Request for layout opinions.

[mroberon1972]

Now that things are getting relativily (haha) back to normal, I was wanting to get other publishers opinions of the layout designs I am trying. Here are links to two pdf examples I am currently offering.

http://www.ancient-awakenings.com/singlepages/Modern Magical Medical.PDF

http://www.ancient-awakenings.com/singlepages/Gateways.PDF

I thank you for your time, and any comments you might offer.


Mr. Oberon
"When using the iron fist, please cover with a velvet glove. Either that or use lots of vaseline..."

 

[astralpwka]

Hi Mr. Oberon!

They look very "clean" and modern.

Modern Medicine balances well, despite being one column. The side boxes are going to demand a lot of attention to balance out against the main column, but can be used effectively, similar to the way Steve Jackson Games books appear.

The b&w layout with Gateway magic clashes when I see the color picture. I think it would look cool with an electric blue border (same style though). The other thing that I notice that stands out is your gutter space. I print my pdf's front to back, and this pdf looks like it wants to be single-sided. I would recommend taking the border right to the edge, but I don't have experience doing that type of border. I also use FinePrint drivers to do my pdf printing, which allows me (as a consumer) to control the gutters.

Good luck on your endeavors!

Garth Wright
Khan's Press

 

[Fast Learner]

You're looking for comments and critique so I'm going to be very specific about some things that I think would make the documents look cleaner and more attractive. Please accept all critique as constructive in intent.

Modern Medicine: Nice layout overall, quite workable if you can keep the gray column full. For more of the 3D effect I suggest moving the light source up a bit, either to the upper-right or the upper-left so that the frame gets highlights and shadows on its upper and lower edges as well. Unless it's intended for on-screen reading only, the type size of the main text is too large... you could easily drop it a point or two. To indicate a new paragraph start you're using two things, both space above the paragraphs and a first line indent: either one is fine on its own, but both are unnecessary. For print there seems to be an excessive border on the inside and considerably insufficient on the outside, top, and bottom. To sum, a nice clean modern look that I feel just needs some tweaking.

Gateway Magic: See my comments above on the 3D effect, margins, text size, and paragraph indicators. In the header area there's too much leading (linespacing) between the words "Modern" and "Awakenings" -- you'd get a nice balanced feel if the overall height of "Modern Awakenings" was roughly the same as the optical height of "Gateway Magic", and reducing the leading would help quite a bit in that regard. The box around the Forward is unnecessary -- the whole page is already boxed just fine and the header ("Forward") does a perfectly good job of setting the section off. The third layer of boxes is unnecessary as well (and the faux drop shadow is pretty unattractive in my opinion) -- the bold type does a fine job of setting those items off on its own.

With such narrow columns and large font size the fully-justified text ends up with a lot of distracting "rivers" of whitespace (clumps of extra space between words that produce a distracting effect) -- squint a bit when you're looking at the page to see them very consciously. Normally I'd recommend a ragged-right format but with the modern feel you're going for I suggest reducing the type size (as above) a point or two (which it needs anyway) and the rivers should clear up quite a bit.

Since you're using bold type to indicate heads and subheads it would probably be better to use italics to slightly emphasize words (like "was" in the lower part of the left column on page 3) -- italics don't needlessly draw the eye to the word when you're scanning the page but will still serve as emphasis when your'e reading the text.

On page 4 the class features have a first line outdent effect that's not necessary and just eats space -- they'd look just fine flush left with the bolded first words. The callout box on page 4 ("Gateway Formula") would be cleaner with a light gray background instead of the heavy outline. If you'd prefer the outline I suggest reducing its thickness by at least half. Similarly the table below it would be just fine with no outline at all, though if you really want it then I suggest reducing it a fair bit as well. Where you are using first line indents alone to indicate new paragraphs (the spell descriptions) they're deeper than they need to be... about 2/3 of their existing depth would be neater looking.

 

[jmucchiello]

Now that things are getting relativily (haha) back to normal, I was wanting to get other publishers opinions of the layout designs I am trying. Here are links to two pdf examples I am currently offering.

Is this for print of PDF? For PDF, the gray sidebar on every page of hospital.pdf is just going to eat ink cartridges for lunch. I don't like that layout style unless you make use of the sidebar on 90% of the pages. GURPS books manage though to use that style without using the gray background.

Gateways: Page 4 is very busy. Having a table and skill sidebar box along with all of the headings makes it to find your way through that page. Why do you explain the column headings on the class table. D20 players know what a class tables is. Also, the class table should have a label. Why is the d20 logo faded on page 1? I don't think you're allowed to change the color values of the d20 logo.

Also, not a layout issue, but your Copyright notice on the OGL for the SRD is not correct. Copy the text directly out of SRDLegal.rtf in the 3.0 SRD or out of Legal.rtf in 3.5 SRD.

 

[mroberon1972]

Thanks so far for the info!

jmucchiello:
Why do you explain the column headings?
Because not all D20 gamers remember those terms. If you don't add it, someone is going to want it.
Header?
Thanks, you're probably right.
SideBar?
You have a point, but this will be print and pdf. I can always have the PDF version with just a box.

Fast Learner:
Thanks for the opinions and thoughts. They actually seem very well though out and I will definatly take them to heart.

astralpwka:
Thanks, Glad you liked it as much as you did!


Mr. Oberon
"Hmnnn... Verrry Interesting..."

 

[Cergorach]

I wrote an hyku:

Empty gray boxes... A waste.
Text font... Big.
Black lines... To thick.

 

[jmucchiello]

Why do you explain the column headings?
Because not all D20 gamers remember those terms. If you don't add it, someone is going to want it.

Well, most publishers write out the terms "Base Attack Bonus", "Fort Save", "Ref Save", and "Will Save" But I didn't get into things like: You say "Hit die" 1d4", WotC (and most everyone else) doesn't put the 1 there.

 

[mythusmage]

Now that things are getting relativily (haha) back to normal, I was wanting to get other publishers opinions of the layout designs I am trying.

About the Hospital PDF. Not really a publisher, yet, but here's my take anyway.

Font: Works good on screen, but for a print product you really need to use a serif typeface. In addition, make it 2 points smaller. You'll be able to fit more on a page and it will look better for the column size used.

Border: It's distracting, dump it. That'll give you more space to work with. with the extra space and a smaller type you should be able to use two columns and make reading easier.

Sidebars: A lighter shade of grey would work better, both from the viewpoint of printing the PDF, and for reading. Also, you do have too much 'white space' at the end of your sidebars. End the column after the last line.

Paragraphs: Either use indenting or a space between paragraphs. Not both. In addition, never 'tab' to indent the first line of a paragraph. Any decent wordprocessor will let you set the first line indent on a paragraph.

Paragraphs 2 and 3 on the first page: Merge them. Arabeal's reply to the high priest would then read, '...he replied, "Would you deny..."'. The way you have it now is jarring.

Typos: The hospitals may be found practically everywhere, but they would be a common sight throughout the land.

Aside from that I rather like what I saw. It's different. It's actually fairly well written. It would make a good addition to most any campaign. It takes a common D&D trope into account and considers it's impact on society. We need more of that in this business.

BTW, I print out long PDFs when I can. I'm not comfortable reading them on screen. When printed out most PDFs I've gotten tend to suffer compared to their appearance on-screen. Smudging, busyness, the sort of thing. So for folks like me keep the layout clean. Keep the shading to a minimum, use line art for decoration and so on. I'm obviously not the typical PDF buyer (going by the ones people drool over), but I prefer something that's comfortable to read rather than something that looks neato keen on a monitor.

YMMV