OUGD504 - SB1 - A-Z: Type in Context - Final Content Prep & Document Setup

Final Content Prep - Before setting up an InDesign document, all the final text and images needed to be collated and arranged.

The first stage in the process was to convert all the photographs to CMYK. As learnt in the printing session, InDesign does not convert images from RGB to CMYK. Therefore, to ensure that the final print is an accurate representation of what is seen on screen, all the images were opened in Photoshop and converted to CMYK. This was quite time consuming but overall very important.

The next stage involved planning how the publication would be laid out, in terms of the content and photographs used. For some of the images, there just wasn't enough to talk about, especially in the aspect of culture and purpose. These were left out to keep the publication engaging and reasonable, in respect to page numbers.

6 non-typographical photographs were chosen to break up the publication and add variety. 3 are of landscapes seen on the trip and 3 are urban shots. The diversity between the two aimed to highlight how different various areas of Washington are.

To whittle the content down, each letter was analysed in terms of the content already written and how interesting/informative it will be to the target audience. Letters that were not appropriate for the criteria were written down and taken out of the publication altogether. This left me with 14 engaging letters, whereby the written content could be built on to incorporate some cultural information and some extra bits about the area.

Document Setup - Once the content was all arranged an InDesign document was created. As a page size of 3:4 was picked to use earlier in the research stages, a page size with this ratio had to be created. It had to be slightly less than A4 to ensure that the bleed and crop marks would be easily visible. James suggested that a 3mm bleed should be used, as it is the standard for commercial printing. The setup made can be seen below.

Grids and margins were next on the agenda. As decided earlier in the project, Tschichold's inner and outer margin rule would be used - one-ninth of the paper forms the inner margin and two-ninths form the outer margin. This was applied to the master page in InDesign, so that all the content has a consistent area to conform to. The gutter size is quite thin and would cause problems with a perfect bound book; however, because this publication will be saddle stiched, the pages are able to lay flat, ensuring that all the content is easily visible.

In terms of the columns, these were to be determined after the typefaces and point sizes had been chosen, as optimum line lengths of paragraphs are crucial to get right before setting certain columns.