August 2015 Video Tutorial -- Typesetting With Xara

[mwenz]

Thanks for the video, Gary.

Mike

[angelize]

I enjoyed the video Gary, I use all of the features you covered a lot but I liked the pizza slice bullets! The soft return is handy for doing bulleted lists where you might want two separate lines but under the same bullet point.

[Rik]

What an excellent tutorial, Gary.
I'm going to have to make notes, and practice!

OK. I tend to draw, more than anything else, but, what your tutorial does show is what can be done, and with ease.

...soft break
...personalised bullets
...baseline shift
...tracking I know about, but, there were some thoughts to keep in mind

...EXCELLENT

[Gare]

Well, Rik—

As I mentioned toward the end of the video, if you walked away knowing one more thing than you did 12 minutes ago, then I'm happy, you're happy, the girl down the block is happy, fighting has ceased in the Middle Easy, and crops are beginning to grow again in Kansas.

@Frances—



When using soft breaks, always make sure your copy is thoroughly edited correctly before using a soft break. Why? Because unlike MS Word (or other text-oriented programme), Xara will not show you as visible characters where paragraph ends are, nor spaces between characters. So if you do soft breaks and then find a spelling or grammar error, it is not fun backspacing in random areas you're guessing at to find and resolve hard and soft breaks, as well as spaces.

Speaking as someone who has gone through it and lived to tell the tale—

My Best,

Gary

[stygg2003]

Thanks for the excellent Typesetting video tut. Gary, somethings I already knew but personalized bullets, soft break, had no idea. Also at the end of your video on fade out, I was surprised to see five of my drawings, Milano-Xmas Girl-Mighty Milk-Coffee Cup and Bad Girl, absolutely made my day

Stygg

[stygg2003]

Determination Poster.

Stygg

[csehz]

Nice tips are collected together in this tutorial, thanks for it

[Gare]

Determination Poster.

Stygg

Stygg, I love your ingenuity and original thinking in combining several of the sections in the video tutorial. All are obvious and all are well done!

[Gare]

Thanks for the excellent Typesetting video tut. Gary, somethings I already knew but personalized bullets, soft break, had no idea. Also at the end of your video on fade out, I was surprised to see five of my drawings, Milano-Xmas Girl-Mighty Milk-Coffee Cup and Bad Girl, absolutely made my day

Stygg

I did that segment months ago, stygg, with the dulcimer music, and I'd forgotten (old guys tend to forget!) I'd annexed your work and put it in the clip!



You're most welcome!

My Best,

Gary

[Gare]

Here's a little something in the typographical nature that might help you on your next logo assignment:

A lot of examples of good logos involve typing a product or company name, and then altering one or two characters to emphasize the type of product or other quality. Example? Below: "Manly Cologne", a fictitious men's hygiene product, has a visually opportunity to put the symbol for Mars (the male symbol in biology) in place of the first or second "o" in "Cologne".

But you might not want to convert the text to editable shapes, given that clients always want revisions.

1. Type your logo. Highlight the character you want to alter.

2. With the character selected (using the Text tool), choose the Transparency tool, and then drag the slider all the way to the right, making only the "O" invisible.

3. Create the replacement character or graphic, and then put it into position to create a custom logo.

Simple and perhaps obvious.





Perhaps not :)

My Best,

Gary