Text Format

So now that I have a much better/bigger pool of images I can use for the content, I really need to enter the world of text formatting!

Richard gave us a handout, which for what I thought text would involve - was surprisingly complicated!

So much to think about...typeface, alignment, line length, leading, point size let alone type crimes and how to deal with all of this in InDesign.

Much more complicated than originally anticipated...

However, I know what I want from the book, I know the design I have in mind and a rough idea of amount of text involved, so I have at least something to get started with.

Firstly, I'm pretty adamant on the typeface being courier, or courier new, being rather digital looking and a nice comfortable reading typeface.I want the design of the book to relate closely to that of an original estate agent brochure, or similar - with digital typeface and lack of a sort of 'personality' in the spacing and alignment.

Using an online text editor, I can grab large amounts of text to experiment with in the Adobe suite. Above, is the typeface I am looking for - serif style (with flicks on the letters) and rather digital looking. Not much personality but readable, accessible and understandable.

The line lengths I will be working with along with this typeface should be about 50 - 55 characters long, paying close attention to hyphens in the middle of words, as you can see above, there is one I have missed on the right hand side at the top - which ruins the aesthetic of the words.

To handle the difficulties of hyphens and lengths of the lines not looking right, I can use the Kerning (space between characters) to make the lines fit better into the space.

 

Shown above: Kerning (accentuated for example) 

Shown Below: Leading ( the space between lines of words)

Eventually, after changing the size of the box, the line lengths and the kerning, a better shape of text is produced, shown below:

 

This still needs a lot of attention, also the production of the text content will be underway soon, I may try and get a writer involved in this.