gOOd Reads, Novel, Novelist, Writer, Writing, Blogger, Free Books, Free Serialized Books,
It seems, nic has a relative who has worked in the printing industry all his life. A few minutes with him as transformed my understanding of page layout. His advice was pure gold, so let me share his wisdom with you. I must invite him to dinner, and this time make notes. I've forgotten so much already. The main things I remember most are:
1. Style.
2. Fonts.
3. Whitespace.
4. Images.
Style.
He emphasized the importance of developing and refining your own style and applying it consistently. He used my Blog as an example of what he meant. Likening it to a magazine, the title page would be the banner, and as such its name 'nicah la Cortes' should be displayed prominently.
Continuing the theme of a magazine, the banner of front page should tell the reader what is inside, the headlines, in this case 'Blog Design'. We call this the headlines and it should be treated as such. Make it big and bold. Sometimes we need to add an explanation, ' A Professional's Tips on Layout'. It needs to be brief and pithy. Finally the message, or 'call to action'. In this case it's what it can do for you. Save you time and money. Who doesn't want to save time and money?
He complimented me on my choice of Title and Headlines color, great for contrast, it punches out! I didn't like to tell him it's just the color of my favorite lipstick and nails.
The next thing he told me about was format. Apparently there are a slew of standard sizes of stuff. I hinted at this in my previous blog when I told you I loaded an app called 'Social Slides'. If you haven't loaded it yet you probably want to now. This handles all the faff of sizing whatever. Just click it from the 'add-ons' menu and check whatever format you want. It's got a few other useful functions as well. Check it out!
Fonts.
When I started, a few weeks ago, I wrote everything using the default font. It looked rubbish. I like sans serif fonts so I changed it to Arial. It looked better, but it wasn't doing it for me. I put an image on the top of the blog like a cherry on the top and published. The next attempt was as equally wanting. I needed help!
Nic to the rescue. He reformatted the earlier blog added a split image in one and quotes in curly things the ---- o O o ---- thingy, and color. It helped. For the next attempt I threw in everything, images, slide shows and videos. It got my highest viewing figures.
I'm still trying, my professional adviser told me how to make a book cover and use fonts. My first attempt was a little timid, just a professional image, my name in Arial and the title name using Arial (italic). I also went with scarlet text. Wow! What a difference! I love it. You can see it on the 'Searching for Love' blog. Pinterest viewers loved it too!
My professional adviser also told me the trick when using different fonts. 'Use them sparingly.' A maximum of three or four different fonts of differing sizes and strength. Use color to add emphasis in place of size. And judicious use of slant, as I call it. He also suggested changing to Verdana instead of Arial. It is slightly bigger and its spacing is wider, I can't remember the technical term he used, but I can see the difference and I like it. I've adopted this as standard in all my writing. He called it a 'signature'.
You can see the latest attempt at the banner at the top of this blog. You can also my latest book covers on my site https://www.nicahlacortes.com. You know I never imagined I could be so excited by designing a book cover. I'll blog about that in my next blog. Spoiler alert, it didn't go to plan. Needless to say the software team of Murphy and Sod made an unwelcome appearance.
Whitespace.
White space is important. I can't remember what he said, but I know he talked a lot about it. Apparently, various publications have a formula to ensure the page is pleasing to the eye. Most experienced editors and compositors can eyeball it, but the format does exist. All we need to know is that we should have a balance of between twenty-five and fifty percent white space for our writing.
Like eating, 'smaller bites are easier the swallow and digest than big chunks'. Yeah! I remembered that! Write in small paragraphs, of three or four short sentences. Make the font big enough to read easily and don't crowd stuff in, let it have room to stand out or pop.
It make be called 'white space' but that doesn't means it should always be black on white. If you find you need to use a color background you should make the text standout or pop. Use colors from the opposite side of the color wheel for the text and background. The words are the message. When was the last time you bought a book or magazine because you admired the typesetting, the font, or the white space?
Can you see the problem with this, compared with this? Why do so many packaging designers fail at this?
That brings me to the last item, images. OK, it's an extreme example, but the above example illustrates two things: That color choices are critical, and a picture is worth a thousand words!You can see how a banner image pops the blog. Easiest trick is to resize an image. Blogger has five sizes for images all available at a click. Nic showed me how to split the images into slices using the crop tool. The simplest is in two vertically or horizontally, but your own imagination is the only limit.
The 'lips' image I use for my icon is a prime example. My signature 'scarlet' was used with a circle and the outside was cropped and sized appropriately. I guess you could use any shape, I saw one in a heart shape. By the way the images of the twin's hair was a heart shape before I split it.After nic showed me the trick of splitting an image, btw it literally only takes two minutes, I wondered what else could I do. The answer; build collages. The app 'Open PhotoPad' which sits inside my Google Chrome Browser (downloaded free from the Google App Store) has a function to do that and lots of templates. I know a half a dozen photo manipulation apps the can do the same including Googles own 'Photos' app.
One last tip before moving on. To get more white space around images use a frame flow around them. Use the same color for the frame as the background and no one will notice it. Apparently, the text will flow around the image with a standard margin. Using the frame trick looks like it has a bigger margin, more white space.
-------------- o O o --------------
Moving on
Finally I'll tell you the best time saving hack I found. I mentioned 'Social Slides', its an app that re-formats slides to popular social media page sizes with a single click. It cuts the time and the faff it takes to achieve a professional finish.
I opened a new 'Slide' (Docs - Slides) and using the main menu I chose 'Add-ons', 'Social Slides' and 'Start designing'. Then chose the side bar and clicked 'Sizes' and 'Blog Featured Image'. The app paused and opens a new page at the appropriate size. The hard stuff is done now.
I always upload the images I need the evening before I need them. Its one of those tasks I can do while I'm watching TV. It's just looking at pictures and saving the ones I want on my hard drive.
So, I upload the image I want and position the text, save it and done. I have a style or signature, Bungee for headlines (scarlet), Pacifico for script (usually grey), and Verdana (black) for the rest. It's been reduced to a formula, me signature. It's my signature, not yours, get your own, don't steal mine!
One last thing. I found this as I was writing this. You can the Social Slides sidebar with 'Overlay' to build an invisible 'Frame' to use with white space by setting the appropriate colors and setting 'opacity' to 0.01.
That's all for now folks.
Regards nicah
Comments