InDesign Magazine Issue 73: The Food Issue
We’re happy to announce that InDesign Magazine Issue 73 (May, 2015) is now available!
Here’s what the issue includes:
- Pamela Pfiffner explores the world of designing and producing restaurant menus
- Chad Chelius reveals his recipe for efficiently producing distinctive cookbooks (includes a downloadable template!)
- Claudia McCue shows how to get started working with edible printing
- Diane Burns shares the story of Da Capo Press, a publisher whose cookbooks promote good nutrition and healthy lifestyle choices
- Nigel French takes us deep into the world of sans-serif fonts
- GREP of the Month: Peter Kahrel shares an alternative to the traditional lookbehind expression that is as powerful as it is obscure
- Best of the Blog
Remember, you can find every issue of InDesign Magazine here, or by clicking Magazine above.
(And remember, monthly subscribers only get access to the current month’s magazine. Annual subscribers get this month’s issue plus 10 years of back issues!)
Enjoy!
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Great issue. I was hoping there would be a few more tips about making a truly functional cookbook ePub. They are particularly challenging. Fixed layout? Reflowable? Best GUI? I have been struggling with finding best way to convert my daughter’s cookbook, Van Made Recipes, to an epub. And wondering if I should go to the trouble of designing it differently for different readers or find the common denominator between the readers and just go with that.
Annette, what’s interesting (and challenging) about cookbooks is that they can go either way, as fixed-layout or reflowable. Fixed-layout is easier, and arguably “prettier,” but distribution is limited, and users have to have a largish tablet to really be able to use them.
Reflowable epubs can be viewed basically anywhere (including Kindles) but layouts like cookbooks need to be redesigned.
You can find nice examples of each. I have lynda.com tutorials on making both reflowable and fixed-layout epubs, but only show a cookbook example in the Creating Fixed Layout EPUBs from InDesign title.
https://www.lynda.com/InDesign-tutorials/Creating-Fixed-Layout-EPUBs-InDesign-CC/169624-2.html
Who uses their kindle to view a cookbook nowadays? If you are designing a cookbook (and any book that includes graphics) – don’t worry about old legacy tablets that no one is using… create for the iPad and modern full color tablets. Fixed layouts are where its at.. Kindle supports it now as well…. reflowable is great for text only books… skip it!
Thank you, Ann-Marie and Funnyouask. Answers from the opposite ends of the spectrum.
I think the cookbook itself needs to be taken into consideration. It is aimed at the camping and #vanlife community who travel with very few possessions. So the question, it seems, is “what epub reader does this community use the most?” I think I will start with the fixed layout, but continue on and create a reflowable version for the “old fashioned” first generation kindle users. It will be good practice. If I can make a reflowable epub from a cookbook I will be able to make a reflowable epub from anything!
Funnyyouask, which fixed-layout cookbooks (or fixed-layout anything other than kid’s books and comics) are you finding on the Kindle?