Professional publishing

How Pagemaker arose

Pagemaker was invented in 1985 by Paul Brainerd, who’d been a newspaper executive. Pagemaker ran on the Mac and used Apple’s laser printer (the Laserwriter).

Pagemaker lets you combine words and graphics to form a newspaper page, including headlines, columns of articles, photographs, diagrams, captions, and ads, all on the same page. Pagemaker let you see the page on your computer’s screen, while you moved the words and graphics by using your mouse.

The Pagemaker program and the term "desktop publishing" both became instant hits. Many would-be authors, publishers, and designers bought Apple computers just for the purpose of running Pagemaker. They used Pagemaker to create newspapers, newsletters, reports, books, flyers, posters, and ads.

Most ad agencies standardized on using Apple computers and Pagemaker to create ads. That’s why Apple computers became popular in the graphics-arts community. Even today, nearly every ad agency uses Apple computers, not IBM-compatibles.

Pagemaker’s competitors

Here’s how they compare:

Pagemaker (for Mac & Windows) is the easiest to learn. It’s the best for handling graphics and short ads.

Quark Xpress is the best for handling text and fonts. Its Mac version is better than its Windows version.

Frame Maker (for Mac & Windows) is the best for organizing long, technical manuals.

Ventura Publisher is just for Windows, not the Mac. It was weak, but it’s improving fast.

Mergers

Quark Xpress is published by Quark, which is still independent.

Difficulties

Using desktop-publishing software can be difficult. That’s why Pagemaker is often called "Pagewrecker", Frame Maker is called "Frame Wrecker", Quark Xpress is called "Quark Distress", and Ventura is called "Vultura": they can eat your offspring.

Frames

Master page

Special pages can diverge from the master.

Clutter

The typical beginner makes the mistake of trying to be too fancy. Use just a few typestyles and frames per page, to avoid making your publication look like a disorganized cluttered mess.

Put enough frames on your page to add spice; but if you add too many frames, your publication will look chopped-up, dicey, as amateurish as an oil painting by a 2-year-old kid given his first paint box.

Adding some frames will make it look spicy,

But too many frames will make it look dicey.

Gentle control shows a master who knew;

Out-of-control shows a kid who acts 2.

Mozart’s music was masterfully charming because its overall structure was simple, though it had a new subtle surprises. Imitate him.

Cheaper solutions

Unfortunately, professional desktop-publishing programs are expensive: about $500 each!

Kiddie pub

It’s particularly good at creating greeting cards, posters, and banners. The first version was popular among kids using Apple 2 computers because it was amazingly easy to use, though the graphics it produced were low-resolution and crude. (I guess you call that "folk art".)

It’s been translated to the Mac, IBM PC, and most other computers, too. The newest versions produce graphics that are better (but still not good enough to pass as professional). Unfortunately, the newer versions are harder to learn.

Like Print Shop, Microsoft Publisher can produce greeting cards, posters, and banners. Better than Print Shop, it can handle high-resolution graphics and tiny fonts well and produce professional-looking newspapers, newsletters, reports, business cards, and origami paper airplanes. It asks for your mood ("Would you like your publication to look jazzy or classical?"), then produces a terrific-looking document with fake words, which you replace with your own words. It lets you fine-tune your publication’s graphics and layouts by using your mouse and professional desktop-publishing techniques. Best of all, it comes with a terrific manual (training you in the fine art of desktop publishing) and costs just $70 from discount dealers.

Bill Gates, who runs Microsoft, liked the design of Microsoft Publisher so much that he took the head of the design team and married her!

Word processing

Recently, word-processing programs have grown to include lots of desktop-publishing features.

If what you’re writing has a simple layout, with very few frames or graphics per page, you can use a word-processing program instead of a desktop-publishing program.

How I published this book

I wrote this edition of The Secret Guide to Computers by using just Microsoft Word. I got by with Microsoft Word instead of a desktop-publishing program because I kept my layout simple, with very few frames and graphics per page.

Being a low-tech guy, I had my staff paste the graphics into my book by hand, by using rubber cement.

Rubber cement is faster than fiddling with scanners, image editors, and high-falutin’ graphics commands in Microsoft Word and desktop-publishing programs.

The only major problem with rubber cement is that if I change my mind and edit the page, we have to paste the graphics in again. To avoid wasting time, we had to plan our work carefully and not paste the graphics in until the text’s final draft was done.

If you use rubber cement, remember that long exposure to its fumes can cause cancer, so use it in a well-ventilated area and try not to get it on your hands.

To make a graphic smaller, I used my photocopier, which can shrink to any percentage.

This font is called "Times New Roman". It’s from Microsoft. I used it for most of my writing. It’s therefore called my "body-text font". Unlike other Times Roman fonts, Microsoft’s has the nice property: when working in small font sizes (such as 8-point), each digit is as wide as two blank spaces, and each period takes up as much space as one blank space. That makes it easy to keep the columns lined up! (Microsoft wants you to line up columns by using fancy features such as "tables" and "decimal tabs", but pressing the space bar is simpler.)

This font is called "Lineprinter". It comes with all Hewlett-Packard Laserjet printers. It’s monospaced. I used it to imitate computer output.

This font is called "Arial Black". It’s from Microsoft. It’s an extra-bold version of Arial. It’s big, black, and ugly. It’s so monstrous that it stands out on the page. That stand-out quality is why I chose it. In fact, it stands out so much that I shrunk it to prevent it from overwhelming the page. For example, in the middle of 10-point Times New Roman, to emphasize a word I used 9-point Arial Black. If I were to set ALL my headlines in Arial Black, I’d look like a big, ugly, pompous ass, so….

To lighten things up and show I’m a regular fella who’s light-hearted and funny, I used this funny font, called "Comic Sans MS". It’s from Microsoft. I used it at the top of each section. I put a box around it to give it greater emphasis, since it isn’t black enough to draw attention unboxed.

Typical text is Times New Roman 10-point (with 11-point line spacing, so there’s a 1-point gap between lines).

Each Formatt font is fascinating (much more interesting than its famous competitor, Letraset) and comes on a sheet (available in art-supply stores). You cut Formatt letters from the sheet by using an Exacto knife. The sheet has a background that’s transparent and semi-sticky, so you can easily reposition the letters if you make a mistake.

The typical page contains 2 columns, each 3.6" wide. When I needed a wider column (to hold a wide table or graphic), I widened the column to 4.8" instead, so the page’s other column shrunk to 2.4". On a few pages, I used 3 narrow columns, each 2.3".