Desktop Publishing

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Desk-top Publishing
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Six Steps to Successful Desktop Publishing

• Establish goals and organize your material
• Answer the who, what, where, when and why question

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Six Steps to Successful Desktop Publishing

• Choose an appropriate format and page layout
• What is the overall look, how large, how many
  colours, columns, what sort of paper?
• What graphics will direct the readers eye?

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Six Steps to Successful Desktop Publishing

• Make appropriate typeface, type size, and spacing
  decisions
• The majority of messages appear as headline and
  body copy - create headlines and titles which
  attract attention with body copy thats
  transparent and doesnt interfere with readers
  ability to quickly understand

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Six Steps to Successful Desktop Publishing

• Add and manipulate visuals
• Replace words with images/visuals where possible
  (photographs, illustrations, charts, graphs,
  tables, organization charts, flowcharts,
  timelines, etc)
• Each requires careful placement on the page

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Six Steps to Successful Desktop Publishing

• Build momentum into your pages
• Youve got readers attention, now keep them
  interested in your publication
• Break material into bite-size chunks by using
  organisational devices such as subheads, pull
  quotes and sidebars.

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Six Steps to Successful Desktop Publishing

• Refine and fine-tune til you drop
• Perfect wholes are the result of perfect detail
• Break your project into component parts to fine
  tune (a singing group is destroyed by one bad
  singer)

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Using design to enhance your ideas!

• design enhances readership
• design provides organisation
• design provides unity
• design sets your publication apart

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Readership

• Colin Wheildon (Australian) found
• changes in headline typography can increase
  readership from 57 to 92
• body copy comprehension jumped from 12 to 67
  when a different typeface was used
• subtle changes in line spacing increased body
  copy comprehension from 77 - 98
• setting body copy on a grey background could
  reduce comprehension from 70 - 3
• headline colours could reduce comprehension of
  body type from 67 -17
• revising the layout (with no change to words) can
  increase readership from 32-67

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Organisation

• Effective design provides hierarchy making it
  easy for readers to tell what is important.
• Reduces information overload

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Unity

• Create a whole from a series of pages, brochures,
  newsletters
• consistent margins, column placement, graphic
  accents, typeface, type size and colour choices
• can create a company identity

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Individuality

• Set your publication apart - project an image
• conservatism, contemporary, expensive and
  inexpensive

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Design Saves Time!

• You make one decision regarding
• typeface
• type size
• margin
• colour
• line settings
• This decision will form the template for all
  documents

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Typefaces

• refers to a particular design or look of a
  family of type (eg Times, Helvetica, Prestige)
• within each family are variations
• bold, semi-bold, condensed, italic, etc
• a font is the complete character set including
  both upper and lower case, punctuations, etc
• fonts allow you to instantly and nonverbally
  communicate atmosphere and image

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Types of fonts

• Scaleable - size is easily changed
• resident - common fonts pre-loaded on your
  computer
• downloadable - stored for use when needed
• free downloadable
• discretionary downloadable

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Beware

• Expanding your font library can cause problems -
  it takes time to add and remove fonts when you
  work with them so they are usually left in memory
  where they reside making programs slow and
  clutters the font menu making the ones you need
  harder to find.
• You should only use a maximum of 2 - 3 fonts per
  publication.

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Font Editors

• Font Editors
• Examples
• Altys Fontographer and Area Font Chameleon

• Enables you to change the appearance of letters
  to your requirements

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Kerning Editors

• Enable fine-tuning of letter spacing to improve
  appearance

• Kerning Editors
• Example
• Fontographer

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Illustration Programs- text manipulation

• Free Drawing
• Microsoft Word 6.0 for Windows Wordart
• Enables you to stretch and compress type, distort
  it, set in circles or at an angle

• Specialized Drawing
• Aldus Freehand, Adobe Illustrator
• More versatile

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How to attract your readers attention!

• create headlines that shout
• set up a headline typography
• choice of typeface and typesize
• choice of line spacing
• choice of alignment (columns)

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Choice of typeface and type size

• family approach larger and bolder versions of the
  same typeface
• opposites attract approach
• headline totally different from body copy
• body in serif and headline in sans serif
• composite approach
• offers opportunity for variety and contrast
  because typefaces are designed to work together
  (choose from a family of typefaces designed to
  work together)

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Hint

• Generally the best looking pages are those using
  condensed heavy sans serif typefaces for
  headlines combined with body copy set in an
  easy-to-read serif typeface.
• Condensed typefaces take up less space and have
  greater impact

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Serif and Sans Serif

• This is a serif typeface - it is Times New Roman
• Serif typefaces have a serif
• Serif typefaces have different width strokes

• This is a sans serif typeface - it is Arial
• Sans serif typefaces have no serif
• Sans serif typefaces have regular width strokes

b
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Headlines in Sans Serif - have greater impact but
are harder to read

• Body copy in serif is easier to read

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Headlines

• Linespacing
• reduce linespacing so lines appear closer
  together - in dtp terms this is called the
  leading (pronounced ledding) from when printers
  put lead between the lines to space
• saves space
• creates white space around the headline

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Headlines

• Alignment
• centred heading are appropriate for classic,
  conservative or formal image
• overuse indicates a novice approach

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Centred headlines - problem 1

• dissipated white space
• white space is scattered either side rather than
  concentrated to one side
• when a headline is set left it is set off by the
  large pool of white space to the right, creating
  more visual impact

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Centred headline - problem 2

• differing line beginnings
• means readers have to search for the beginning of
  the line
• reduces reading speed

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Centred headline - problem 3

• strange shapes
• headlines of gt 3 lines create distracting shapes
  (diamonds, triangles, upside down triangles)
• fine tune to get rid of shape by substituting
  words or kerning

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Centred headline - problem 4

• inadvertent justification
• some centred headlines nearly fill the line which
  looks like a mistake in left justification

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Centred headline - problem 5

• scattered alignment points
• readers search for CLOSURE
• to locate alignment points in a lines beginning
  and endings - if left justified there is no
  ambiguity in the design, people wont try to
  puzzle out the design
• make your intentions clear in your design

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Centred headline - problem 6

• difficult transition to text
• people have to move their eye more from the end
  of the headline to body copy when the headline is
  centred

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• ALWAYS ASK DOES THIS DESIGN MAKE THE READERS JOB
  EASIER

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Headlines
This is important

• To capitalize or not
• dont use all upper case
• all upper case is harder to read
• all upper case takes up more space
• all upper case has less white space around -
  needs smaller font
• lower case are more shapely when put together
• dont capitalize all first letters
• only capitalize first letter and proper nouns
• confusion regarding new sentence

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Beware

• If you decide to use a font specially designed
  for headings which uses all capitals, be
  consistent in its use - and dont use it for
  body copy

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Headlines

• Letter Spacing
• defaults are usually too generous for headlines
• tracking - reduces or increases letter spacing
  uniformly throughout a range of text
• kerning - reduces or increases letter spacing in
  individual pairs of letters

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Tracking

• gains white space to the left or right of the
  headline
• word shapes become more pronounced
• the larger the headline the more important
  tracking becomes
• In Microsoft Publisher
• Choose Format, Spacing Between Characters.
  Notice that the default is Normal. Select Tight
  and print the page. If the letters appear too
  closely spaced, change to Normal.

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Kerning

• distinguishes amateur and professional
• problems occur when overhanging upper case letter
  (T,Y,W) appear next to short lower case letters
  (a,o,i) or periods or commas (.,)
• In Microsoft Publisher
• Choose Format, Spacing Between Characters. From
  the Spacing Between Characters dialog box, select
  Between Selected Characters Only and the Squeeze
  Letters Together. You can now modify letter
  spacing by clicking the up and down arrows.

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Headlines

• Line Breaks and Hyphenation
• never hyphenate a headline
• ideally headline should be broken into lines the
  same size
• headline should be kept short
• if headline is large, increase the size of the
  most important part (the beginning)

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Body CopyMaking Type Easy To Read

• the aim is to
• produce text so beautiful your readers wont
  even notice its there! Parker R
• decisions
• what typeface?
• what type size?
• leading?
• alignment?

• avoid long lines of small type
• avoid short lines of large type

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x-height

• The x-height governs the amount of space needed
  between lines - how much air is needed between
  the lines of type
• high x-height typefaces look larger that low x
  heights (even when both same size)
• low x-heights need less leading than high x
  heights

p
this is the x-height
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• These are Arial font - both in 28 pt size
• normal leading
• .8 leading

• This is a piece of text to show you how the
  xheight of different fonts can affect the look of
  the document.
• This is a piece of text to show you how the
  xheight of different fonts can affect the look of
  the document.

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• This is a piece of text to show you how the
  xheight of different fonts can affect the look of
  the document.
• This is a piece of text to show you how the
  xheight of different fonts can affect the look of
  the document.

• These are Times New Roman font - 28 pt
• normal leading
• .8 leading

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Leadingconcerns the x heightfonts with high x
height need more leading

• This is a piece of text to show you how the
  xheight of different fonts can affect the look of
  the document.
• This is a piece of text to show you how the
  xheight of different fonts can affect the look of
  the document.

• This is a piece of text to show you how the
  xheight of different fonts can affect the look of
  the document.
• This is a piece of text to show you how the
  xheight of different fonts can affect the look of
  the document.

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Alignment

• choice depends on
• image
• left flush/ragged right is friendlier, informal
• line length
• avoid narrow columns of justified text as these
  have large letter spacings and excessive
  hyphenation
• available time
• justified is more time consuming to get it
  looking good
• word density
• justified has more words per column
• ease of reading
• evidence suggests flush left/ragged right is
  easier to read because of consistent word spacing

• 2 options
• left flush/ right jagged
• different amounts of white space to right
• justified
• word spacing is adjusted, white space equal each
  side

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Alignment choice depends on

• image
• left flush/ragged right is friendlier, informal
• line length
• avoid narrow columns of justified text as these
  have large letter spacings and excessive
  hyphenation
• available time
• justified is more time consuming to get it
  looking good
• word density
• justified has more words per column
• ease of reading
• evidence suggests flush left/ragged right is
  easier to read because of consistent word spacing

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Practical Exercise

• Using the text provided, edit it to produce a
  document with headlines which are easy to read
  and shout to the reader Read Me
• experiment with the kerning and tracking options
  provided by Microsoft Publisher to provide a
  professional look
• experiment with different leadings and fonts
• use the spell checking facility
• using copy and paste produce several versions to
  compare, select your best effort and compare it
  with your neighbour

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Conclusion

• During this presentation you have seen how fonts
  can be used to enhance readability, both of
  headlines and body copy.
• You should now be able to adjust kerning,
  tracking and leading of your text to create a
  professional look and you should have an idea of
  which fonts to use.