You have made an interesting start, though I do have some small suggestions that I feel will help.

Unity is often of the utmost importance for a successful composition.
- Consider this with your choice of typeface; presently you have used four very different face's which do not correlate well at present.
- Think about your grid; it feels slightly loose and un-unified.

You would do well to introduce some more hierarchy; consider amplification, elaboration and proximity.

Are your pages facing? Has this been considered?

Thank you very much for your feedback.

Yes the pages are faching.
That's also one of the things that is not sure yet.
The reason I chose this poem is that it's about 2 people. So I made the grid so that whatever vincent malloy says starts all the way at the left and what price says a couple (4) tabs more to the right. (I'm still looking how to produce a better communication between the 2 whilst still keeping them seperate, ie. cutting the pages).
One other way of keeping them seperate is by using different fonts for malloy and price (price being evil and dark, malloy being just a young boy), but like you said, perhaps that's not a very wise way of achieving my goal.

Do you think the colourscheme is ok?
Do you think I could get away with using different sizes for certain words (or perhaps fading some words in the background or something to make it a bit more dynamic)?.

grtz, tnx,
david.

None are so hopelessly enslaved as those who falsely believe they are free.
-Goethe-

> None are so hopelessly enslaved as those who falsely believe they are free.

Why ?

hehehe...didn't see that one coming =)

I have used that sig for a while now, it's a bit of a political point of view (don't want to offend anybody with this!). I think that some some countries are pretending to do things 'for the freedom of the people' but actually are just trying to force more rules and laws on people and societies to get more power, control and money.

Hope this satisfied your question =)

None are so hopelessly enslaved as those who falsely believe they are free.
-Goethe-

Thank you, Politic is interested in you don't ask me why =)

I would really try to push this to more accurately convey the content of the poem - which is a kid's obsession with scary things? The colors and type don't match the content (with the exception of the type you've ended the right pages with). The border detracts from the poem itself. I would also look for some body type that isn't so clean and classic, but still legible. I can see this being black and white, or black and red. Something very clean, but "scary"

I would agree with Chris, the colour system and border detail is probably too rigid in this circumstance to fairly depict the "scary" poetic detail.

Your idea of separating the two voices by use of grid is an option worth exploring further - currently as I mentioned I do not feel that it works particularly well. Have you explored using one page for one voice and the other for the second? For example Price is always on the left page while Malloy the right?

Another option for separating the two voices may be careful selection of typeface - a specific face for a specific voice - though remembering to restrict your palate of faces to ones that work well together for a specific reason.

Keep exploring and experimenting. You have a "fun" poem to work with so let this show through in your exploration of its meaning.

-nic

goodmorning people,

again thank you very much for the feedback and I'll do some more 'scary' exploration of the poem. Last night I've been working on a cover in red and black cause with the current colourscheme I couldn't get a scary mood.
I'll try some different typefaces as well...do you think the blackletter would work for the evil vincent or is a blackletter too different to mix with another font?
Are there any websites where they explain what typefaces work together?

tnx,
david.

None are so hopelessly enslaved as those who falsely believe they are free.
-Goethe-

Hi all,

I just changed everything to make it look a bit more scary. Just wondering if I'm going the right direction? I'd like to put additional text on the left pages explaining the poem (bit of history and info about tim burton and vincent price and stuff).
Also wondering if the layout is clear enough to see what price says and what malloy says.

thank you!

None are so hopelessly enslaved as those who falsely believe they are free.
-Goethe-

I'm getting some strange errors when I open the .pdf, but from what I can see, you're really looking much better. I'm still not sure about how you're treating the border. It looks art deco to me, and not "victorian gothic"

I disagree with the change of direction, to me the poem does not call for a scary feel, you have given it a look which will cause the reader to prejudge the poem. I much preferred the innocent look of the first pdf, although the division into a dialogue isn't entirely working so I would drop the names from the top, the use of tracking doesn't work for me maybe it is just too emphasised and I suspect the Garamond, Baskerville contrast isn't enough for the casual reader to identify. You could experiment with the blackletter idea, but it would be more of a challenge and I suspect ultimately more effective to restrict your typefaces and work with alignment and colour.
Tim

Again thanks for the feedback guys.

Like you said TImd, I have taken out the names at the top earlier today because of the reason you're saying. I also think it made it all a bit too obvious. At the moment I'm experimention with a couple of other fonts. The reason I had the garamond and the baskerville was because I wanted to use typefaces that had established a name, but at the moment I'm also playing around with some freeware fonts to see if they perhaps communicate better (one off-topic question, I have a typeface called brokenscript (by letterror if I remember correctly, which tells me in FontAgent Pro that it's perfectly fine, but won't show up in Indesign, any suggestions?).

Would you think I could throw in a couple of more colours? (ie. a part of the poem is about the sunny weather outside, could I make that yellowish or would that also be a bit too obvious?
I must say that it's quite hard to format a poem because sometimes you have very long lines and sometimes just very short. Would you think that I made a good desiscion in the size of the book? (Like I said, I've shown this poem to a couple of friends and they all want a copy to have their friends read it, so that's why I wanted to make it quite small so people can carry it around, but it is a bit more of a challenge I think).

I'll keep all your suggestions in mind while I'm going to play around a bit with the grid to see what other options I have to keep the malloy and price seperate whilst flowing together for easy reading.

Thanks AGAIN! =)
david.

None are so hopelessly enslaved as those who falsely believe they are free.
-Goethe-

Sorry I can't help you with your font problem, I use neither InDesign or FontAgent, try posting in the Build forum or searching there to see if anybody has had similar problems.

You are right, it is a challenge to format poetry, however since you have the lines defined for you (in that you use the lines as written) you can print them out, cut them into strips and position them on a blank sheet till you come up with something that works (easier than trying to do it on computer since hard/software tends to inhibit the quick changes). The size and format of the book are all part of the challenge, unless you come up with an insurmountable problem it is probably best to work with in your established format, since that is what you will have to do in professional life. I think as regards colours you should probably avoid anything that makes you think obvious.
Best of luck.

Tim

Good idea about the cutting it out and positioning them on a white sheet! Think I'm going to do that now, I need to get away from my computer and it's probably a nice change so I focus on something else instead of keeping to change the designs I already made.

cheers!
david.

None are so hopelessly enslaved as those who falsely believe they are free.
-Goethe-