Published Academic Dissertation

Print Layout for Bound Book

Print Layout for Lengthy Publications

Lots of designers overlook Adobe InDesign. It's not as cool as Photoshop or Illustrator. However, it is an indispensable tool for laying out long texts such as entire books. This book, a doctoral dissertation, is 121 pages long. Let's start with the outside.

Judge the Cover

Because the topic of this thesis is the psychology of decision-making, a coin toss symbolizes the subject nicely. The coin is entirely computer-generated, rendered as a vector in Adobe Illustrator with simulated 3D rotation. Because the topic is specifically about relationships, the coin pictured has a face on both sides: George Washington from an American quarter, and Queen Elizabeth from a Canadian quarter. A keyline present in the original design was not suited to the publisher's offset printing process, and was removed in the final version.

A Page-Turner

The content of the book features many tables, graphs, and other means of presenting data, as well as over one hundred pages of text. Formatting was accomplished through use of GREP styles and by-rule paragraph formatting, providing consistent and clear typography. Gill Sans and Bembo font families paired for a professional appearance throughout. Page numbers and table of contents automatically updated if they were affected by layout changes during the design process. A strict Pre-Flight analysis checked for errors, alerting on any inconsistencies in formatting. When the final version was printed, the results were stunning.