Book arts return.

Innovations in the computer field have brought sophisticated layout and typographical control to the desktop of graphic designers for a fraction of the cost of conventional typesetting systems. Graphic designers now have the option of proofing their work by outputting, or printing, laser printed pages. They can make corrections, and new pages can be output and separated, a process in which primary colors are combined in varying proportions to make all the colors of the spectrum, plus black.

At the secondary level at Confederation High School, information design students are exposed to desktop publishing through programs using QuarkXPress software. Students achieve familiarity with the software, and reach varying degrees of fluency with it. A minimum of 4 MB of RAM, or memory, and an 80-MB hard drive, or storage space, is needed to run Quark, although several less comprehensive packages, such as Ready, Set Go, would have served quite well for this project and would have had more modest memory demands.

Lessons in Book Design

Several students involved with art courses and creative writing approached me about using the art department's Macintosh to generate books. As these students had no experience with book design, I advised them to first look at novels in the library and to examine typographical layouts, headlines, chapter breaks and how illustrations were used to support the text. I suggested they look at some classic works, such as the Tenille illustrations for Alice through the Looking Glass, as well as a series of books written and illustrated with simple effective line drawings by Patti Stren.

Creating Electronic Pages

The students entered all of the text into word processing programs that are available on computers throughout the school. From the rough drafts generated at this first step, they made decisions such as where the text would break and where the illustrations would appear. The students made several proofs to establish the proper font (type style), point size (type size) and leading (space between lines of type), as well as text orientation. After a final spell check with QuarkXpress, pages were entered in position and printed on the department's 300-dpi laser printer. Black ink illustrations were later tipped in by hand to produce a master set of pages that could be photocopied to create a small edition.

Limitations

It was within our power to scan each illustration and import each drawing directly into the page layout, but the file sizes would have proved prohibitive and would have required lengthy printing times. The low resolving power of the laser printer for the drawings was also a factor in this decision. Covers were enhanced by fixing a laser printed proof to a sheet of cover stock.

The final efforts were quite extraordinary considering this was the department's first publishing attempt. The students showed that the computer is capable of doing far more than word processing and number crunching. By using basic computer skills, typographical knowledge and experience gleaned through exercises in our information design program, the students created impressive professional-looking books. These works also inspired more students to try desktop publishing.

Professional Results

Computers are now a part of every educational environment. With an investment in a desktop publishing package and a few fonts, elementary and secondary classrooms can publish very sophisticated documents in-house.

Irv Osterer is head of the art department at Confederation High School in Nepean, Ontario, Canada.