Well, one reason that would also explain this phenomenon is that layout affects people subconsciously. A person with knowledge of layout can identify where their impressions are being affected by the way the page is set up, whereas someone with no idea at all sees a pageful of text. They may not notice that they get tired of reading more quickly in a document with poor layout, or that they find it more difficult to search through and find the topic of their choice, but it's there nevertheless. Expecting them to comment on it is like expecting someone who's never tasted cheese to pick out the cheddar in a lineup of other cheeses.

Another possibility is that you are yourself subconsciously identifying 'anyone who comments on the layout' as 'someone who knows about layout'. It's a bit of a paradox really; if you know about layout you can talk about it, if you don't then you can't, so naturally the only people who criticise it are the ones that know about it because one implies the other. Now, I personally have never officially studied layout, but I can tell a bad one when I see it without using daft terminology that only the initiated understand.

Just my take on the theory.

Ash

You know, I was considering the same thing myself...

On another site in another thread there are currently 101 programs being suggested for writing the bare bones text of your game that must NOT be Word. I have no idea why not. Honestly. No idea. But apparently that is so - you must use these text editor things.

Its the same deal I hear about layout. You must do this, that and the other and only someone who knows will be able to do it properly. And then I look at, say, Dogs or PTA and think ... thats hardly something I couldn't do myself?

I'd actually like to hear a rebuttal of this from someone who can tell me in laymans terms what I should be doing to do GOOD layout? Whats the magic? Where can you learn?

Neil

ps. Next week I am going to ask the self-same question about Editing. Be prepared!

Take the King's shilling at http://www.omnihedron.co.uk/dutyandhonour/

There a bunch of people who notice layout issues, a bunch who hmm and haw about fonts and another group who are grammar-obssesed. Often these groups of people overlap.

But, if you make a reasonable nod at satisfying them all, you'll have less whingeing to deal with. (There, I ended that sentence in a preposition. That will annoy some people.)

That said, although it sounds bollocks, I do agree that the layout makes a subtle difference, which people might not notice.

But, the layout to play unsafe is pretty good. The only thing I wasn't sure about was the grey watermarks, which to me emphasised the thiness of the paper by making me think the picture on the other side of the page was showing through. So, if you do get it laid out again, keep it very clean and simple; you even want people to think "Ooh, get that nice layout", but just grokk it.

So, layout again if you really want to, keep the lovely cover, sign up with IPR and buy an ISBN, print on better paper, sell also as a PDF (making sure you make just as much money), and do the Play Unsafe sticker thing.

Simon Rogers
http://www.profantasy.com
Blog - http://sjrlj.notlong.com

Buy this excellent book, and as many of the series as you can afford:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Basics-Design-Layout-Gavin-Ambrose/dp/2940373345/ref=pd_bxgy_w_h__img_b?ie=UTF8&qid=1201772341&sr=8-2

They explain what layout, typography and graphic design are, why they matter, and how to perform the basics. Highly recommended for anyone trying to communicate effectively in text.

Jon Hodgson
www.jonhodgson.com

It's about book-as-artifact and the user experience.

Don't confuse "good" with "fancy". As for websites, what you want is something that helps in the assimilation of information and makes the whole thing look attractive to encourage people to make the effort.

It's very unlikely that you'll need to involve a specialist layout person. You just need to develop some basic skills. Play Unsafe suggests that you're at the beginning of that process; if you do more you'll probably get better at it (that's how it's worked for me).

You're right about one thing. Most gamers - certainly the online purchasing section - are indeed quite forgiving about presentation, being more focused on getting access to funky content. For instance I've seen PDF products by well-known and successful publishers that are all in boring Arial, with mad justification, claustrophobic columns and headings, and riddled with errors. People liked them anyway. To me, being perhaps more sensitive to such things, the message was "We do not care enough about you, the user, to do a good job." That shouldn't be taken as an excuse to *ignore* presentation, but as a cue to put it in perspective.

EDIT: Oh, I was going to say that in other sections of the "industry" - mainly print-focused - there's a tendency to use excessive layout. I looked at a demo of one of Mongoose's books a while ago - Hawkmoon, I think - and it had an incredibly heavy, complex page border around text that had never seen the light of proofreading. One could debate whether D&D3 has conditioned a segment of the market to expect overdone layout.

PS - the secret to justification is, in most cases, not to use it. Left-aligned text is easier for the eye to follow.

PPS - I've seen a lot of recommendations for 'The Non-Designer's Design Book' by Robin Williams (no, sadly not that one). Also available on Amazon, and quite often reduced to around half price.

Tim Gray
Silver Branch Games
www.silverbranch.co.uk

(Damm you Ash! I could have had first post but I was good and held off, now you win! :P)

I think I disagree. Good layout (and by that I don't mean excessive layout ... Solipsist website not withstanding) is a massive aid to understanding and enjoyment of a text, and more than that, it *adds meaning*

As I've tried to explain on the thread about software I started on Story Games (http://www.story-games.com/forums/comments.php?DiscussionID=5481) I really feel that trying to write text up without any notion of how it is going to appear on the page is crazy. I need to know in advance where my heading levels are, and what is in a list and what is out of it, and things like that. Once you are doing that you are already halfway to writing with design in mind.

More than that, once you have written the text (in semi-laid out format) the final step, the one where layout is tweaked, really does make a difference. Not being a layout guru it's one I sometimes have to struggle with, but I know when I've got it right because suddenly it just clicks, the text looks right, the page looks better, and it actually gets easier to read and comprehend.

So yeah, I think it matters. Maybe not as much as some anal people think it does, but still a lot.

http://www.solipsist-rpg.com/

There's a great quote somewhere about good layout is invisible, only bad layout shows.

The way we read a page is a deeply ingrained thing. Left to right. Top to bottom. Big to small. We follow these patterns without really realising their structure.

There's a problem with that. Because we do it subconsciously, when we come to recreate the effect ourselves consciously, it's much harder. We make leaps of logic, we assume we know what happens cos we're exposed to layout every day. It's why people get tempted to make everything bold ("so people notice").

And you might have natural skills and end up with something half decent. And people will read it, and have a nagging feeling of something not being right, but if the content is good they'll persist anyway. Now if you get rid of that nagging feeling, they'll come away more impressed with your text, but not know quite why.

There are lots of great books on type and layout, where you can learn why the subtleties matter. I personally like Ellen Lupton's Thinking with Type.

Or, if you want it with a web angle Elements of Typographic style applied to the web is a good read that'll teach you the basics.

-Matt

Realms Publishing

An interesting illustration of this can be seen in the Manga scene. Originally Manga comics came to us from Japan, where the books are laid out from right to left. This caught on in a big way in America, and when the US inevitably started putting out manga comics of their own that had never even touched Japanese soil, lo and behold they wrote them from right to left to simulate the 'traditional' method of layout in Manga comics.

Ash

...and I get where you're coming from.

For you, getting someone else to do the layout would probably be a waste of effort. Certainly it would be a waste of money if they wanted to charge you professional rates for it. I don't think it would add enough value to justify the costs for your size of market.

Still, could the layout of Play Unsafe be better? Certainly. It's very readable and that is a combination of the content and the layout. I did find some of the narrow columns going over pages awkward, and the spacing of justified text in the narrow columns jarred.

If they had been perfect I would never have noticed. How much is that perfection worth?

Another factor that isn't metioned above is compatibility. You printed through Lulu and there were printing problems, right?

Similarly, John Wilson's mum was doing a book and they went through Lulu. John's sister Alimay did the layout in Microsoft Publisher but John got me to make the PDFs.

John and I would only trust Lulu with a bulletproof PDF, and I know I can make one. For me it was easy, and quick, to create a PDF that would meet their standards and bleeds, etc. so why should John or Alimay put themselves through that? I checked Alimay's layout and it was fine, so I didn't mess with it. If I'd done it from scratch I would have done it differently myself, but it was certainly readable as it was. Any effort I would have put into changing the layout wouldn't have been worth the marginal improvement.

I did the cover (for softback and dustcover hardback) and that was again easy and quick for me to do as I know the software and had an idea what would look good.

Looking at Play Unsafe I think the cover is really bold and strong, so you'd only be getting marginal improvement from someone else doing it.

So, I guess if you have no strength in the area don't do it yourself. If you are an accomplished amateur with an eye for this thing then you can do it yourself and you could always ask for feedback of a few people to see if you're way off base. For making PDFs you're probably now in a position to advise others after going around the loop with Lulu, right?

I think it's whatever you find is better. I've played around with a few packages, and have ended up with one of the more purist text editors (Scrivener, mainly because it suits my style of writing. Used Word for a while, and it was the only package (admittedly Word 6? at the time) that managed to blow out both my master and back up copies of a project at the same time and corrupt them, so I went back to Appleworks which was pretty bulletproof. Word vX worked fine for Power Projection but as the file got bigger it got a bit less manageable. I'm using Scrivener as it makes it easier for me to focus, and organise. However, I think it's really a matter of what works for you. You're the one doing the text. Both NeoOffice and Word 2004 do the job too.

The key to me is clarity, and it's a hell of a lot harder with rules heavy systems than rules light ones. It took a long time to layout Power Projection (the initial light version in Word, the full version in Quark) not because the software was difficult, but because the search for making things clear to read and follow. The 101 series BITS books are mostly Word based for layout because it's coupled to a booklet plug-in.

I'd hold some material like MegaTraveller's books and some Chaosium books as examples of good layout, because they are basic and really easy to read. You don't fight with the text. Backprinting and excessive layout detract from the content for me. The recent Mongoose Hawkmoon and Elric books are an example of this. If someone had cut the grey backprint the layout would be so much easier to read, but they didn't and it irked me. ;-)

Keep it simple, and you can do it yourself.

Dom

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Dom Mooney
http://www.bits.org.uk/
http://www.powerprojection.net/