I figured I might as well post this, since I've been sitting on it for a while.

http://1001.indie-rpgs.com/push.jpg

It's the blocky, modernist style you've seen in Brian Glass' design work on Exalted and whoever's doing D20 Modern. For the interior, I'm hoping to loosen it up just a bit, approaching the near-perfection of Oliver Graute's layout of Engel and its supplements. Nobody else does greyscale graphic design that that German dude. Wow.

Comments are welcome. Once the first set of stickies gets done (should be tomorrow, I think), I may try to work up a few fake interior pages.

The cover image is a cropping of "A Game of Life and Death" by Brett Cushing, something that Shreyas recommended to me quite a while back. I've sent an email to Brett asking her if I can license the piece (under the same conditions that I'm licensing content), but I haven't heard back yet. If she says no, there's plenty of other great art and artists out there. I've got some of Antti's stuff for Argonauts that's collecting dust until I finish the game, and a couple of those pics might work as covers.

But now it's time for me to sleep...

Er, the list of names seems to need work, yes?

Other than that, seems cool to me.

Jealous you're not there? ;)

Dude, it's a draft. The names obviously have to wait until we see who actually contributes (writing, editing, layout, illustration, whatever) to the first issue.

Looks good. Hope you can use that art.
--Emily

Looks really good. I have my concerns about the envelope, mainly because I cannot guess what it intends to convey; it works compositionally but in my opinion it fails to communicate. I like the flower! It's a nice counterpoint to the hard-edged look of the remainder.

So the implied message "Push the envelope" is too subtle, huh?

I have this image of an envelope now, with one of those "hello my name is" stickers reading PUSH.

My image of "pushing the envelope" is that of something in the envelope, trying to get out. Now that you point it out, it works; I see the components of the saying.

I guess what I'm saying is that it makes a cool statement if you stop and think about it, in the way that a designer might do, but I wouldn't be surprised if it went over a layman's head. So it lies to you to decide whether you want to keep the cute pun for those that have the energy to interpret it, or not. shrug

That sans you used is a beautiful face, by the way. What is it?

Hmm.

An earlier version of the logo (the one I used for the RPGnet column) had a little stick figure that made the pun more obvious, I think. But I couldn't make the little guy work with the cover layout. Things got crowded.

I'll fiddle around with it some later and see what other options might exist. Cute isn't necessarily a requirement.

Edit: The font's Twentieth Century MT. A underrated favorite of mine.

New cover draft with new logo:
http://100flowers.indie-rpgs.com/push2.jpg

Concerns:

• so I used "Lumos" which is one of the two main Harry Potter fonts. Don't know what the proprietary rights on that sucker are. Don't know if we want to be associated with Potter, though that "fun for all ages" feel is certainly cool. I may try to switch it for some other warped serif font.

• Don't quite feel the "patch" effect behind the letters is exactly what I want, but it was easy to do in Flash MX, so I just left it, figuring I'd come back later and perfect it. A plain white square doesn't jibe with the letters, but I'm not sure what would. Patch gives us "square" with some raggedness that's kinda cool. But not perfect.

• I haven't heard back from Brett about "A Game of Life & Death," so I just stuck in one of the graphics I did for Fingers on the Firmament. It's not John Harper, but it gives us an idea of what different kinds of covers might look like. I kinda like the idea of black-and-white images or some kind of grey or blue-tinted sepia.

Let me know what you think. Better? Worse? I'm kinda leaning towards ditching the envelope, because it was a bit too cute.

Jonathan,

That last link doesn't seem to work.

[Edit:

Oops, now it does. Whatever.]

Okay, is it just me, or just this new cover draft kick serious ass?

http://1001.indie-rpgs.com/push3.jpg

Cover image is by Amy Kim Ganter of http://www.felaxx.com/, who I haven't contacted for permission yet (so don't get too excited), but this is, by far, the coolest combination yet, I think.

N i c e a r t. V e r y.

So I haven't heard back from either of the artists that I wanted to use for the cover. Grr...

The deal is, in order to avoid having to use a commissioned piece that didn't really have the desired flavor, I was hoping to license work that had already been done, so I new the results. But I can't license any work if the artists don't write me back.

So I'm open for suggestions. Here's sorta what I'm looking for:

- not anime. can have some influence, but I want someone with their own style.
- something that's evocative of the kind of progressive, out-of-the-box agenda that PUSH has.
- something that looks good against the dark blue/grey cover layout that I already have.
- something that's fairly iconic. images that sear into your mind.
- something that's a bit quirky and different.
- artists who will email me back and possibly be interested.

If anybody has any good leads, throw down. If it comes down to it, I could possibly try to commission something from Clio Chang or Gary Simpson, but I wanted to see what else we can come up with.

Nevermind! I sent an email to Clio Chiang and she's interested in working on a cover for us. I'm discussing the subject with her now, but she did some cool sketches of Maggie Cheung as Flying Snow a while back, so I'm thinking something wuxia-related would be cool:

http://www.cliochiang.com/art/hero.htm

Of course, some part of my brain thinks it's a bit solipsistic to have the cover be an illustration of me and Shreyas' article, but with most of the rest of you doing heavy theory stuff, I don't know what other evocative imagery we have to draw on. A picture of Finnish roleplayers? Not if they're as ugly as ours :p

Chiang seems really talented. Lucky! I'll tell my artists to back down, we already have a cover...

... although we could gather an all-girl squad of Finnish roleplayers for a posed we-play-games-in-our-lingerie shot. Or would that be too suggestive?

You got Clio Chiang to do a cover?

Man...

yrs--
--Ben

Okay, new layout sample up, using my article-in-progress. This one's a little bit too much like Universalis for my tastes, but I want to wait until the cover art comes in to do anything fancier, since I might have to redesign the cover layout.

http://1001.indie-rpgs.com/wuxia.pdf

In any case, from this, you can get some idea of the kind of clean, journal-esque that I'm going for. I got a font that's easy to read on a screen (Tw. Century) and it's layed out in two columns, horizontally on 11 x 8.5" for the Americanos to print out (too bad for Eero, Rich, Piers, and me: A4 users unite!). If you want to imagine the printed volume, think about folding that in half and then going up in size by 20% or so (say somewhere between 6x9" and half an A4).

I stuck an article synopsis in the front, which I think looks cool and gives people an idea of what the content is from the beginning. The "which article am I on?" bar at the top helps when flipping through the thing, but I'm not totally pleased with it yet. The sideboxes look okay so far, but I haven't really put them through their paces or go them where I want them, since those parts of the article are still sketchy. I'd like to get the page numbering to number both columns seperately, but I don't know if OpenOffice is willing to do that. Adiitionally, the (stupid) program refuses to format the Endnotes page like all the others, but I probably just need to kick it a little bit. I'm optimistic that these things will work themselves out.

Am I going to end up laying the whole thing out in OpenOffice. No clue. I could use PUSH as an excuse to buy expensive layout software (I've worked with InDesign before and really dig it), but maybe I won't. Who knows. More thoughts on that once I get through my article, do the layout this way, and see how everything looks. I'm sure Shreyas can help me learn LaTeX if we end up doing things that way...

The layout looks nice and clean: lots of text, no messing about.

The typeface looks a little small to me, on a screen at 100% size. What's the font size?

I don't love putting a gray background to the box text; I think that makes it harder to read.

Presumably this discussion here is only about layout, not proofreading and editing, right? I just spotted a couple typos, is all.

I'd head the notes with a boldface Notes.

Some random impressions:

That's looking impressive, I've been seeing way too much rpg-layout lately. I think that this academically mixed, restrained magazine style is definitely the way to go, it gives the text added punch. Perhaps a hint of flirting with pop-culture is warranted, but 95% serious is the way to go.

I like the use of white space. Pages do not need footers, and the headers are nice. Add the name and issue number of the journal to the header, as well as the name of the writer. Leave the middle empty, though.

The sidebars (or properly, boxes) have a good tone (disagree with Chris on that), and I like their balance. Don't go adding any asymmetric emphasis in the borders. The titles and subheadings are nice, too. Shouldn't the main font have a little bit of sheriff? Although I like using the same font for both titles and text, so perhaps this is the best option...

The synopsis works. Generally you've captured a nice level of text structuring (that is, pretty minimal). Any thoughts yet on how the layout works with a game, or some other text that does multiple headings and highly structured/graphical content? I'm thinking tables and such.

I like the idea of numbering the columns separately. Somewhat challenging to get automated, though. Will think on it. As for layout software: if you want, we can consider doing it by proxy: you make mock-ups with OpenOffice, and I duplicate it in QuarkXPress. Whatever's your pleasure.

clehrich wrote: The typeface looks a little small to me, on a screen at 100% size. What's the font size?

I don't love putting a gray background to the box text; I think that makes it harder to read.

Presumably this discussion here is only about layout, not proofreading and editing, right?

I'd head the notes with a boldface Notes.

Eero wrote: Add the name and issue number of the journal to the header, as well as the name of the writer.

Shouldn't the main font have a little bit of sheriff?

Any thoughts yet on how the layout works with a game, or some other text that does multiple headings and highly structured/graphical content? I'm thinking tables and such.

As for layout software: if you want, we can consider doing it by proxy: you make mock-ups with OpenOffice, and I duplicate it in QuarkXPress. Whatever's your pleasure.

Jonathan Walton wrote:
See, I'm inbetween you and Eero on this. I think the boxes need something to set them apart visually, but I don't like how the grey background interacts with the grey header. Maybe a white background and a more elaborate border? Maybe a different background for either the header or the boxes?

Eero wrote: Add the name and issue number of the journal to the header, as well as the name of the writer.

Is that standard practice? As far as I know, most American journals tend to stick the author's name on one side/page and the article's title on the other side/page and then call it a day. Presumably people know what volume they're reading or can just look at the cover. I guess I'm having trouble imagining a header that holds that much information without looking messy and jumbled. Got an example for me?

Shouldn't the main font have a little bit of sheriff?

I was under the impression that serif fonts are easier to read in print and san-serif fonts (like the one I used) are better for screen reading. I had pondered changing the font of the main title and headings, just to make those more independent from the rest of the text.

Jonathan Walton wrote: See, I'm inbetween you and Eero on this. I think the boxes need something to set them apart visually, but I don't like how the grey background interacts with the grey header. Maybe a white background and a more elaborate border? Maybe a different background for either the header or the boxes?

Eero wrote: Add the name and issue number of the journal to the header, as well as the name of the writer.

Is that standard practice? As far as I know, most American journals tend to stick the author's name on one side/page and the article's title on the other side/page and then call it a day. Presumably people know what volume they're reading or can just look at the cover. I guess I'm having trouble imagining a header that holds that much information without looking messy and jumbled. Got an example for me?

I was under the impression that serif fonts are easier to read in print and san-serif fonts (like the one I used) are better for screen reading. I had pondered changing the font of the main title and headings, just to make those more independent from the rest of the text.

New sample, this one layed out in LaTeX, which I'm beginning to learn. It's also based on the first couple pages of Emily's article (just so I could have fun messing with tables).

http://1001.indie-rpgs.com/hello.pdf

It's going to take a bit of work to get this right. I'm going to have to develop some specific stylesheets for PUSH, but I think that LaTeX would do us a hell of good in the long run. It's super easy to just drop documents in, once you have the formatting set up on the front end. So every issue after the first would be a piece of cake. Also, the way it automatically handles Bibliographies and stuff is super nice. And it'll do the whole book as one file or a series of seperate files. And the file size ends up extra small.

If you can't tell, I think it's really cool, but it'll take me at least a week to set up the stylesheets. And I really should finish my own article first. Sigh...