THE REAL USEFUL DTP-BOOK

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6. Build a page grid that allows flexibility in ’measure’ (text column width). Instead of a three column grid, create one with six or seven column guides. Then you can set text columns across two, three or even four column guides in any combination to add variety. Despite baseline rules, remember to increase the leading as you increase the measure, to maintain readability.

7. Convert colour pictures to mono in a graphics package before you import them. A mono printer does the conversion at output stage, but you risk losing much more detail than you think. Once converted to greyscale, experiment with increasing the brightness and contrast – this minimises the risk of a printing out a milky grey mass.

8. A typical 600 dpi printer can output greys and halftone pictures at screens of around 80 to 90 lines per inch, but 300 dpi models can only manage 60 to 65 lpi, and you risk banding and bleeding. Even if you manage to get much higher screens in your output, give them the photocopier test. If the laser-printed screened dots aren’t perfectly clear, a photocopier won’t be able to handle them, nor will your local quick-print shop.

9. If coarse screens make your pictures look shabby, why not go all the way and turn it into a design feature? Turn greyscales to hard blacks and whites with a ’Gouache resist’ effect. Or apply some custom screens in your image editor. Or even posterise the whole thing. You’ll be guaranteed faithful printouts.

10. It’s tempting to introduce plenty of grey shades as a form of ’colour’, but nothing is clearer than black on white... or in this case white on black. This is especially true when using old laser printers, where greys go blotchy and text on grey backgrounds is unreadable. If you think it looks boring, cheat by printing on coloured paper.

11. Often you’ll want to run pictures that are relevant but otherwise uninteresting, or a spectacular colour picture that looks flat in black and white. Use clever caption design to give the picture significance on the page. Captions shouldn’t float, but should be aligned to an edge. Or you can run them large as pull-out quotes.

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