Layout and design how-to's

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Here's one I linked to earlier - a nice little intro to using grids.

www.theexplorersco.com

Designing Layouts in RPGs — The Explorers Company

Grab your sword. In this Design Delve, we're going to learn the arcane art of designing amazing layouts for tabletop roleplaying games using the infamous grid system. Layout design is game design. Find out how to layout your next project.
www.theexplorersco.com www.theexplorersco.com
 
I've got two word: style sheets. Make them. Use them.
 
Nobby-W said:
Here's one I linked to earlier - a nice little intro to using grids.

www.theexplorersco.com

Designing Layouts in RPGs — The Explorers Company

Grab your sword. In this Design Delve, we're going to learn the arcane art of designing amazing layouts for tabletop roleplaying games using the infamous grid system. Layout design is game design. Find out how to layout your next project.
www.theexplorersco.com www.theexplorersco.com
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Lots of great stuff here. I agree with its statement on space in particular, some OSR docs are too crowded for easy reading and reference. I find the examples here first class and many of them are ones that occured to me as well!
 
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And here I've been bending Google Docs to my will with only marginal success. This is...enlightening? And making me think it might be time to get something to properly set up my game.
 
I’m using Google Docs on a Wild West game Im working on, but it’s frustrating at times. I can’t get rid of the section lines at all. They just seem to keep reproducing.
 
My big hiccup has been text hopping around and not retaining format. Its to the point im gonna try my hand at using Scribus and hope I don't muck it up too bad.
 
If you are wanting to get into desktop publishing, those articles about layout are good, but many folks are commenting on the troubles of trying to do layout in Goolge Docs.

You need to look into Scribus, which is an open source desktop publishing software.

Scribus – Open Source Desktop Publishing

www.scribus.net www.scribus.net
 
I'd actually just suggest springing for Affinity Publisher. Already cheap, it goes on sale often, handles inDesign files and PDFs as starting points, and is pretty easy to use. If it's something short, there are other online options- I know for GameChef and 24/48-Hour RPG contests, I fall back on GM Binder.

You can see an example of something I did in it here:

chuckdee.itch.io

Bridgers by Chuck Dee

In a war-torn city, a rag-tag group of malcontents are the only thing between it and an unspeakable enemy
chuckdee.itch.io chuckdee.itch.io
 
Rasyr said:
If you are wanting to get into desktop publishing, those articles about layout are good, but many folks are commenting on the troubles of trying to do layout in Goolge Docs.

You need to look into Scribus, which is an open source desktop publishing software.

Scribus – Open Source Desktop Publishing

www.scribus.net www.scribus.net
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I actually started teaching myself Scribus and have started the process of typesetting/formatting thanks to this thread actually.
 
Endless Flight said:
I’m using Google Docs on a Wild West game Im working on, but it’s frustrating at times. I can’t get rid of the section lines at all. They just seem to keep reproducing.
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You might be better off getting a proper composition tool. The cheapest ones are Scribus (free and supported by DTRPG) and Affinity Publisher (cheap but better UX). The other options like Indesign or Quark are either expensive or rental-only. I have Indesign CS6 (the last version before they went rental-only) but I see a few folks on this thread who use Scribus or Affinity. For layout on RPG materials any of these would do the job fine.
 
As Affinity Publisher does not provide a Linux version, I'm using Scribus. It has its issues, and after doing a bunch of novels with it, I have found work arounds for most of those issues. I would say though, try to keep your documents small. It becomes very slow with hundreds of pages.
 
AndreasDavour said:
As Affinity Publisher does not provide a Linux version, I'm using Scribus. It has its issues, and after doing a bunch of novels with it, I have found work arounds for most of those issues. I would say though, try to keep your documents small. It becomes very slow with hundreds of pages.
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Running Affinity on Linux (Finally works)

(on Fedora 30, Affinity 1.6.5.135) Information I tried to run Affinity previously, but only got to the point of VK_CHILD_WINDOW_RENDERING not being implemented and after not using Affinity Photo for a long time to stay with Linux I got the following message on Discord: So I had to try it out and ...
forum.affinity.serif.com forum.affinity.serif.com
 
AndreasDavour said:
As Affinity Publisher does not provide a Linux version, I'm using Scribus. It has its issues, and after doing a bunch of novels with it, I have found work arounds for most of those issues. I would say though, try to keep your documents small. It becomes very slow with hundreds of pages.
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If you're doing that sort of work you might be better off with TeX. There are also word-processor like front-ends for it such as LyX.
 
chuckdee said:

Running Affinity on Linux (Finally works)

(on Fedora 30, Affinity 1.6.5.135) Information I tried to run Affinity previously, but only got to the point of VK_CHILD_WINDOW_RENDERING not being implemented and after not using Affinity Photo for a long time to stay with Linux I got the following message on Discord: So I had to try it out and ...
forum.affinity.serif.com forum.affinity.serif.com
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Well, if I am going to pay money for my software, and that is regardless of the amount, I only pay for something that's built to work on my system. Using work arounds does not cut it. Also, read to the end of that thread and you'll see it does not work any longer.
 
I always get Creative Suite via work, how much does a copy of InDesign and Photoshop cost under an educational license these days?
 
Voros said:
I always get Creative Suite via work, how much does a copy of InDesign and Photoshop cost under an educational license these days?
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It's still rental only. No idea what the education pricing looks like. 25 or 30 years ago it was quite substantially discounted from retail but still a few hundred pesos. I used to have channels through which I could get stuff at education prices and the local university could supply the software, which was separate parts at the time - Pagemaker, Illustrator and Photoshop plus Streamline and other bits. They even had a catalogue.

However, my sources for such things tended to veer towards the ooo-arrrrgh-matey end of the market.

You can still buy Quark Xpress and Corel Draw without a rental arrangement. I have no idea what the educational prices for those are these days, though.
 
For layout I'd say you need InDesign and Photoshop, Illustrator is nice but something you can live without if you're not a full blown graphic designer.
 
Voros said:
For layout I'd say you need InDesign and Photoshop, Illustrator is nice but something you can live without if you're not a full blown graphic designer.
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CC comes as a bundle with it, although you can rent the bits individually. robertsconley robertsconley does this. I don't think he's getting education prices but Indesign isn't too painful by itself. I dare say it wouldn't be all that dear if you could get an education rate.

I bought CS6 just before it went rental-only and that was about £1,000 at retail prices.

Depending on what you're doing there are several reasonably credible alternatives to Photoshop. Despite what the haters say, GIMP, Krita and Paint.Net (and Corel Photopaint, for that matter) are all reasonably capable image editors.
 
Voros said:
I always get Creative Suite via work, how much does a copy of InDesign and Photoshop cost under an educational license these days?
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Since my wife is in photography, we have the sub. It's really quite reasonable for what you get - $9.99 a month gets you everything but inDesign. I guess the publishing side of it is more lucrative, as that is 20.99 a month by itself- one of the reasons I switched to Affinity. I actually use Canva and GMBinder more, though.
 
Nobby-W said:
CC comes as a bundle with it, although you can rent the bits individually. robertsconley robertsconley does this. I don't think he's getting education prices but Indesign isn't too painful by itself. I dare say it wouldn't be all that dear if you could get an education rate.

I bought CS6 just before it went rental-only and that was about £1,000 at retail prices.

Depending on what you're doing there are several reasonably credible alternatives to Photoshop. Despite what the haters say, GIMP, Krita and Paint.Net (and Corel Photopaint, for that matter) are all reasonably capable image editors.
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I currently pay $56.17 for Creative Cloud. Worth every penny. But I also make more than $50 a month from my store.

The current alternative are GIMP, Scribus (Desktop Publishing), and Inkscape (Illustration). The only thing that hard to replace is Adobe Acrobat. Everything I used was PitA. So if I had to go with one app, Acrobat would be that app. It need to make sure the final PDF for PoD is in accordance to standards of the printer.
 
I've found you can get surprisingly good results, regardless of the tools, if you have a clear design with some idea of how to get information across.

If you use many different fonts on a page, it will look messy. Headers are supposed to stand out, so there it's ok.
If you have (coloured) boxes, don't let the text extend out to the end of the box, leave some space around.
If you have sidebars and boxed text, think about how the eye flow across the page when reading. If you break up two columns with a box in the middle, the flow of reading will be broken on both columns.
For the love of all that is holy, don't have a coloured background with important text on with low contrast colours!
Also, please, please don't put a pretty picture behind the text. Readability is the first aim, prettiness comes third or fourth.

...and then know when to break the rules. :clown:
 
I am getting all my needs met by Pages for Mac.
Page templates, heading and paragraph style presets, inset capitals like they use in old manuscripts, full control of headers n footers, variable number of columns and variable widths, double-sided printing supported and the option of horizontal binding edges with landscape page orientation, automatic ToC compilation using preset headers, etc.
 
So I just found a new tool in my kit for layout - Canva. It's pretty easy to get a brochure style publication laid out in a reasonable amount of time.

This is something that I put together for my next campaign to hand out to my players.

 
I just started learning inDesign. Lots of options everywhere but I’ve been watching videos with Terry White and they’ve been very helpful. He’s good about breaking down inDesign for beginners.
 
Endless Flight said:
I just started learning inDesign. Lots of options everywhere but I’ve been watching videos with Terry White and they’ve been very helpful. He’s good about breaking down inDesign for beginners.
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Excellent and styles are your friend.
 
Endless Flight said:
I just started learning inDesign. Lots of options everywhere but I’ve been watching videos with Terry White and they’ve been very helpful. He’s good about breaking down inDesign for beginners.
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You have any links? I'm still using Publisher, but the inDesign videos have been helpful also.
 
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