November 2013 Xara Xone Tute: Page Design Part One

[mwenz]

What a good year for tuts 2014 is looking like! Not to say 2013 isn't/wasn't...But I really like this "topic" list above.

This is how I look at this subject. Before I draw that ball (or Christmas ornament), illustration/chart or what have you, I have to have concepts of where they are going, how is it going to meld with the other elements on the page, how will the page be structured, etc. No sense in drawing an ubber complex chart if I am only going to have 1 or 2 column inches to display the info.

Anyway, looking forward to it.

I got carried away on the word "grid" and applied it to a peeve I have. I did just discover what I thought was a bug only appears to apply to RTF pasted text. I'll have to investigate before I call bug again...

Back to worky.

Mike

[Gare]

There are plenty of people who are more experienced in the definitions, functions, and intricacies of Xara than I. Also, there are a passel of technicians who wield Xara as though it's a camera, and they succeed!

So it's real simple: I try to approach making Xara easier and more fruitful by the "holistic" method. Not spiritual or spacey, as the term has become characterized as, but rather the original "Holism is characterized (but not defined) by comprehension of the parts of something as intimately interconnected and explicable only by reference to the whole." —Many online dictionaries

Draw some concentric circles. The inner-most one are Xara's tools; working outwards, there's Xara, outside of that is your OS, and then your computer, and the outermost we'll want to declare is Artwork.

I'm just stepping outside of the concentric circles to try to show the larger picture. And that's why I got lost in the page design theme this month and why it was so late to the forum.

People who want to tune in want results. And to do this, the learning needs to happen in stages.

I'm far less boring in person, honest!

-g

[Boy]

I'm far less boring in person, honest!

"Boring" is one of the last words I would use to describe you.

[angelize]

We use a grid for laying out Good Morning Sunshine. Our layout is a standard US letter size page (8.5 by 11 in) double page spread. each page is laid out using a 3x3 grid we have no bleed but we do have a page margin, gutters and column breaks. (some of this Gary hasn't covered yet) We use the grid to layout our columns and align the ads. For the pages I have a template with guidelines set up, but often when doing the ads the grid is in my head

Here is a grid based layout I did this summer for one of our advertisers.

[mwenz]

Here's a couple contributions to Gary's tut. Bleed and Safe area rectangles (which I wouldn't otherwise illustrate but for this tut) are on non-printing layers. And because it is hard for me to stick to an actual tutorial, the layout has been changed to a 5" x 7" card for the first one.

The second was a full page as if it were a magazine article. Pay no attention to the ruler lines...they were just there so I could ensure the text baselines align across the columns. The stock photo I used for the background has elements that roughly hit the three main columnar grid.

Mike

[Gare]

Cool, Mike.

And you've just opened another topic for next year, and that's typeface selection and fitting text. I know there are "quickies" because we all have stuff to do this year, but ifI sat down and thought a lot about how font choices, stacking, and justification would help get the text message across and support the grpahic a little better, well, then we'd be in episode 7 or something .

That's not the point of my posting, though. You're one of the few members who is seizing this understanding of a virtual grid and doing something with it. Others will follow for sure, but thanks for truning in an education effort as early as you did!

My Best,

Gary

[mwenz]

Thanks, Gary.

It's going to be a fun series when they crop up. Looking forward to them all!