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• • April 23, 2015 at 2:46 am #74893
    P. Ahmed

    Member

    Hello folks,

    Is there an Illustrator CC equivalent to David’s Real World InDesign CC? If not, what is the best book to get on Illustrator which is as comprehensive as the InDesign one?

    Thanks.

  • April 23, 2015 at 6:29 am #74902
    David Blatner

    Keymaster

    There are very few “comprehensive” how-to books anymore on any of these topics. Publishers just aren’t making much money from big books like that. Sad. I highly recommend getting a copy of “Real World Illustrator,” though I don’t think it has been updated in a number of years. But the fundamentals are critical. The lynda.com videos have become the new best training on the market, in my opinion.

    That said, I also highly recommend The Illustrator Wow! Book, which I talk about here:

    Two Books I Recommend, #1

  • April 23, 2015 at 8:32 am #74907
    P. Ahmed

    Member

    Interesting. Thank you for those book recommendations, I’ll look into them for sure.

    You know you’re right about Lynda.com, I subscribed about four months ago thinking that I would check out a course or two and unsubscribe after the first month, yeah right. Those videos are indeed very, very good, I’ve watched five of your courses now, CC Essentials, Beyond the Essentials, 10 tips on GREP, InDesign: 10 Essential Tips, and the PDF for Print one, amazing stuff, really loved knowing what settings to change a PDF to for print/the web etc., this stuff is vital when you’re just learning from home, and currently starting Murphy’s one on Styles, and then your ones on Colour and Preflight. It consolidates in a more solid way what is written in the books when you see it done.

    If you read this response, I have a question. I’m beginning to think I’m totally wrong with the spacing settings I use in general for fonts, remember I’ve no idea what you guys in the industry do so I’ve just automatically made things up and assumed that I need to increase the leading or justification options by a large amount to make things readable, I understand that I should do whatever looks good, but maybe in general I haven’t understood it because I see you guys only applying a small amount of leading to long document texts, like if it were a 12 point font maybe you guys would apply 14 or 15? Yes? But never something like 23? Which is what I would’ve done. [I know you guys are laughing now! “23? What a joker”] I was looking at your InDesign CC book and thought to myself that I’m getting it wrong cause the leading in that book doesn’t look as though it’s a huge amount and the books looks lovely. I looked at other books too and can see that the text is tighter than what I have been setting it as. Since even when I set the tracking in the paragraph to zero and applied the spacing in justifaction settings etc., I was going up to huge percentages like 170 or something, something ain’t right methinks.

    So what kind of leading do you use for long texts? Also what kind of justifcation settings?

    Thanks again.

  • April 23, 2015 at 9:05 am #74911
    David Blatner

    Keymaster

    HaKa: Whenever I design a book, here’s what I do: I grab a ruler (preferably one that has picas and points on it, as well as inches or cm) and go looking for books on my bookshelves that I like, or that match the look I’m hoping for. Then I sit down with a short stack of books and measure the distance from line to line of text (leading), the margins, the page size, and so on.

    If you’re going for an “open” airy look, then there’s nothing wrong with 23 point leading. If you’re going for dense legalese that you don’t really want anyone to read then you can try 10 point text on 11 point leading. :-)

  • April 23, 2015 at 9:05 am #74912
    David Blatner

    Keymaster

    HaKa: Whenever I design a book, here’s what I do: I grab a ruler (preferably one that has picas and points on it, as well as inches or cm) and go looking for books on my bookshelves that I like, or that match the look I’m hoping for. Then I sit down with a short stack of books and measure the distance from line to line of text (leading), the margins, the page size, and so on.

    If you’re going for an “open” airy look, then there’s nothing wrong with 23 point leading. If you’re going for dense legalese that you don’t really want anyone to read then you can try 10 point text on 11 point leading. :-)

    • April 23, 2015 at 5:25 pm #74922
      Alan Gilbertson

      Participant

      For a flexible (literally) and transparent pica/point/mm/ tool, the Galaxy Gauge is a very inexpensive choice. The company is disconcertingly retro (the website looks like it was designed in the 90s and hasn’t seen much change since), but the products are handy indeed. When you need to measure the width of a label that’s firmly affixed to a round surface, like a bottle, there’s nothing like it.

      The largest size of the eponymous gauges has a cheat sheet for proofreader’s marks, serif and sans serif type gauges, a screen density chart and screen finder, decimal-to-fraction converter, rule and bullet size charts, a circles and corners gauge, a protractor and a leading gauge. I have all of them.

    • April 23, 2015 at 9:27 pm #74925
      P. Ahmed

      Member

      Many thanks for that link to the Galaxy Gauge, Alan, seems just right.

  • April 23, 2015 at 9:07 am #74913
    P. Ahmed

    Member

    Awesome. Lovely to get an idea of how you guys do it and that the leading choice I made is ok for that look.

    Thanks.

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