Typesetting – getting down to it

The time has come to teach myself some of the finer points of typesetting before putting all the content together. This is the last day of 2023 and I’m bracketing what I need to learn through daily timetables as I get closer to my deadline of publication in the Spring of ’24.

This is probably the most efficient way of working for me as I tend to go off on various tangents if not brought back to the iron discipline of learning a new skill through timed reading/ practising.

As an ex educator I’m well aware of the distractions that can waylay a student but I also have a host of learning tools at my disposal. Yes I have a plethora of websites and YouTube tutorials I have gathered in the last few months and I have a boundless curiosity but I need to curb that for this project at least. I have spent the last few days boiling down those resources to those I need at the most basic level to get done what I need to get done.

My most invaluable tools are small notebooks where I record all the things learned and to be practised/avoided along the way.

It seems inevitable to me, now, that the next logical stage is to make a ‘real life’ prototype of the book I hope to produce. Enric Jardi‘s course Editorial Design – How a Book is Made on Domestika is a good starting point for this hands on procedure. His course on Fonts is also excellent.

So it will be out with the scalpel – the measuring board and rulers and a lot copying/ dummying up of different physical books to get a feel for the process before I apply the whole thing digitally. Here’s to a more productive new year.