Revision as of 01:52, 23 December 2008

This page is a continuation of the hideously long Layout discussion.

We're up to seventh draft, so I'd like to reframe these comments in the light of "How can we finish this bitch?"

To Do - update, add suggestions

Cram's seventh draft notes

Font - the new heading typeface is interesting. I'm not sure how I feel about it yet. It's a good balance of messy and clean, but I don't think it feels quite right for book headings. We've talked about how the book needs a certain "official", ordered style in order for us to break those rules. I think this font might be a tad too zany. I really do like the capitals though - perhaps it would be better placed as -- I don't know the term for this -- when you make the first letter of a piece very large? That would be appropriate for pieces which don't already have a dingbat to lead the piece (like the page1 intro).

alright I've thought about it, and I think we should keep this one unless you find one you like more.

Page 1 - I like the icon you've selected. It could use a messy ms-paint style moustache scribbled on.

Page 5 - note to self: find new graphic to close piece. May already have one in your collage folder. Or ask Chloe.

Page 11 - rebreak heading so that "Black Iron Prison" is on its own line. And Mang has informed me that SSOOKN should be "semi-secret" not "super-secret".

Page 19 - Because there's no other significant text on this spread, I think the upside-down text should be right-side up.

Page 20 - I'm not fond of the font used on the "Who the fuck is keeping the love..." quote. It's hard to read. A few uses are fine, but let's not overdo it. Also, delete the period at the end of the quote.

Page 27 - rebreak the first line of the piece so that principiadiscordia.com is on its own line, rather than the ".com" on its own. Is there any way to reign in the text on page 28? If not, that's cool, but it feels kind of weird with the five short lines on their own page. Darken the "It's that easy..." stamp on page 28. The font you've chosen for that is perfect, by the way.

Page 30-31 - I wonder what this spread is going to look like with a break in the middle.

Page 38 - I like the font selection for "God is my co-dependent." Also, good placement in conjunction with the Paths graphic.

Page 43 - perfect font selection. I think it captures LHX's "space and break" style quite well.

Page 48 - Is there any way to pull in these two lines?

Page 51 - The heading here feels crowded. Kill the word "Description".

Page 49 - Laughing my ass off! You really did do exactly what you set out to. I like how in certain parts, you can make out a few words of the text, but probably not enough to make much sense of it. Could you incorporate a bit more order in this chaos? It should feel like maybe you could read this piece... Like, create some holes where you can actually read the original text. (like you've done on p62) Overall, love what you've done here.

O HAI! Just popping in to say I have reviwed #7. Awesome. I agree with Cram's points relating to layout. I love the title font, Net. Any chance of a copy?

The cover hasn't been discussed since August. Net adopted a negged version of #6 (with the addition of those awesome ding-splashes), so I'm gonna ask if y'awl prefer the original blue cover (imagine it with ding-splashes if need be), or the brown-ish negged version. I'll be up front and say that I don't like the negged version myself and my reasons (below) have become clearer to me. Net has already said "I'll stop manhandling your colors and just leave some roadside dings on it." That's cool; I just wanted to clarify the team's thoughts and feelings.

My feeling was that the blue version gave it a sort of defaced semi Official Document look, something to get under the skin of the mind (after all, we all judge books by their covers initially - it's human nature) and that the brown version totally detracted from that and made it too surreal to have that same effect. A little amateur marketing psychology for sure. Do you see what I mean, or am I talking balls?

Let me know if you want the PSD for further tweaking, Net.

--Rev. St. Syn, KSC 00:51, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Eighth Draft - Released Dec 10, 2008

parts 1-2: http://ifile.it/2n7sdop

part 3: http://ifile.it/y3vfszn

We've taken a bit of a hiatus while Real Life juggles and jiggles around us. But now we're back... I'm going to try to make a master list of stuff we need To Do before we're done. Feel free to add to the list. Use the tags [C] for stuff that Cramulus should work on, and [N] for stuff that Net should work on.

Some of the items on this list are taken from the previous discussion on the Layout page. If stuff has already been addressed or discussed, just make a note - it's hard to keep track of all this stuff at this point, and I'm finding it difficult to pick up where we left off last month.

This page will remain for ongoing discussion. But please check out and update the To Do List as we move forward.

000 reviews Draft 8

wow. was I already amazed by the previous versions, it's amazing how you can make it even more amazing than that!

I love the fonts, btw. I like the one you're using for the titles a lot. but one question, since every uppercase letter is a sort of doodle/picture, wouldn't it sort of give away all the big guns when you're writing multiple all-caps words like on pages 2,3,4? The one you're using for the bodytext is also very pretty.

Since these pages aren't flattened, I'm not 100% sure if what I'm looking at is correct. The round "hand of eris" dingbat on page 00005 is superimposed on the tampon-spag image, is it supposed to be opaque or does my viewer not render transparency over a picture correct? there's a few other places where this happens as well (K-grenade at page 00008). If it was intended that way, maybe consider making them transparent? also the whatever-it-is at page 00009 is maybe not displayed correct, or just really weird :)

• 00010 the eye behind the BIP card may need more frills.
• 00023 Enrico pic at page 00023 may look a bit better if the background is coloured lightly grey (or maybe filled with dingbats?). if you send me (a link to) the original pic, I can GIMP cutout the background transparent and/or light grey for you.
• 00029 looks niiiiiiice with the paragraphs indented like that. just sayin' :)
• 00030 -- still love this :) i hope next year at DoD in Edinburgh Payne and I actually get around to watch Total Recall :)
• 00033 perhaps a tad more spacing between the subtitle and the blockquote? a bit more space above and below the blockquote would push the last the two lines of the last paragraph to the next page, that would be okay, right?
• 00035 needs maybe a grey thingy behind the title? how about the "asshat" picture that can be found in the POEE smiley list.
• 00043-00046 Lots of whitespace in LHXs piece. It's good. What would you think about a box/border around this piece, though? Maybe those slanted/rounded boxes? You could again put dingbats behind those, and I think it would sorta make LHXs thing be more "separate".
• 00045 "lemon > lemonade", too many spaces before the > ? Also maybe move the bomb picture a littlebit up?
• 00049 "NOW IS THE TIME TO FIGHT!" doesn't the full-caps heading kind of spoil the effect of using smallcaps? if you're using smallcaps you might as well turn that heading to "Now is the Time to Fight".
• 00051 Big block'o text, not very inviting to read, can it be broken up somehow, or have some extra gfx? Also, maybe mark up the words that are tags in this piece in some way (bold, teletype font, something) instead of uppercasing them.
• 00055 spacing with the pointy hand icons seems a bit off, they're not aligned vertically. also may need a bit more space between the hand and the text. (i seem to recall i've said this before?)
• 00059-00061 are supposed to be a mess of letters right? are these the bad pieces we don't really like? :) also i think there's something fukt with the transparency again, the monkey has a rotated white box around it, i suppose it should be transparent.
• 00084-00087 stripey stuff? i have no idea how this will look in print, but i trust you know what you're doing :)
• 00093 the frill around the uppercase U collides with the P on the next line in the title.
• 00096 the dingbats behind this pic are suddenly black instead of light grey?
• 00097 not sure about the font in full-caps here, but it's your call. it also looks pretty funky, this way.
• 00098 Love this motto for the last page!

the way it looks now, i promise people are going to say it was in fact well worth the wait.

I CANT WAIT UNTIL I GET MY HANDS ON THIS IN HARDCOPY!!

Net Responds!

CRAMULANIAC

Page 1 - Moustache added.

Page 11 - Broked and semi-ed.

Page 19 - Compositionally, the left alignment is awkward right side up. If you really feel strongly about it I can rework it.

Page 20 - I've tracked out the smaller text for increased legibility.

Page 27 - Rebroked. I can't fit that on one page without it looking weirder than the few lines on another page, but what I can do is add some meat to it. "It's that easy" has been darkened.

Page 30-31: I know I'm not supposed to do that but I think the resulting slightly misaligned image will only add to the effect. Even if someone puts this together by hand, BADLY it still will get the message across because all the important elements are so big.

Page 38 - I swapped it out for what I thought fit even better.

Page 43 - I think it was 000's idea. :)

Page 48 - Pulled.

Page 51 - Kilt.

Page 49 - :D I cleared off a little more readable area and if you try really hard some of the overlapping text is barely legible as well.

Thanks Cram!

SYNAPTACLYPSE OF THE GENERATING VARIETY

I denegged your cover but left a little poomp on it.

Now that you explain it that way, I like it better and I think conceptually it has more oomph than my contortion of the idea. I don't think you're talking balls but oddly enough it's not too difficult to imagine you as a giant scrotum that can speak.

I made it look older and more worn. Can you dig?

TRIPLE ZIPPLE Hurrah, triumph! I'm glad you dig the fonts. I do think that using only the lowercase for the piece titling is worth trying out. I'll try do this for the next version, or at the very least do a few samples to compare.

After we're done with the print version (since it's the most finicky) we can start fine tuning the non-printing, online PDF version. I've looked at the files on Preview and Acrobat and haven't noticed the problems you're referring to. What program are you viewing them with?

00010 - Maybe. I'm a bit ambivalent about it too. I was playing off the "Bare Minimum" idea but there are other ways to have fun with it.

00023 - I'd appreciate it if you'd do the cutting.

00029 - Thanks, it was an unusual amount of paragraph breaks that I massaged the best I could.

00030 - Ha!

00033 - Good call.

00035 - I dunno, I think any complexity behind those capitals could easily obscure them. Could you procure the image and maybe a quick sketch of what you're thinking? I'm not sure of what you mean by grey thingy or in terms of the asshat smilie.

00043-00046: I preserved his line breaks almost precisely, if I remember correctly. I'll do another comparison version as I'm planning for the piece titling. 00045 - Those shouldn't be spaces, it should be an arrow: ——> I kinda like the bomb where it is, this way it looks like the fuse is burning.

00049 - That's the way they wrote it. :/

00051 - Broked. Typographic conventions favor using small caps for acronyms that are pronounced.

00055 - I added the hand in the 8th version, and I adjusted it to point more precisely.

00059-61: Yes, I used an EPS instead of a TIF bitmap ....

00084 - It will be slightly irritating but tolerable in order to better induce a bit of madness in the reader. Mwah ha ha!

00093 - Defrillinated.

00096 - Yes. This is kind of like a frame that lets you know where the book started and ended to create closure. It also is used on 00008.

00097 - I can dig it.

00098 - In terms of content or typography?

Thanks dude!

Netaungrot 04:00, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Ninth Draft - Released Dec 20, 2008

one file http://www.megaupload.com/?d=5I1A2F82

This draft reflects changes discussed above (SillyCybin has been replaced with P3nT4gR4m just after the PDF was made so it's not in there).

Still need to dig into the To-Do list.

Netaungrot 12:44, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

Process note

Once we finish the design phase I'll start the laborious process of making our book ready to be printed. What this means is that I'll be replacing dingsplosions, and graphics with just the right amount of resolution and ink density so that they are high quality but not excessively large. Then I'll be fitting our layout into A4 spreads. After these print files are done, I'll be doing another set of production specs for the non-printing PDF version.

Also, if I don't receive Zarathud sketches and specific placement ideas by the morning of Dec. the 27th (this Saturday) I'll start doing this myself. I'd like to focus on getting the rest of the pieces in that are in the To-Do list and pairing them with graphics/illustrations.

I'm working on breaking our PDF into smaller pieces so it's easier to download, however I have PDF issues again that are making this difficult.

Netaungrot 01:49, 23 December 2008 (UTC)