OSR OSR Layout and Design Thread

[Fenris-77]

We have a lot of very talented folks here on ENWorld who write and publish, or would like to publish, their own RPG materials. Doing layout in a program like Affinity or (gods help you) InDesign can be overwhelming though. So many buttons! Which ones do I press? I feel your pain. I am not a professional layout guy, let's get that out up front, but I taught myself to use Affinity a couple of years ago and I've done a bunch of reading about layout and design. People seem to like my stuff anyway, which I'll take as the compliment it is.

I'm not creating this thread so I can tell people what to do so much as I think we could all use a place to ask questions about layout and design in its own space, instead of as dribs and drabs in thread about other stuff.

Here's a quick list of the things I think are fundamental to doing good layout for RPG stuff (in no particular order)

1. font choice and pairings
2. visual hierarchy
3. proper attention to white space
4. understanding grid layout options and function
5. graphic design basics
6. balance and proportion on both page and spread
7. how to find and use public domain art
8. special sauce (I like Big Macs, sue me)

There are obviously a ton more things I could put on that list, but I think it covers the basics. I will endeavor to help anyone who posts in this thread with their specific layout and design problems, but I'm quite happy to have anyone else with chops chime in, perhaps especially when they disagree me.

A few books to look at in terms of perhaps learning a thing or two about layout and design for RPGs:

Into the Odd Remastered - layout by Johan Nohr (this is my well-thumbed go-to source of inspiration)
Mork Borg - Also Johan Nohr, but I mention it more for the dungeon at the back rather that the genius art-punk the proceeds it.
Brindlewood Bay - Gauntlet Publishing - super clean, no-frills and spot on vibes
Dolmenwood - Necrotic Gnome - OMG the vibes!
Shadowdark - Arcane Library - perhaps the most viscerally functional OSR book ever published. If you want to see spreads done well, this is where to look.

Plus many more that I'm sure I'll think of as soon as I press post thread. Anyway, this is a place for questions and probably lots of pictures. Let's have some fun.

 

[Scribe]

Shadowdark - Arcane Library - perhaps the most viscerally functional OSR book ever published. If you want to see spreads done well, this is where to look.

Not to bang on the same drum I always do, but I cannot get over the way SD is presented. I would have to pull a few adventures to compare to the Cursed Scrolls, but for everything else as far as ease of use, easy on the eyes, and I mean physiological, literal easy on my eyes, I don't think I have an example to hold above it.

 

[Fenris-77]

Not to bang on the same drum I always do, but I cannot get over the way SD is presented. I would have to pull a few adventures to compare to the Cursed Scrolls, but for everything else as far as ease of use, easy on the eyes, and I mean physiological, literal easy on my eyes, I don't think I have an example to hold above it.

It's a masterclass in layout and functionality, no doubt about that. I find a lot of people seem to mistake aping the SD trade dress for actually doing the things it does well in terms of layout.

Imma just throw this out there though, I don't love Montserrat as a body font, but that takes nothing away from how functional and readable it is. An aesthetic choice on my part.

In my own stuff I pay some attention to physiological accessibility. I use 14/12 point minimum in almost everything, occasionally dropping to 11 point for dense stuff. I also make sure I use legible body font (alegreya in my case) and use enough white space to let things relax and breathe a little. I have no idea why people still drop super-dense micro-font texts when they are publishing a digital text. The teacher didn't give you a page limit, let that shizz breathe a little.

 

[Scribe]

Imma just throw this out there though, I don't love Montserrat as a body font, but that takes nothing away from how functional and readable it is. An aesthetic choice on my part.

I played around last summer with a few options, but I've got a draft and the SD book open 4 feet away on my non work desk, and I can read them both at a glance so it passes my aging eye test.

I should also say, I have no training or education in this stuff, beyond some technical writing at my tech school over 20 years ago, so it's all just feel and vibes for me, for better or worse.

 

[Fenris-77]

I played around last summer with a few options, but I've got a draft and the SD book open 4 feet away on my non work desk, and I can read them both at a glance so it passes my aging eye test.

I should also say, I have no training or education in this stuff, beyond some technical writing at my tech school over 20 years ago, so it's all just feel and vibes for me, for better or worse.

It's functional as hell, no arguments from me, I just don't really like the way it looks. Mostly I don't like the rounded somewhat modern feel of it for fantasy applications. I'll freely admit that I'm a font nut that cares probably too much about the aesthetics in some cases. All that said, it works and I'd never tell someone not to use it. Heck, I used it in my first couple of SD publications.

 

[zakael19]

SD's design really seems to be all about whitespace. Big chunks between paragraphs, large line spacing, paragraphs that are a couple of sentences. It's very spread out! I think that makes it digestible despite the black and white colors (I generally find some degree of color a la Dolmenwood helps with fatigue and comprehension). Not a huge fan of the section header font, but it's used very sparingly.

Dolmenwood's text is way denser, but the incredibly precise editing to get gorgeously justified paragraphs with those multi-tone colors to help your eye skip down from Header -> Section -> Subtopic and then well chosen emphasis bolding there. It is, I think, the most readable text I've seen.

Also god the amount of pruning they must've done to keep spreads so concise. Paging through "Running a Campaign" and it's just 2 pager after another: Starting a Campaign -> Campaign Themes -> Running Games -> Designing Dungeons, etc.

(edit: I just reopened Draw Steel again and my eyes are calling out for mercy. Black and White small scale text, no justification, no within-paragraph bolding to help digest, aaaa)

 

[Fenris-77]

SD's design really seems to be all about whitespace. Big chunks between paragraphs, large line spacing, paragraphs that are a couple of sentences. It's very spread out! I think that makes it digestible despite the black and white colors (I generally find some degree of color a la Dolmenwood helps with fatigue and comprehension). Not a huge fan of the section header font, but it's used very sparingly.

Dolmenwood's text is way denser, but the incredibly precise editing to get gorgeously justified paragraphs with those multi-tone colors to help your eye skip down from Header -> Section -> Subtopic and then well chosen emphasis bolding there. It is, I think, the most readable text I've seen.

Also god the amount of pruning they must've done to keep spreads so concise. Paging through "Running a Campaign" and it's just 2 pager after another: Starting a Campaign -> Campaign Themes -> Running Games -> Designing Dungeons, etc.

(edit: I just reopened Draw Steel again and my eyes are calling out for mercy. Black and White small scale text, no justification, no within-paragraph bolding to help digest, aaaa)

Whitespace is so key. More of it lets the readers eye (and brain) relax a little between bites. You need to have separation between elements for proper reading and comprehension.

I added Dolmenwood to my list of books in the OP precisely because of how well it subtly uses colour to direct the readers eye and add structure to the dense layout.

I started reading Draw Steel the other day and had the same reactions. Oh vey. It might be my copy, but the font they chose isn't nearly as legible white on black as I would have wanted. Too many fine strokes in the font and it looks all wobbly.

 

[zakael19]

It's not OSR, but I actually really like Daggerheart's text. Lots of shapes and colors to break things up, and coded by section. There's a specific thing they do with callout boxes where it's a shaded color with fine darker lines top and bottom that I think is really attractive (and the color matches the chapter's theme colors).

 

[Fenris-77]

It's not OSR, but I actually really like Daggerheart's text. Lots of shapes and colors to break things up, and coded by section. There's a specific thing they do with callout boxes where it's a shaded color with fine darker lines top and bottom that I think is really attractive (and the color matches the chapter's theme colors).

View attachment 432110

The colour callouts are nice, yeah. A feature I really like there is the slimmer font for Step 7 compared to the title that follows it. Some folks just use big-smaller-smallest (or black-bold-regular) for everything in their hierarchy but that doesn't always do the trick. In this case, the fact that it is step seven is less important (visually) that what step it is, so the title can (and does) get the most visible treatment.

Edit - it's still dense AF though, which I don't love, but that's a taste thing up to a point.

 

[Marc Radle]

We have a lot of very talented folks here on ENWorld who write and publish, or would like to publish, their own RPG materials. Doing layout in a program like Affinity or (gods help you) InDesign can be overwhelming though.

Just out of curiosity, why ‘God help you InDesign”?