Today I worked on the text and the cover of the book. I tried Xara Xtreme and had a few issues, but the learning curve was acceptable and I managed to try out a few ideas.
I really like the title font, but it is too light and bold seems to have no effect.
This is a different font, but I forgot to re-center
my name at the bottom.
This one has my name centered.
I tried lots of other ones, but these are my favourites . . . so far.
Xara has a few peculiarities in Ubuntu Linux. Bold seems to have no effect and there is no font sizing between set size parameters that are quite far apart. There may be a different approach to font sizing and bolding, but I haven’t found it yet. I really like the transparency and feathering controls, which are very precise. I may have to use a variety of tools to get the features I need while staying open source.
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June 15, 2008
So far, everyone I ask likes #2 0r #3. The Font is too faint and regular on #1.
Vote for #2 or #3!
Here are larger versions in the same order. I tried to make them the same size, but due to sizing for the drop shadow, they turned out a bit different.
Image #2, the bottom bar is the same colour and transparency , but I faded the title colour box back. I haven’t found guidelines in Xara Xtreme or a way of cropping the image. So everything is aligned with a trained eye, but I will have to re-do the whole thing for the real cover. The Gimp was used to crop these from a screen shot,, then back to Xara for drop shadow. I can do some tasks in Scribus too. Between these three programs, I hope to do my book in open source only. So far, it just slows me down because I know how to do somethings in each program. I can’t get CMYK or drop shadow in The Gimp, I can’t crop in Xara and I can’t scale in Scribus. I have no guidelines ( a great feature of InDesign) in any of these programs so far and I have not found an option that lets me view the grid. I know that these programs are also available for Windows and maybe for Mac OS, but I am being stubborn and trying to use Linux because it forces me to learn it.
Xara works with vectors, even treating fonts like vectors. I love the font tools as I can move, scale and even use effects easily. I didn’t use any effects on these, but I might try some out later. In this version I changed the bottom bar to a different colour and made it more transparent. I also blurred the drop shadow more effectively.
Below is the same font as #3 in the previous post above.
I like the third font best. It seems to compliment the natural theme best. The others are too formal to me. It’s looking great.
Later,
Reggie
My vote’s on the second cover. It’s a fun font and promises what’s inside won’t be dull or sloppy.
I choose 2 too!
It is keeping with the style of your title and it seemingly suits you more . . .
my 2 cents
L