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Making Magazines with Blurb’s BookWright: An Interview with Trevor Ehle
Recently, I had the chance to chat with Trevor Ehle, the Senior Product Manager at
Blurb who’s been working on
BookWright.
BookWright
is a great new way to make a book, and more importantly, a magazine.
Let me share his insider information about the new things you can do
with
Blurb that make it pretty easy to make a magazine—whether you’re an experienced designer or not.
Apparently, building the foundation for your magazine using words and images in
BookWright
is pretty much the same process as making a book—but there are some
differences, according to Trevor Ehle, that you should keep in mind
before you start. Here are Trevor's tips for making a stunning
magazine...
- "The
magazine format has the option of printing images and/or text on the
inside of the front and back cover. We think this is a nice design
addition that is exclusive to this print format. You’ll find it in the
'Covers' section of BookWright."
- "To keep printing costs as low as possible, Blurb
requires that all magazine page counts be divisible by four—so keep
that in mind when setting up the content for the pages portion of your
book. You can always add blank sheets at the end to make your magazine
fit this page count. But don’t worry—BookWright will let you know on upload if your magazine’s page count is incorrect."
- "The
magazine’s spine is relatively small, even at larger page number
counts, so it might be best to use an image, background color, or
texture on the spine in place of text. Given the limited space that is
available and the variation of the printing process, you are more likely
to get a final product you are happy with if you stay away from using
text."
- "BookWright
has soft proofing built in. If you have ever visited our [color
management page] you know how complicated this can be—yet it’s an
important part of your book design process. We’ve taken Blurb's ICC Profile for color management and integrated it directly into BookWright to help save you time and make it available for everyone—regardless of technical ability."
- "As
you drop images into your book, we automatically apply the color
profile to help manage colors more closely. (However, this can also be
disabled in your Preferences view, if you wish to work without it.) If
you are designing an ebook, BookWright
will disable the profile automatically so you see the true colors,
since digital files do not, obviously, need to be calibrated for print."
Are your creative juices flowing? Are you ready to publish the next Life magazine? Bookmark these tips, then head on over to Blurb. Right now, Blurb is offering 15% off on all printed products for returning customers and 25% off for first purchases made by new customers through May 31st!
Simply use the code MYFIRST at checkout for new customers and
15%SAVINGS for returning customers. These deals expire next week, so if
you're going to grab one, you better hurry!