Category Archives: Tools

Attn.: InDesign Salvage Operations Team

Justin asks, do you have any tips for recovering “damaged” files? when i try to open a layout i was just working on, it prompts me to fix the file from recovered data, then notifies me that the file may be damaged; it starts to recover, but then the program quits altogether. [. . .] [...]

Also posted in advice, Lazyweb | 1 Comment

In like a lion, out like a lamb

I spent a ridiculous amount of time yesterday converting two files: one Quark XPress 6 document to InDesign CS4, and one WordPerfect document to MS Word 2004. Part of the time-suck was because my apartment is disorganized and I couldn’t, um, find one of my laptops. Most of it, though, was because I’ve forgotten a [...]

Also posted in advice, Typesetting | 10 Comments

Am I going blind?

Happy New Year! Here’s my first lazyweb request of 2009: Can you see the guides in this screenshot? How about the control points on the path? Because I can’t, and it’s making me nuts.

Also posted in advice, Lazyweb | 2 Comments

Hitler’s subtitler starts moonlighting in Web development?

And, speaking of parodies, did anybody else just get this e-mail from FontLab?

Also posted in typography, web development | 4 Comments

Calibrate!

For anyone who uses print-on-demand outfits such as Lulu.com, or who has been considering doing so, Cathi points out the following brilliance: “Dear Lulu” is a test book researched and produced by graphic design students and Prof. Frank Philippin at Hochschule Darmstadt, Germany, during an intensive two-day workshop with London-based designer James Goggin (Practise). The [...]

Also posted in books, print-on-demand, printing, production, technology | Leave a comment

Flash vs. substance

A few weeks ago, Rachel Sugar, one of my coworkers, had an idea—based on a book called Jews and Shoes—to present some illustrated factoids about footwear in Jewish tradition. Staff favorite Vanessa Davis was nominated for the art portion of the project, and I asked if she’d be interested in working on what was then [...]

Also posted in art direction, Design, illustration, Lazyweb, technology, web development, Work | 3 Comments

Prepress Gremlins: The Duotone Edition

Twice a year I lay out a cute little catalog for a publisher friend, and I’ve been doing it for four or five years, so the files have gone through several software upgrades. They were originally supplied to me as Quark XPress 4.1 docs, and I probably kept it that way for one or two [...]

Also posted in printing, production, Work | 18 Comments

“If I spike you, you’ll know you’ve been spoken to.”

So, the other day, I was asked to set up HTML for an e-mail that someone else—let’s call them Agent B—is sending. Today Agent B sent us a preview of the e-mail, with the Agent B logo added at the top and the usual “Click here to unsubscribe, etc., etc.” at the bottom, but the [...]

Also posted in Rants, web development, Work | 4 Comments

For anyone else who ever wondered

So I was trying to find an example of a paragraph-styled bibliography in the Chicago Manual when I had one of those irrelevant thoughts that so often interrupt my work: “I wonder if, using the magic of the internet, I could find out what books these sample pages are from?” —Languagehat: Fun with the Chicago [...]

Also posted in books, Editing, Reading | 1 Comment

Search Engine Terms, 2/23/2008

This makes me happy.

Also posted in humor, Meta | 2 Comments