Making My Way into ebook Design and Layout
March 28th, 2012
Although I continue to harbor reservations about the ability of human readers to change the look of ebooks on their e-reading devices, time has come for me to jump into ebook-making with both feet. To be sure, it gnaws at me that the typefaces I use in my print books will not make it to their e-versions, but it really is time.
So right now, in between projects and/or pieces of projects, I am beefing up my skills by extending my knowledge. First in my learning parade is Anne-Marie Concepcion’s DVD from Lynda.com, Adobe InDesign CS5.5 to EPUB, Kindle, and iPad. This is a fairly painless way, I am finding, to take a step-by-step tour of what you need to do to turn InDy CS5.5 files into epubs.
Of course, as often happens, one thing leads to another and I realize that I need to get up to snuff with CSS, so that I can tweak CSS definitions to adjust how ebook pages will look. The text recommended to me for CSS is HTML and CSS: Design and Build Websites. I think, too, that I should brush up on my HTML. So that leads me to something lighter, a series that I had some fun with learning basic HTML years ago, Sams Teach Yourself HTML5 and CSS3 in 24 Hours. But all isn’t right enough with the world to end there. I remain stuck on the thought of how much I hate that all my design choices can be altered on an e-reader. Some ongoing discussion on Twitter and great suggestions from fellow tweeters, under the #eprdctn hashtag, led me to a number of great looking open source typefaces at The League of Moveable Type. I think their Fanwood, Linden Hill, Prociono, Clover, and Sorts Mill Goudy might be very nice text faces. Raleway, League Gothic, and Junction might just lend themselves to some great display work.
That’s how, after all this time, I am really preparing to plunge into the design and layout of ebooks. Any other suggestions most welcome.
4 Comments Add your own
1. Martin Pugh | March 28th, 2012 at 9:43 pm
Stephen,
Sounds good. I may be able to refer more projects to you in the future. Looking forward to seeing how this Texas book turns out! Many people ask about ebooks, and I know it’s more or less a distraction for some designers, but nevertheless- a request.
Best,
Martin
2. admin | March 29th, 2012 at 6:57 am
Yes, I really needed a kind of organized plan to get myself enthused about working on ebooks. I’m still not quite ready to jump right in, say, by next week, but I’m getting there, maybe, in a month or two’s time. I want to make sure I’ve answered all my own questions about the mechanics of resolving certain issues that occur. It’s a really big deal that I found some new open source typefaces that allow embedding. What I can’r figure is how embedding in ebook files is a problem for commercial fonts, but not embedding in PDFs.
3. Damian | April 5th, 2012 at 7:31 am
Nice blog and reflects my efforts exactly. There must be many typesetters out there adding to their skill set and trying to make the transition to epub. I read somewhere that web designers are probably better suited to epub because of the underlying technology, however typesetters I think are at an advantage as they perhaps have a keener eye for typography and “readbility”. Good luck and look forward to your next blog.
4. admin | April 5th, 2012 at 9:15 am
Thanks, Damian, both for visiting and commenting, and for the compliment. I am perhaps in a different category altogether, as I not only am self-educated (regarding design, that is) and have never had any inclination, interest, or skills for drawing or painting. I edged into print and then book design purely out of a love for words.
During my early, “staring out” years, I often spent the slower, winter months learning HTML (later PHP and MySQL) in hopes of designing my own website and transitioning into website and web app design. But I really don’t think visually enough, nor do I have the “inventor’s mindset” that those two areas benefit from.
Nevertheless, there finally came a time when the move into ebooks called for refining and using that skill set. It’s really, of course, CSS that’s necessary. Moreover, however, I think web designers may lack the print designer’s perspective that’s such an integral part of book design. Remember, the printed book is, or can be, an art object in its own right, completely aside from what’s in a particular book. I don’t think anyone’s ever going to look at a “first edition” ebook with the excitement of finding a first edition of, say, a print version of Moby Dick.
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