make that the header and then, and then put the body text into the sidebar and whatever.
00:18:43
Speaker
And then I do another backslash and sidebar. Or I'll do ah something like something along those lines. I will make it very obvious. Not some symbol.
00:18:53
Speaker
i do I spell it out and I make it so that you can't miss it. Right. And it's the same with most other other of these kinds of things too. Yeah. Now, just to draw parallels, this is the same as, say, in HTML where you do open tag, you know, whatever, then close tag. It's literally the same thing. Yeah.
00:19:15
Speaker
Yeah. So it's just it's just a ah way for a human to read where does this stop and start or start and stop. Why we keep getting backwards? It gives the human very, very clear, like, this doesn't belong here, so I have to deal with this now. Right. Right. You know.
00:19:31
Speaker
Yeah. All right. um God, there's so many things. There are so many things. I also... You know, like if you're right, I mean, this is the benefit of writing into layout is that you can think about it.
00:19:46
Speaker
ah Some people don't like it because they think, oh, I'm just, I'm writing, i need to write my thing first. Yeah. And I get that. And when I'm first writing into layout, so so for for example, like the most recent thing I did where I'm writing from scratch into layout is um maybe the adventure for Pinebox Middle School, besides Heincluster, right?
00:20:08
Speaker
But I'm like, I'm writing this adventure. I have no idea what this adventure is yet. I'm writing it. Here we go. And I'm writing into layout. That's it. right and And it's still a rough draft. It's still stream of consciousness, whatever. But as I iterate on it and as I refine it, as I edit it and go through it, suddenly I'm starting to think, okay, well, this page ends here.
00:20:32
Speaker
i need to have a paragraph break here or somewhere around in here. And it needs to continue here or I've got our, or I want to put a piece of art in here. So I'm going to cordon off space in my layout to make sure this half pager is going to go here when I'm talking about yeah the camp out at night or whatever.
00:20:51
Speaker
And I'm thinking about those things as I'm writing. the adventure yeah The medium is informing the message at that point. It does. And the the the closer you get to completion, the closer you get to a final product, the more the medium relate relates to the message. Right. right So as as you as you refine it into a final edited stage or very close, suddenly decision-making becomes not just, am I saying what I need to say in in a clear way, but am I putting it in a space where
00:21:22
Speaker
that makes sense, that is pleasing to the eye, that is, you know, that follows the rules of layout, you know, all those factors become a thing.
00:21:33
Speaker
And when you get used to that, it's hard to go back. Right, right. Yeah. I see the value. it I ah want to make the transition myself at some point, but it's like, it's it's just, there's a fluidity for me that comes with just working in a word processor. Yep.
00:21:52
Speaker
that it there's it's just a like a nimbleness, I guess, in in being able to just get the content out. it's it Some of these, I don't know how Affinity works. I haven't tried it.
00:22:04
Speaker
But InDesign does things differently, right? Even selecting text. We were talking about this before. but before we started in design doesn't, doesn't use the shift arrow the same way that, um, word does. It doesn't act the same way. Right.
00:22:19
Speaker
And, and you get used to it after a while, but at first you're just like, what the
Challenges and Solutions in Layout
00:22:24
Speaker
hell? I didn't, I don't want it to expand over there. I want it to contract over here. I mean, it's, it does these weird behaviors, but that's the way in design works.
00:22:33
Speaker
You have to get used to it. When I, when I, when I was trying to do like, I'll do like, um, Like, you know, control shift, whatever, to, to skip words and select Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's like, things started moving and I was like, what, what is happening? Oh my God, undo, undo. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You can't do that.
00:22:51
Speaker
You can't that. You can shift ah arrow to select, but I think the control stuff and you start an arrow around, you might be messing with kerning. Oh man. Who know knows what else? and don't even know what it was. It was just like, i was like, I just don't want to see that happen again.
00:23:06
Speaker
So yeah, it might've just been harmless. Who knows? yeah but But it was not expected behavior, I guess. yeah the yeah Yeah. And there's all kinds of weird stuff like that. yeah When you're working, when it it just takes time. it just takes getting used to.
00:23:21
Speaker
And I remember... at first when I was trying to write to layout, I was like, this is so awkward. It's so weird. I'm looking at I'm looking at a, like a final weird trade dressed page here and I'm writing into it and it, I've got all this extra stuff.
00:23:39
Speaker
that I don't need for writing, for just, for just what I'm trying to write here. And it's easy to get distracted by all that and yeah we're overwhelmed by it so that you don't think about what you're writing. And instead you're thinking about navigating through the, through the layout program or whatever.
00:23:56
Speaker
But after a while, when you get your reps down, you're just like, yeah, I can't see going back from this because of the way, because of what you had described before. Right. Yeah. Layout informs content, content informs layout. know um So this this might feel a little premature in some ways where I remember when I was working on Savage Eberron, for example, I wanted to make sure that I attributed things to people, right? To the right people and so on.
00:24:28
Speaker
and And I remember the credits page being almost a part of preparing my document. And it was very much a part of that. um Who I wanted to mention, what I wanted to credit with. I like i i actually ended up adding credits for the original Eberron campaign setting because I wanted to emphasize these were the people who designed that. These were the people who edited it, created it, blah, blah, blah, right?
00:24:54
Speaker
Um, and then of course, you know, people who contributed ideas, I want to make sure they were included. ah wanted to make sure there was space for me to, um, to add uh, a ah dedication, yeah you know, things like that.
00:25:06
Speaker
And so I felt like that it it for me, it became a part of writing with layout consideration yeah because I wanted to make sure all of that was able to fit into that credit page.
00:25:19
Speaker
Right. Um, now I, I think I've seen examples where the title page and the credit page might be one in the same. And then I've seen, um cases where they're separate pages altogether.
00:25:32
Speaker
Um, which I think makes more sense because it gives you more room for each of those, for the, know, more space for each of those, uh, purposes. yeah yeah there's so many factors in just that, right?
00:25:45
Speaker
It could be that you you don't have the you don't have the pages to do it. yeah If you're printing, if you're page count matters. So so yeah, you just say, well, like yeah I don't have a page for this, so the title's going to go on top and the credits are going below and I got to throw this dedication out. Copyright, all those, yeah. you know You know, all the permissions that I've been granted for what to use, whatever, yeah e cetera, et cetera. Yeah. Now GPSR stuff for EU considerations. That's got to go on
Credits and Acknowledgments in Layout
00:26:15
Speaker
the credit page now. Oh, wow. So there's all kinds of other considerations there with that.
00:26:20
Speaker
So, yeah, so i try to i try to be mindful of that in terms of layout. It makes you, like I said, making sure there's space for the content I want to put in there. um And maybe I'll start kind of a kind of prototype what that might look like in Word, you know, in the Word environment, just so I have a sense of, okay, is this realistically going to fit, you know, do I need to restructure things or, you know, shorten my dedication or put that on a separate page, whatever might be. Yeah, exactly.
00:26:49
Speaker
Um, and then like the, the other, the other component, I think that, that i a lot of people don't think about this upfront is, um what are you going to print in Are you going print in grayscale or is it going to be purely black and white? Or is it going to be, um, you know, CMYK full color, you know, for, uh, printing, um because,
00:27:16
Speaker
you're going to want a logo. your your Your product logo yeah is going to have to be included somewhere. And you want to make sure that you have those assets prepared, that you have a black and white version or grayscale, or that you have the full color version available for whoever's going to do your layout to be able to include it.
00:27:32
Speaker
How big is that going to be? Do you have to put a licensing logo on the same page? You know, like all those kinds of things. So that's another kind of component of, you know, laying out while you're writing, while you're preparing it, you know, think ahead, you know, so that when the layout artist gets it, they know what, what your intent is, you know, what, what you need to have on there.
00:27:54
Speaker
Cause layout artists, they don't know that you need to have the Savage Worlds logo necessarily. Yeah. Right. Right. Yeah. Because I write into layout, I have a credits page from the very beginning and I add to it throughout the project.
00:28:07
Speaker
Right. So if somebody playtests a game or whatever, i add their name. Drop it in there. that I drop it in there. Yeah. and And I keep doing that iteratively throughout the whole process until I've got a full credits page.
00:28:20
Speaker
Yep. Yep. Yep. But it's always, it's all right there. I don't have to transfer it from one place to another or anything like that. It's all right there. Yeah, because it might be tempting to keep that in like some notes somewhere, you know just keep it all in the same document. It's going to end up in that document anyway. It's part of the content.
00:28:35
Speaker
it part of the content. um God, I feel like I've... There's a lot of things that we we touched on, but I feel like there's so much more that we might be missing. There is. mean...
00:28:48
Speaker
i mean Just in general about how these how these things work. that that that That's the whole point of this is to sort of get you in the mindset of how they work so that once you make that transition,
00:29:02
Speaker
Because a lot of are going to learn layout yourself, right? Because you should. You should learn layout yourself. It's not that hard. And um really, it just takes some dedication and some learning and some trial and error and all that stuff.
00:29:17
Speaker
Because if you can do it yourself, you save a whole lot of trouble about um paying a layout person to fix your stuff.
00:29:29
Speaker
Yeah. yeah especially when you're editing and having to do you know answering all these questions about well what's um i mean like how do i want this spread to look if you're relying on your layout person who doesn't really know your content very well They're going to make decisions that you may not make.
00:29:50
Speaker
Right. So I'm a big proponent of you learning how to do it. doesn't have to be super fancy. doesn't have to be a Mork Borg or whatever it is or or Monte Cook Games type of layout.
00:30:04
Speaker
um It can be fairly simple and still look really good. Yeah. But um it's worth taking the time to learn it, I think, because when you start thinking in terms of how those programs work when you're writing, I think it makes your writing better.
00:30:22
Speaker
Yeah. If you want to experiment, ah Swag, for example, has some templates that you can download and use for free. Yes. And so you can just pull that up, start you know putting in, even if it's dummy text or whatever, or just a small sample of your of your work,
00:30:38
Speaker
start putting in there, get a feel of what layout is like there. and And then whether you start writing directly in the in the templates themselves or you're planning to trent you know transfer it all later, it at least gives you a feel of what that experience is going to be like.
00:30:55
Speaker
yeah And you'll learn like, oh, how do I place ah an image here? how do i How do I make a border of that image so that the text wraps around wraps around it? How do I do all these things?
00:31:06
Speaker
And that's fun. To
Advanced Layout Techniques
00:31:08
Speaker
me, it's fun. oh yeah It's like I'm working on my project, doing my thing, and now I'm going to sit down with this new layout program, Affinity if it is if it's that or InDesign if it's that, and I'm going to learn how to do my project in it.
00:31:21
Speaker
yeah And that becomes super fun. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. You see it kind of come to life. Yes. as yeah As you're playing around in there. That's how I learn things is I do projects and then I realized I need tools to do these projects. And so I'm going to get the tool. I'm going learn the tool using my project.
00:31:37
Speaker
Yeah. Yep. It's a fun way to do it, I think. Absolutely. and And what's cool about about those templates, too, is that they actually have styles built into them. And so you can see how applying those styles affects things yeah and how updating and editing those styles allows you to make those changes across your entire document.
00:31:57
Speaker
Yeah, you can learn things like how much do I want to indent the text here? Right. How much space do I want between paragraphs? And then you start looking at other books. How do they do it? How do they do it? i want to do it that way.
00:32:08
Speaker
So now I have the, now I'm starting to learn. what I need to mess with in, in paragraph styles to make it look like I wanted to look like. Right. Right. How do i how do I do hyphenation and have the, the text justified, but with hyphenated words versus staggered, you know, right, right side columns, you know?
00:32:29
Speaker
Yeah. There's all sorts of of neat little things you can, you can explore in there. There's a million little tricks. And yeah of course, layers, yeah we get involved in that. And and i'm a big fan. might want to think about this early is not putting everything on a single layer because people who like to print PDFs and don't want to waste printer ink or don't have color printers so they can print their, just your super cool color art may not want your art in there at all.
00:33:01
Speaker
If you have layers in your InDesign file or your your layout program, and I don't, Affinity does layers differently, but um you can turn them, you can plot to PDF in a way that you can turn those layers off.
00:33:15
Speaker
So somebody who wants to print just a black and white or minimally color version of your book, can turn off all that art and just print it that way. Turn off the background layer. Exactly. You can turn off the trade dress even and just have the text. and And even for screen, for reading on screen, it's helpful because it'll help the pages load faster without having to load those those images in the background.
00:33:41
Speaker
um You can more quickly scroll through the text and and whatnot. And for a lot of people who might have visual impairment, it helps with contrast too. I've had some PDF products where the background was super busy and fine. You know there are the artist made their choices. That's great.
00:33:56
Speaker
It made it really hard to read the text sometimes. So I could just turn off that background layer and I can just... Clean text, black text on white background. Really easy to read. so So that's another consideration.
00:34:07
Speaker
Yeah, the point is the tools are there. Yes. These things are there. If you don't put layers, I will come hunt you down and beat you up. So will Ron. Ron Blessing will hunt you down and beat you up.
00:34:19
Speaker
And they're not that hard. ah at least At least in InDesign. I don't know about it. Affinity weird. Yeah. I feel weird. I'm not sure handle them as well. Yeah, I think last I checked, and then maybe they did an update, but it was per page rather than for the whole document, which is super tedious. but Yeah, that is tedious.
00:34:40
Speaker
Oh, and also, again, kind of just an overview of how these how these things work. um when you're using, again, it's the same kind of principle as paragraph styles and and those things is templates for page pages.
00:34:59
Speaker
So you can set up a page in the layout program that has all the backgrounds on it for the graphic design, the pagination all in it, and all the little titles in the corners and all that other stuff is in a template page.
00:35:15
Speaker
or a spread up there that you can apply to each of the pages in your in your document so that You never have to, but if you change once, you change them all.
00:35:26
Speaker
yeah So if you, if for some reason your pagination is too close to the edge of the book and we haven't really even touched on margins and bleed yet, but if it's too close for whatever reason, if you've done it correctly with a template on your app spread template, you can go in, move that pagination just a little bit ah away from the margin of the book.
00:35:48
Speaker
And it will apply to all the pages in your book. Is that the master page? Is they call it? Yeah, master pages. yes Right. Yeah, brilliant, brilliant feature. So you you you can have any number of those. and And say if you're doing archetype cards, for example, you can put your logo on the master page. You can put your background graphic design on the master page. You can say skills, attributes, all on the master page.
00:36:10
Speaker
And then you have all that set in the proper place so they don't move around between pages. And then you've got each page with the individual skills on it and all the stuff that's individual for that character. Right, right. But all the stuff that's universal that you don't want to mess with, either accidentally or not, is all on the master page so that it doesn't move around from place to place as you scroll through the PDF.
00:36:42
Speaker
That's just fundamental stuff that new people will not know. right away or may not realize that they need to do, but that's, that's best practices. yeah Right. And that's how these things work.
00:36:54
Speaker
it It is to your layout, what styles are to your text. Yes. So, you know, one place where you make a change updates everywhere. Yes. So, yep.
00:37:06
Speaker
So i have I have a few general tips yes that we probably didn't cover. Probably. one Well, one we did. Use paragraph styles for everything when possible. Yes.
00:37:17
Speaker
And paragraph styles include a leading bold in front of a colon. that's a pair That's something you'd set up in paragraph styles. You would not necessarily bold. You wouldn't at all bold. like that text and then put the colon and then no, no, you just put it, of there's a bleeding bold paragraph style. That's all.
00:37:34
Speaker
Indents, all that stuff, it's handled in paragraph styles. Use them for everything unless there's a really special specific reason not to. Use short paragraphs, shorter than you think. And when you're writing in Word, a lot of times people who are new to layout will write much longer paragraphs.
00:37:53
Speaker
And when you go into layout, they turn into blocks of text that span columns. Yes. Right? learned that the hard way. Yeah. So generally, when you're writing, and this is easy to fix, but when you're writing, even in Word, keep your paragraphs between like one and five sentences max.
00:38:14
Speaker
Mm-hmm. Because in layout, it will translate into a readable thing. if you're If you're writing these big, long paragraphs, it just turns into a wall of text that's horrible.
00:38:25
Speaker
yeah And your layout person will have to break them up for you. and And honestly, that's just a good sort of, I'll say, usability thing in general. Because if you you know whether it's like two column or one column, that long wall of text...
00:38:39
Speaker
I'll tell you right now, if I see something like that, um um my eyes just glaze over before I'm even halfway through it. um But the shorter chunks, you know, it's also easier to find information yes when you're referring back to it later. yeah It's not buried in this giant wall of text. It's, oh yeah, it was that third paragraph on this page at the bottom.
00:38:57
Speaker
Or it's that, it's, and part of that is paragraph styles and headings too, like leading, this leading bold thing or this bulleted thing will explain to me where to find the things that I'm looking for.
00:39:07
Speaker
Right. And we talked about that a little bit in the organization episode, I think. Yes. But all those things are tools that not only break up the page and make it more interesting to look at, but also much more clearly um communicate your ideas.
00:39:27
Speaker
Right. So that's that's another thing. Yeah. Another aspect that um layout programs have are stories.
00:39:38
Speaker
And the way they tend to work is you make a text frame and then you can paste all your text in there. so you've got you've got a chapter from your Word document and you make a text frame in your layout program. You text you paste paste all your text in there.
00:39:54
Speaker
And it's it's it will go to the end of the of the text frame that you've got, but hidden underneath all that, past that, is all your text. And so the way layout programs work is that you can extend those text frames or make new ones that then continue from where they leave off.
00:40:13
Speaker
and then you make And these would become called stories yeah in in InDesign anyway. It looks broken at first. It does. But then when you start flowing the text through, you're like, oh my God, this is cool. Yeah, it's super cool. It's an essential part of how layout works because then you can move those stories, like the the text frames around so that you can cut off at a paragraph break or...
00:40:36
Speaker
you know do all There's other ways to do that too, but I use i use story text frames to do that. and then um so that ah My point is, i think, I usually do a story per chapter.
00:40:49
Speaker
So I don't use a story for the entire book. um I start a new story for each chapter. Right, right. And that breaks it up into a more manageable way. And that way you can use find and replace in a specific story. so you're not actually searching the whole book every time you're doing a find and replace if you just want to do in a chapter.
00:41:09
Speaker
Right. And stuff like that. It also prevents weird reflow stuff from happening. Like if you nudge something in one chapter, oh yeah it doesn't impact anything later chapters. It forces you to to lay out the chapter rather than screw up the entire book when you've when you've all of a sudden you've got an orphan paragraph that's translating through 300 pages your book.
00:41:34
Speaker
Right. You know what I mean? It's just in that chapter and it's much more manageable for you. The other thing you might end up doing is putting tables in their own stories, so depending on how things go.
00:41:47
Speaker
um Because tables in line in text text boxes kind of get a little weird. I've done both. um And I regretted putting them in line because of yeah because things get weird.
00:42:03
Speaker
Things get weird. When you put it in its own story, you can still have it interrupts. parts of text just like you would if you dropped in an image. It it treats it like it's like a separate figure, if you will, um when you have it in its own story.
00:42:15
Speaker
So i yeah, like to like Tracy said, I highly recommend doing it that way. it's it's It makes it so much more manageable and you can manipulate it, move it. you know If you want to have that table span the full width of the bottom of the page, you can do that if it's in its own story.
00:42:30
Speaker
Exactly. it's just you just make the text box wider and then it'll all, you know. yeahp And also the the disadvantage of it is if if tables are in line, they always move with where the text is. oof Yeah. if you if you And they'll wrap pages well. Yeah, they will. It's so weird. And that's that's actually ah an advantage because if you don't want to have to worry about where the table is all the time,
00:42:54
Speaker
and you're making big edits or or cutting a whole lot of text and moving it somewhere else, for example, your table will all of a sudden, if it's in its own story, be in the wrong place. yeah So you have to be cognizant of that.
00:43:05
Speaker
But it's sometimes essential because that to do it that way because inline tables can get a little strange about yeah um what happens to the paragraph after that. or you know oh there's It's just some weird stuff that happens. yeah about the only time i think i've done it in line is when it's like it's a small table that accompanies say a power or an edge yes and that's about it but other than that if it's like gear yeah do a separate story yeah yeah yeah yeah for sure yeah and that's a whole layout nightmare when you get into gear chapters and stuff like that oh my gosh
00:43:42
Speaker
Um, another thing, and yeah this is all super dense, so I know now no we're not all going to get it, but I think it's worth coming back to, and maybe just an overview is helpful.
Font and Design Choices
00:43:53
Speaker
But another thing that I do want to mention is I would highly recommend against using san serif fonts as your body text. Yes.
00:44:02
Speaker
This is a fundamental, almost all like, um, Graphic designers agree with this, but serif fonts are much, much easier to read as body text than sans serif fonts. If you don't know the difference, you can look it up.
00:44:19
Speaker
But basically there's ah there's a curly Q at the end of yeah it's all the end of the the hangy bits on your characters and stuff. And with those hangy bits, they're way easier to read than without them.
00:44:34
Speaker
yeah And it can be tempting to say, I have a sci-fi book. i want i want to I want to have a ah font in my body text that sans serif that looks like you know sci-fi, e right? right Wrong.
00:44:48
Speaker
I'm very – it's not wrong, wrong, but i highly recommend you don't do that. That's what headers are for. Right. That's what headers are for. Yeah. And Christian and I have our favorite serif font that we use.
00:45:02
Speaker
Yeah. Well, there's a couple. okay I have a couple. um Palatino is so obviously at the top of list. um A Google font is EB Garamond that I really love.
00:45:13
Speaker
Mrs. Eves. Mrs. Eves my favorite. it's that's That's actually, that's been a long time favorite. actually That's been the longest favorite. I used it for Holler. I used it for Pinebox Middle School and I use it for Hong Cluster. I think we use it in Savage Eberron. I think that's what we use. And that's what the original Eberron campaign setting actually is.
00:45:31
Speaker
Yeah. That's where I learned about it. um But yeah, those are, those are my top, top favorite serif fonts. Serif fonts. Yeah. Body text fonts.
00:45:42
Speaker
Yep. And then headers go to town. Yeah. As long as you can read it. They can even be decorative fonts. Exactly. I mean, don't go crazy with like, you know, don't use papyrus, please.
00:45:55
Speaker
Well, maybe there's a reason. Maybe. But they are there they are there to communicate your style and communicate your setting and all that stuff. But this with this body text, is it's there to a degree to do that. Yeah.
00:46:09
Speaker
But i would I would highly recommend sticking a serif font. There are exceptions to sans serif fonts, but you have to really know your typography to make the right call on that.
00:46:20
Speaker
Yeah. But generally speaking, as Tracy said, serif fonts are best because the the characters are more easily distinguishable. Your eye more easily interprets, your brain, rather, more easily interprets those characters and those words.
00:46:34
Speaker
um And, and you don't, you know, it's just, yeah, it's just, it's just clear in a lot of ways. Clear, not visually, but clear in terms of comprehension as as you're going through it.
00:46:45
Speaker
Yeah. So, and I think as we said before, art, paragraph breaks, um bold, leading bolds bullet points, all that stuff can help not only help you with clarity and stuff, but it can break up the text in a way that's visually appealing and heading levels, heading levels as well.
00:47:09
Speaker
Yes. Generally I use only three. Yes. So, but sometimes I go to a fourth depending fourth for me is usually an inline kind of a heading, you know, like we, like we talked about with a, you know, bold colon, whatever.
00:47:22
Speaker
Um, But, uh, but, the and and I want to emphasize too, that heading levels is not just, oh, I'm going to make this bold going to make it a smaller font size than the other heading. Yeah. Use a heading to use a heading three.
00:47:36
Speaker
Right. So those are, yeah. Yeah. but But my point about ah breaking up the text is you can do that with anything. You don't need art to break up the text in a pleasing way. right You can do it with a sidebar.
00:47:48
Speaker
You can do it with ah the bullet points. You can do all these little tricks that help you communicate things, but also so that your reader doesn't get tired.
Learning from Examples
00:47:57
Speaker
Case in point, Savage Eberron has no art in it.
00:48:01
Speaker
And it is all like visually broken up by headings, sidebars, things like that. Tables, of course. Strategically placed. Strategically placed, yeah. Or timelines or whatever else that you've got that you can put in. oh yeah You don't have to...
00:48:15
Speaker
make these things happen but that's that works they inherently work yeah they inherently work to add the same way art does right to make it an you know variety enough so that the reader doesn't get bored and it keeps interested in reading the book right that's what i've got and i know that was a lot yeah what what else do you have christian before we sign off No, I think we covered it. Like I said, just that the best way to learn is just play around. Go muck around, get a template, or just open up If you have Affinity, Affinity is cheaper than Creative Cloud. Affinity is way cheaper than InDesign, and sometimes they have sales. They sales all the time. There's sales. Yeah.
00:48:57
Speaker
Yeah. It seems like every month there's like, oh, Affinity is having a sale. um ah but But if you're fortunate enough to have access to InDesign, fortunate, like as if it's like this.
00:49:10
Speaker
It's just kind of expensive is all. Yeah. But man, is it powerful. It is very powerful. Really, really powerful. Yeah. But just play around and, you know, make a document that you're not afraid to muck around and break things and and whatever. It doesn't have to be the the actual working product that you're going to end up with.
00:49:27
Speaker
just Just play around with it Learn from experience. um The other thing I recommend is study published materials. I looked at PEG products left and right.
00:49:39
Speaker
Me too. To see what was the structure that they used and how they did it. What was really cool is because I had Carl Kiesler doing my layout for me for Savage Eberron. He was using a lot of the similar techniques that he used for peg. And so I was able to then study, oh, that's how he did these styles. That's how he set up the InDesign file. yeah And I was able to learn from that as well, which was really, really fascinating to see.
00:50:03
Speaker
Yeah. Also, Carl did my my graphic design for me and he he gave me it in a way I could see how he did it. And it's super educational for me. Yeah. You know, I'm like, oh, that's really cool. That's clever.
00:50:14
Speaker
Right. Wow. And, you know, watching his, looking at his Photoshop files and stuff like that. Super educational. Yeah. Super educational. Yeah. So, ah so that's, yeah, that's it really. You know, a lot of this is, i think Tracy and are really just speaking from the experiences that we've had.
00:50:31
Speaker
um And you'll you'll have your own experiences. yeah You'll have your own discoveries, lessons learned, mistakes you'll make, you know. And inspiration. And inspiration. i think I'm limited in my inspiration because I really wanted my stuff to look like Pinnacle stuff. so Yeah, no, same here. And and there's other books like like Free League stuff. Oh, Chef's Kiss. It's, oh, God, their layout and graphic design is so impeccable. and And I see some of their stuff and I'm like, me I'd like to do a book like that. Yeah, it's it's intimidating yeah when it gets that when it gets like that or the D&D books or yeah or even Monty Cook.
00:51:05
Speaker
Some of those, like I can i could do it, but they have they have more than the tools to do it. They have the art in place to do it. They have the you know all all this stuff and it's it's it's intimidating.
00:51:18
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. But you can learn from it all. Yeah. And, and, you know, fundamentally, like we said, when you're writing, think about what the layout might be like. Think about the structure of your document as you're writing it.
00:51:31
Speaker
Um, you know, anticipate, you know, what's going to happen when you get to the point of doing the layout, or if you're writing directly in layout, you know, you're, then you're able to see it in that context, uh, as you're writing.
00:51:44
Speaker
So, And try not to be distracted by it. Try not to be distracted it. You'll get used Yeah. Yeah.
Closing and Community Engagement
00:51:50
Speaker
It's easy. it's it's It's not unlike when I try to show a prototype of a website to to somebody like a stakeholder.
00:51:56
Speaker
no And you know if it's too lo-fi, then they get it's hard for them to visualize it yeah where I'm just trying to get them to think about structure and organization. yeah And if it's too hi-fi, they start nitpicking all the things like the colors and what can we nudge this over? it's like, no, we're not there yet. yeah So there's that, there's that fine balance yeah of, of, you know, focusing on structure and not getting caught up in, you know, fine tuning the design just yet.
00:52:25
Speaker
yeah So if you do your styles, right. the fine tuning later on will be that much more easy. like yeah And, and also your master pages will be that much easier when that time comes. So yeah,
00:52:38
Speaker
Cool. All right, then. Thank you for listening to the Designing Problems podcast. We want this to be more than a podcast. We want it to be a community. If you'd like to engage with us directly, share your creative triumphs, your roadblocks, or simply interact with a cool group of supportive people, we have our own Discord server.
00:52:56
Speaker
Please come by join the discussion, and share some inspiration. Until next time, keep designing your problems because you're bound to solve a along the way.