Sunday, November 29, 2009

Mastering InDesign CS3 for Print Design and Production or Ultimate Blogs

Mastering InDesign CS3 for Print Design and Production

Author: Pariah Burk

Mastering InDesign for Print Design and Production shows how experienced professionals with deadlines and billable hours use InDesign efficiently and effectively. Through the case studies and interviews, readers will find inspired to look beyond the over-emphasized basic features and into the depths of InDesign's utility for real-world print design.

Most InDesign books are written for beginners, and experienced users are frustrated by them. When you already know how to make, fill, and thread a text box, the entire first half of most InDesign books is useless. But this one doesn't dwell on the basics. Mastering InDesign for Print Design and Production fulfills the promise of the Mastering series, to provide real-world skills to professionals and students. Like all Mastering books, this one includes:



• A "by pros for pros" approach: The author is an active professional working in the field of graphic arts, layout, and design, writing for professionals who want to improve their skills or learn new skills.

• Real-world examples: Running throughout the text are examples of how the various skills are applied in real scenarios, described throughout the book in the form of examples and case studies from the author's own design and consulting work, as well as interviews with other designers using InDesign on the job.

• Skill-based teaching and hands-on exercises



Although the book has a comprehensive glossary, page one begins right away speaking to the core market—print professionals—in industry terms about industry challenges. This immediately lets experienced InDesign usersknow the book is about them. The approach is humorous, making the digestion and retention of complicated information easier for the reader through quips, anecdotes, and design- and print-geek humor. But at all times the book is true to its mission: Helping a professional do their job in InDesign without frustration, confusion, or aesthetic compromise.



Table of Contents:
Introduction.

Chapter 1: Customizing.

Chapter 2: Text.

Chapter 3: Characters.

Chapter 4: Drawing.

Chapter 5: Images.

Chapter 6: Objects.

Chapter 7: Pages.

Chapter 8: Stories.

Chapter 9: Documents.

Chapter 10: Output.

Chapter 11: Efficiency.

Chapter 12: Collaboration.

Appendix: The Bottom Line.

Glossary.

Index.

See also: Bacardi and the Long Fight for Cuba or The First 90 Days

Ultimate Blogs: Masterworks from the Wild Web

Author: Sarah Boxer

“What are you working on?”
“An anthology of blogs.”
“I didn’t know you had a blog.”
“I don’t. It’s an anthology of other people’s blogs.”
“How do you find good blogs?”
“I read. I surf. I look at blog contests. I follow links. I ask people about the blogs they like.”
“Is a good blog hard to find?”
“Yes. Very.”

A Book of Blogs? WTF!!

Sarah Boxer, a former New York Times reporter and critic, travels through the blogosphere (more than 80 million blogs — and counting) and finds some masterpieces along the way. Among the bloggers in the anthology are:

two fashion critics mocking the inexplicable “fugliness” of celebrities
a Marine Corps lieutenant stationed in Fallujah in 2006
a 19-year old student in Singapore cheerfully pining for her ex
an illustrator’s tiny saga of a rodent and his ball of crap
Odysseus’s sidekick telling his side of the Iliad and Odyssey

Revealing and deceptive, grand and niggling, worldly and parochial, these blogs comprise a snapshot of life on the wild, wild Web.

Publishers Weekly

With this collection of 27 blogs culled from disparate corners of the Internet, Boxer, who writes for the New York Times, attempts to impose some kind of fixed order on a form that generally relies on the satisfaction of timely updates. For many blog-savvy readers, this collection would appear to have all the appeal of a new MP3 converted into 8-track format, but much of the writing contained in the book is well worth browsing for even the most hardened Web aficionado. The highlights in book format, predictably, are the blogs that maintain relatively tight spelling and grammar standards and focus on subjects beyond the writer's petty complaints. Benjamin Zimmer's "Language Log" reads like a wonderfully expansive and more self-aware William Safire column, while Sean Carroll's "Cosmic Variance" manages to be wryly humorous even while discussing theoretical physics at the Ph.D. level. Ringers like Alex Ross of the New Yorkerand Matthew Yglesias of the Atlantic Monthlyhardly seem like fair choices to demonstrate the democratization of the Web, but their blogs, on music and classical politics, respectively, are must-reads. Other, less conventional highlights include the neocon-spoofing comic "Get Your War On," the ruminative expat diary "How to Learn Swedish in 1000 Difficult Lessons" and the cheerfully hyperactive idea stockpile "Ironic Sans." (Feb.)

Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information

Forbes

The irony that an anthology of compelling blogs would appear in paperback is not lost on Sarah Boxer, the former New York Times Web critic and editor of Ultimate Blogs. But here it is, 27 blogs from the more than 80 million out there. Boxer has done the surfing for us, turning up a Nobel Prize laureate and U.S. Court of Appeals judge discussing immigration and global warming; a 19-year-old student in Singapore pining for her ex; an African-American arguing that King Kong is an inherently racist film. Many bare their souls, like gear-head-turned-Marine-Corps-lieutenant Jeffrey Barnett, who is thrilled to connect with the children of Abu Ghraib prisoner and yet plainly con-fesses, "That's right, we profile based on age and gender . . . and it works." Apparently there is more to the blogosphere than mere navel-gazing.—Stephanie Cooperman



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