Artifice

[vianegativa]

I have a request for all my friends in LJ Land that are graphics designers or layout artists.

As I'm always overdoing this that and the other, I have decided to try to put together a player's campaign guide for my Star Trek game. Something bright, shiny and probably far beyond my capabilities to make.

I need to essentially layout pages like you might in Quark Xpress, but its been years since I used that program. Does anyone have any suggestions on a program a novice can use to lay out a book?

Also, I need to render a pretty 2-D starmap. Any suggestions?

Any help would be appreciated.

Comments

[sunflower1969.livejournal.com]

I found indesign pretty idiot-proof. But it's pricey.

[vianegativa.livejournal.com]

$197.95... and that's at student pricing. Hmn.

[ui-tomcat.livejournal.com]

no suggestions, but sounds like a fun game

[vianegativa.livejournal.com]

Why thank you. It's kind of like Cthulu meets Deep Space Nine...

[bitterlawngnome.livejournal.com]

InDesign

[vianegativa.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

[arshermetica.livejournal.com]

Use InDesign. So very intuitive and user friendly.

Either way, I SO wanna see the end result. What system are you using?

[vianegativa.livejournal.com]

That seems to be the running suggestion.

I'm using the CODA system. I'll gladly send you anything I churn out. I have a number of campaigns I want to "treat" in such a fashion.

[nfotxn.livejournal.com]

What do you have?

[vianegativa.livejournal.com]

At the moment? Good intentions and some daydreams.

[garebear.livejournal.com]

I'm with everyone else. InDesign CS3.

If you have experience with Quark, it shouldn't be too difficult to move to InDesign. For Illustrations, usually Illustrator works best, but the learning curve is brutal. It can be done with Photoshop, but you really have to keep resolution in mind; there's no really good way to reliably "upsize" a graphic; unlike Illustrator, Photoshop is raster based rather than vector.

[hereticsoul.livejournal.com]

I agree with the others...InDesign. I've yet to take my class in the program but have successfully figured it out on my own (and based on experience with other Adobe apps) well enough to layout my workout log sheets.

Given how spendy it is, you may see if Adobe still offers a 30-day trial version you can install long enough perhaps to do your project or see if you like it well enough to purchase it.

As for a 2-D starmap, I recommend Universe. You can find it at Diard Software. It's inexpensive and you can create starfield images with all kinds of great interstellar clouds and other effects. It's pretty affordable too.