Sunday 22 May 2011

Design question

I'm looking for some advice on creating the usual two-column word doc/docx template (like we see in modules and B/X) to start building the Old School Adventure Guide. Or more to show off some ideas in this format.

Any suggestions from those who have done it before. Anyone want to email a template? jovialpriest@gmail.com

I'm not after your special font or anything, just my ignorant plan was to create two columns using format on word and go from there.

Is that ridiculous?

5 comments:

  1. Unfortunately, my templates are in OpenOffice and InDesign CS2. Come to think of it, I might not actually have an OO template, unless I got one from Dragonsfoot. They're pretty easy, though. There's usually some way to check the page properties -- don't know what it is in Word, but I bet it's under "Format". You can change the columns there. Then there's another place to change headers and footers, which is how you'd set up slugs and page numbering.

    I may try to create a template for OO and then save a page in the most recent Word format it can handle, so you can turn it into a template.

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  2. I could whip together a two-column template with a three part header and a page number at the bottom of the page in a couple minutes. If you are looking for things like facing headers on pages (so the header is always on the outer top edge of the page), that's a little more complicated and normally best done in a layout program. I could send you a quick template for Word if you want, but it might be just as easy to make one for yourself. I could send you the steps to do that, too. Let me know if you want it and we can hash out the specifics. cats [dot] teacher [at] gmail [you know the rest].

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  3. If you are willing to learn, I am willing to host InDesign CS5 for a short time while you download it. Then you will have professional tools to work with.

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  4. Thanks everyone. Job done. I can get to work. Greg - more professional advice may well be needed in the future. Many thanks to all.

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  5. I did all my work in Word. It's not the best, but it was only a couple of hours to get everything laid out. The biggest problem is Word doesn't make good decisions about when to split text to the next column, so you have to manually add column breaks all over the place.

    Also, layout should be the very very very very very very last thing you do, because any change you make to the text after layout in Word can screw everything up.

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