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• • April 11, 2012 at 2:15 pm #61987
    Stephen Buck

    Participant

    Hi everyone. I am a novice InDesign and InCopy user who has completed David Blatner's “InDesign CS4 Essential Training” and Anne-Marie Concepcion's “InCopy CS4 and InDesign CS4 Workflow Essential Training” each one time on Lynda.com. I'm now watching lectures from InDesign CS4 Beyond the Basics as I have time, and when I've gotten enough of that I'll repeat all three watching everything in sequence (because there's only so much I can absorb the first time through).

    I'm an Amazon indie author who has been using Dreamweaver to create Kindle books, but now I need to go one step further and make print ready PDF's for give-aways to website visitors, and print ready PDF's that meet specific criteria provided by CreateSpace.

    For the most part I find InDesign easy to use, but there are some parts of the print publishing world that I need help understanding. Right now, I'm struggling with font size and the best relationship to its supporting baseline grid.

    I'm able to place everything on the InDesign page without any trouble, but my problem is the result. I do not understand enough of font to baseline grid theory to know what baseline grid size I should use with what font size.

    The book I'm preparing in InDesign right now uses Adobe Caslon Pro 12pt. My original baseline grid was set to 12pt, but then I changed the baseline grid to 10pt and 8pt. I printed a sample copy of each page with the different baseline grid and they all look good–but I'm also conditioned to reading paper that has 12pt Courier double-space fonts on it. Complicating the matter is that I just haven't read a printed book since the Kindle 1.0 was released, so just don't have good visual references to make sound judgements in this respect on my own at this time.

    How do I determine the best baseline grid size to use with respect to the font?

    Are there lectures on Lynda.com that I can watch that will help me understand that theory, and if so, what ones?

    Are there articles here that have already addressed my question (I searched, but didn't initially find anything in the articles I skimmed through).

    Thanks,

    Buck

  • April 12, 2012 at 12:33 am #61989
    Tim Hughes

    Member

    Sounds like rather than software skills it is time to look at this as a design issue. You refer to the baseline but setting that comes from you deciding what the leading is going to be. I could put forward 10pt type on 13pt leading as a good example, but here google is your friend, look up leading and type size, and I suggest some extra reading on grids and book design.

    Cheers and I trust you enjoy the world of type design.

  • April 12, 2012 at 1:30 am #61990
    Stephen Buck

    Participant

    That's very helpful as I have not known the best keywords to search for an answer.

    Thank you

  • April 13, 2012 at 12:52 am #61994
    Tim Hughes

    Member

    :)

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