Case Study

This is a step by step guide which shows some the work which goes into creating a book - from my perspective anyway.

The example here is the Warren Bardsley book from Peter Lloyd.

It shows how complex it can be and what is involved in producing a final file for printing.

Step 1

Client's Word file

This is the file as supplied by Peter.

It's beautifully formatted and really easy to work with.

It's got footnotes at the bottom, and has some explanatory notes and picture number references highlighted in red.

Step 2

Picture references

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Peter has highlighted in the text where the pictures are supposed to go, along with a number which refers to the particular image.

That's fine, but I'll change it very slightly to be more useful for me...

Step 3

Picture references changed

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I take out the picture reference number and place it at the end of the relevent paragraph.

The word "Pic" is removed also. You'll see later how these are dealt with.

Step 4

Importing file into InDesign

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The Word file is now ready to import into InDesign.

The cursor is placed on the page and the file imported...

Step 5

Checking import settings

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I need to check the import settings here to ensure the footnotes are imported properly, and that the italic, bold and superscript words are imported accurately.

Step 6

Missing fonts

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The text is in, but InDesign is complaining that the fonts used in the Word document are not present on my system.

That's fine, that can be fixed easily.

Step 7

Replacing fonts

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At this stage I replace all the missing fonts from the Word document with Times.

The correct font is unimportant at this stage, as they will all be applied later with the paragraph styles.

Step 8

Changing colour

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Once that's done, I change all the type to a red colour.

The paragraph styles will correctly colour the type as I go, and anything still in red stands out and will need to be fixed later.

It looks ugly at this stage, but that will be fixed shortly.

Step 9

Applying character styles

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Before I apply paragraph styles, I must ensure that all the italic and superscript characters in the document have a character style applied to them.

This prevents them from changing to the common roman font when the paragraph styles are applied.

This picture shows all italic characters having an italic character style being applied to them.

Step 10

Applying text formats

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OK, now that that's done I can apply the paragraph styles to the whole document.

Using the client's Word document for reference, I apply styles to the whole file.

It now looks much tidier. There are extra spaces between the paragraphs to be removed, and the footnotes will need looking at.

Step 11

Finalising character styles

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I'll just go in and finalise a couple of character styles now.

You'll notice the picture reference number at the end of the paragraph is now coloured green. This is so I can always see where Peter requires that picture to be. I'll remove these numbers right at the end once the chapter is finalised.

The other words showing in pink ("as shown above/below/opposite") are highlighted so Peter can see in the PDF which I send him that the picture reference in the text is correctly written. I'll edit these words as I place the pictures.

Step 12

Search and replace

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I've got to search and replace a number of things prior to pagination.

With this book, I'll be searching out hyphens, en-rules, ellipses and double spaces. These are all searched and changed if necessary so they are all correct.

This picture shows a hyphen which will be changed to an en-rule.

Step 13

Footnote numbers

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The footnote reference numbers now need to have the superscript character style applied to them. The first one here has been changed. There are plenty of them to do.

Step 14

Formatting the footnotes

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Now that they're all done, I can select the footnotes themselves and apply the paragraph style to them.

That's how they should look!

Step 15

Fixing the photos

Now we're ready for the pictures to be placed.

There are a huge number of pictures used in this book. Here are a few of them.

Each of them needs to be cropped, straightened, cleaned and then re-saved as CMYK images.

Step 16

Positioning the first picture

The first one goes on the right hand page, just below those pink words of type. Peter has indicated in green the picture number and the approximate size he requires it to be.

I've placed the picture at about the correct size, away from where it will finally be.

Step 17

Setting the text runaround

I've placed a box over where the picture will sit, with a runaround on the box to push all the type away from the area.

That looks about the right size.

Step 18

Place the pic in position

Slide the picture into position.

The runaround box is too deep, so we'll need to fix that.

Step 19

Cut the caption

Firstly, I'll cut the caption out of the text and move it to the pasteboard on the right, then remove that green wording which was used to to indicate the picture size required by Peter.

Step 20

Adjust runaround below picture

The caption goes in place below the picture, and the bottom of the runaround box is raised to the correct height.

That spacing looks about right now.

Step 21

Edit the picture reference in the text

Once the picture is placed, I edit the pink wording relating to it, so it reads correctly.

Peter will check that it is correct once he sees the PDF which I send him.

The green number at the end of the paragraph just indicates which picture should be there. It will be removed once all is OK, and that pink type changed to black.

Step 22

Placing second picture

The second picture is a much smaller one, which will go on the right side of this left hand page.

Again, I've just placed it here about the right size, out of the way.

Step 23

Place runaround box

This picture is going to sit between the two columns which are shown here as blue vertical guides. It will be as close to the pink picture reference as possible.

The runaround box shows the approximate location where the picture will sit.

Step 24

Move picture into position

This is about where this picture needs to go.

The blue guides are important to ensure that all pictures align to the grid, making sure there is a consistent look throughout the book.

Step 25

Cut the caption

I'll cut the caption out and place it to the side for the moment.

Step 26

Picture and caption in position

The caption is positioned under the picture and the runaround box is re-sized to allow the correct space below the caption.

This process is continued for each picture, in each chapter, until the whole book is complete.

There were around 500 pages in this book.