Yesterday’s InDesign class (specifically focusing on the EPUB medium) was exhausting. It was an assessment session. An assession, if you will. I felt like I was looking at a Fractal artwork, looking deeper, you end up finding more features and so on until you control the atoms of the document. At least, that’s what it seemed like.

Chris went over frame types, paragraph styles and how there’s 72 points in an inch. It threw me for a loop when he said structure first then add content. It’s not like webdesign at all, where Fadiman states “Content is king” but more like a complex word problem, like the kind you find on the LSATs.

Ginny, Ron and Hermione all want to go to the Ball, but Ron doesn’t want to dance with Ginny and Hermione and Ginny dance only once. It’s important to set up your table and set up the rules before plugging in combinations of dancers. (Stretched analogy, I know, but that’s how I remind myself not to dive into putting in text right away.)

Chris went over how important it is to limit the number of frames in your document. He gave us an exercise where we had to make a colored business card with a logo and it could only be two frames. Exercises like these forces the software user to find features and get clever. The quarter, I imagine will be filled with those exercises “you have fifteen minutes to make this business card and can only use two frames and only the fabric from the clothes off your backs.” (Project Runway reference.)