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Post by zanshin on Feb 28, 2010 14:22:58 GMT -5
I think most people who have been following the zine have seen it now. If you haven't and it isnt available yet through RPG Now, pm me with your email and i'll 'Send It' to you. What I am asking for here is for people to post here Favourite Article, and why. Less favourite articles, why and how we can improve. What you would like to see in the zine in future. Please try and be constructive in your criticism , but don't be afraid to make points that will improve the Zine. Thanks!
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Post by Aramis of Erak on Mar 1, 2010 4:08:20 GMT -5
The D&D conversions; it's always been easy to go the other way... but T&T to D&D has been a bit of a bugaboo.
The general use font doesn't render well on my machine; quite possibly due to use of the "export to PDF" rather than "print to PDF" mode. Sticking to a "common pdf" font for content, and the more artsy fonts only for headers and titles might be a better choice.
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Post by zanshin on Mar 1, 2010 4:42:16 GMT -5
Aramis - so was that a positive for the D&D conversion or a negative? Thank you for the point regarding the font. What would you suggest would be some of the better fonts to use? Arial? Verbena? Times New Roman?
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quoghmyre
7th Level Troll
The Summer Troll
Posts: 1,048
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Post by quoghmyre on Mar 1, 2010 5:01:08 GMT -5
Thank you for you comments. Fonts are like beer, everyone has their preferred taste, I love Monteiths. I choose Oregon LDO Book as the body font for 2 reasons, firstly it's not a "common pdf" font and secondly it should feel familiar to anyone who has T&T 5 rules.
Personally I hate the uniformity that Word and Adobe have brought to DTP, but that's a whole other rant. But rest assured you won't be seeing any Helvetica, Times New Roman or Arial, while I'm on the job.
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Post by zanshin on Mar 1, 2010 5:33:28 GMT -5
Good point well made Quogmyre . I certainly love the look of the Zine. Just searching for that elusive happy medium! More replies! Theres a free copy of the second issue in it for you
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quoghmyre
7th Level Troll
The Summer Troll
Posts: 1,048
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Post by quoghmyre on Mar 1, 2010 6:20:40 GMT -5
Don't let me discourage your comments. We do want the Zine to be the best it can be. Often knowing why things are the way they are helps. My goal was to make the Zine, unique and beautiful, to look great printed and still easy to read on screen. I've been working with fonts, both from a user and designer for too many years. I have even computerised 2 fonts for professional use, back when there weren't the wonderful range we have now. Nothing like working for a font designer to learn about the art.
Choosing the fonts I did was not a light decision, those who saw the very first draught will know I changed one font as I felt it just didn't work. Selecting fonts is an art and one that I'm just a journeyman, I know a few designers who have a real gift in this area.
I'm happy to revisit my choice of fonts but they won't be replaced with any of the nasty 3.
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sligo
4th Level Troll
Read my blog: http://indysligo.weebly.com/
Posts: 495
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Post by sligo on Mar 1, 2010 6:42:33 GMT -5
I can understand the aversion to the common fonts, but what was said up above was the same thing I said in a private email. My suggestion is to use a font that is easier to read for article text, and stick with the cool fonts for titles, sidebars, and section headers. If you want to use different fonts for different articles, that's fine - just as long as it's an easy-to-read font.
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Post by Aramis of Erak on Mar 1, 2010 11:00:09 GMT -5
Aramis - so was that a positive for the D&D conversion or a negative? positive. Thank you for the point regarding the font. What would you suggest would be some of the better fonts to use? Arial? Verbena? Times New Roman? Time, Helvetica, Courier, Symbol, Zapf Dingbats: all are default on-screen fonts and look good printed and on screen Arial is pretty common, and looks good on screen. Arial Narrow and New Helvetica Narrow also look good on screen. I've not seen verbena on anything but a windows install. Oregon needs a decently large dpi to look good, at least 150; full page onscreen (my normal reading mode) is effectively* 90dpi, at which point Oregon looks rather bad, lacking consistent whitespace; helvetica doesn't. Edit: for reference, my ebook reader screen is 800px tall...and loses 30 of that to interface overhead. So it also gets about 90dpi for the logical page; real DPI is about 180. *the page is 770px tall, and is an 8.5" logical page... effictively, 90dpi, even tho' the screen's actal DPI is different.
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Post by zanshin on Mar 1, 2010 12:32:13 GMT -5
Thank you Aramis , i'm glad it worked for you
'I've not seen verbena on anything but a windows install.'
And on Trollbridge lol (Verdana actually, but its my error!)
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quoghmyre
7th Level Troll
The Summer Troll
Posts: 1,048
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Post by quoghmyre on Mar 1, 2010 15:03:11 GMT -5
I'm not entering a Font war, I've made my position clear. If you want something different, I'm happy to hand the job over to someone else.
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sligo
4th Level Troll
Read my blog: http://indysligo.weebly.com/
Posts: 495
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Post by sligo on Mar 1, 2010 15:11:45 GMT -5
I can see it now... An squad of Tahoma "R"s flanking a division of Helvetica Vowels as they march toward an Arial stronghold.
Quog - the work you've put in to this project is admirable. However, you guys did ask for feedback, and you got what you asked for.
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quoghmyre
7th Level Troll
The Summer Troll
Posts: 1,048
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Post by quoghmyre on Mar 1, 2010 16:58:27 GMT -5
Feedback away, but just keep in mind that a lot of thought has gone into some decisions, others not so much. This process also allows us to feedback to you why we made these decisions and find ways of improving. But at the end of the day the buck stops here, we make the hard choices. If others want to make those choices then fine, I'm happy to pass over the job. I'm not going to make the Zine less than the best I can, even by popular vote. That's the joy of voluntary work, you get the make the hard choices to the best of your ability.
In this case, is perfect on screen readability worth the trade off against mundane and boring? Some of the fonts I considered were Optima, Palatino and Garamond. My call is: Oregon is a great balance, it's a body font designed for reading, it scales well on screen and looks stunning printed. There are other fonts that also meet this criteria, but Oregon also has a great T&T feel to it.
One of my major disappointments of the printing of the T&T 7 is the boring font choices, I think Liz did a far better job with 5.
Here's a question that I'm not sure on. I started spreading the solo though the Zine, as they used to be in SA, but that added a huge amount of extra work and it would have still ended up with big chunks on single pages. I opted for keeping all the articles together and printable in sections. That way if you only wanted to print one or 2 sections you could use From Page To Page. So is easy printing of sections more important than spreading the solo through the whole Zine?
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sligo
4th Level Troll
Read my blog: http://indysligo.weebly.com/
Posts: 495
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Post by sligo on Mar 1, 2010 20:34:24 GMT -5
As clever a mechanic of spreading the solo through the zine, I have two problems with it:
1. Spreading it out hides the possibility that it is a very short, and probably lame solo. It's a clever gimmick, not a primary feature.
2. Since our primary method of distribution is electronic, playing the solo on screen with it spread out will be very difficult. All together I can just print the selected pages if I want a hard copy, and I'm not forced to print stuff I don't want.
Spread out, you're forced to reference paragraphs by page number, which requires a lot more editorial work.
In other words... Keep it consolidated.
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Hogscape
11th level Troll
Stalwart of the Trollbridge
It's not the years, it's the mileage.
Posts: 2,126
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Post by Hogscape on Mar 1, 2010 20:56:55 GMT -5
I haven't had a chance to look at any of the content yet (but soon will get stuck in) but a quick scan tells me it's visually impressive!
The proof will be in the feedback received from non-'Bridge members...
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Post by mgtremaine on Mar 1, 2010 22:36:19 GMT -5
Leave the solo's together as you did. I printed my TrollsZine out today and spent some time reading it. It's very good I'm really impressed with everyones efforts. I'll pick out my favorite bits after some more reading.
-Mike
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