Designing a Book (2019)

Course details

Learn how to design a book that will be cherished for years to come. Nigel French breaks down the components of an elegant and readable book, starting from the ground up in Adobe InDesign. This class covers setting up your document, placing and styling text, working with images, creating the book cover, and preparing the book for printing. Follow along step-by-step as Nigel goes from a blank page to a beautiful book that proves print is very much alive and well.

Learning objectives
Setting up an InDesign workspace
Adjusting the page size and margins
Placing text
Applying text styles
Automating formatting
Adding footnotes and headers
Placing images
Fixing text details
Creating the front matter
Creating the cover
Exporting the final book

Concepts

0. Introduction

01 - Creating a book in InDesign
02 - What you should know
03 - Using the exercise files

1. Getting Started

04 - Overview of the book
05 - Setting up a workspace

2. Document Setup and Strategy

06 - Choosing a page size
07 - Setting margins
08 - Adding page numbers and running heads

3. Placing Text

09 - Placing the text
10 - Cleaning up text
11 - Choosing your typeface

4. Styling the Text

12 - Creating and applying the body style
13 - Section paragraph styles
14 - Section paragraph styles - Using a nested style
15 - Creating and applying chapter number styles
16 - Automating chapter title formatting
17 - Align text to a baseline grid
18 - Additional formatting
19 - Adding and formatting a footnote
20 - Automating character styles
21 - Adding the running header
22 - Removing unwanted headers

5. Working with Images

23 - Preparing the images
24 - Placing the images
25 - Generating captions
26 - Using (or not using) the InDesign Book feature
27 - Placing the images as anchored objects
28 - Placing inline images

6. Finessing Text Composition

29 - Recomposing text
30 - Paying attention to small details
31 - Using a GREP style to fix runt lines
32 - Fixing hyphenation and justification violations
33 - Fixing widows and orphans

7. Creating the Front Matter

34 - What is the front matter
35 - Sections and numbering
36 - Designing the title and half-title pages
37 - Formatting dedications
38 - Generating the table of contents
39 - Formatting the table of contents
40 - Creating a list of illustrations

8. Creating the Cover

41 - Setting up the cover document
42 - Designing the front cover
43 - Adding text to the front cover
44 - Designing the spine
45 - Designing the back cover

9. Preparing for Print

46 - Preflighting the finished book
47 - Exporting to print-ready PDF
48 - Archiving the project

Conclusion

49 - Next steps