The large image on the front page changes each time you come back to the site, or you can refresh your browser window for a sneak preview!

We might not make the opening as it’s a bit far to go for a night out, but if you’re in the area, pop along. The exhibition runs till the 9th April.

More on the Dox website.

The publication includes new work by Peter Finnemore and Paolo Ventura, a short story by Rachel Trezise and essays by Russell and the late film historian David Berry.

The book launch is tonight (10th Feb) at Turner House, Penarth. More on the ffotogallery website.

UPDATE: the publication is now available on amazon.co.uk – order The Silent Village on amazon.

There’s also a talk by artist Tim Brennan (who’s currently exhibiting at Turner House) on his recent publication ‘English Anxieties’ plus a load of stalls, zines, other diverse activities and some cake. There’s more info on the Ffotogallery blog.

Great poster too.

We’ve uploaded the slides for each day below, as well as our ‘recommended reading list’ for print design and book design. Underneath that there’s a list of links to useful sources of further information.

Course Slides

Day 1 – Setting up print projects, introduction to InDesign
Day 2 – Stocks, getting the most out of your budget, working with printers, more about InDesign
Day 3 – Looking at books, binding options, using multipage features in InDesign, grid systems etc
Day 4 – Sending your work to print, contents pages, indexes and other information management features in InDesign, using ISBN numbers

Recommended Reading

The Elements of Typographic Style – Robert Bringhurst
Grid Systems in Graphic Design: A Handbook for Graphic Artists, Typographers, and Exhibition Designers – Josef Muller Brockmann
Designing Books: Practice and Theory – Jost Hochuli and Robin Kinross
Adobe InDesign CS4 Classroom in a Book (Classroom in a Book (Adobe)) – Adobe
Japanese Bookbinding – Kojiro Ikegami and Barbara Stephan

More Information

Stock Suppliers – There’s lots of stock suppliers in the UK, some useful ones for getting hold of swatch books include PaperCo and Robert Horne.

Font Suppliers – Again a long list, some of the main ones are MyFonts; Fontshop (who also produce Font Book) and Fontfont

Font Identification Services – I find identifont the most useful – you answer a series of questions about the font (or not if you only have a limited character set in front of you) and get rewarded with one or more ‘best guesses’. There’s also MyFont’s What the Font? service – you upload a jpg or gif image of the font. I’ve never used this one so don’t know how useful it is.

Book design, printing, grid systems – About.com has a good introduction to page impositions and Wikipedia have quite a useful (if incomplete) section about book design.

For grid systems still the best series of articles on the web is Mark Boulton’s simple steps to designing grid systems. The New York Times’ Book Design Review is great on a regular basis too.

Fonts and Typography – Personal favourites are: I Love Typography; The Elements of Typographic Style (Robert Bringhurst’s book applied to the web). The My Fonts newsletters and interviews with typographers are quite useful too.

We made use of the form on the Welsh School of Aromatherapy’s site and needed to offer the form bilingually (Welsh and English) so we thought it would be a good idea to make the language file available to other people. Kevin Donnelly kindly helped out with the translation and proofing of the language file (whilst simultaneously developing a free (GPL) Welsh-to-English translation service – http://cymraeg.org.uk/).

The language file has now been added to the download, so if a Welsh secure contact form is just what you’ve been waiting for, your prayers have just been answered. Or something.

We’ve done lots of bilingual websites in the past of course, but this was the first time we’d tried to apply our skills using WordPress as a CMS, in two languages and with direct translation from one page to its equivalent in the other language.

The plugin we opted for in the end was xLanguage by the extremely helpful HelloSam which, whilst our php skills weren’t really prepared for such a steep learning curve (and with several very supportive pointers in the right direction from Sam), did eventually do exactly what we wanted it to do. In the process we also ended up creating a welsh version of Mike Cherim’s excellent Secure Contact Form. There’s a few bits in the welsh language file which still need translating, but once we find someone to do those, we’ll send Mike the finished version to add to the download. In the meantime if anyone wants the incomplete version (it’s just missing a few error messages) drop us a line. You can see the file in action on the Aromatherapy Wales site.

Thankfully, the work wasn’t all coding and we did find time to have fun with some of the School’s ideas for a logo. The first go at this was a graphic version of a narcissus which, whilst it worked fine, didn’t really hit the spot. But salvation came in the form of David Attenborough, as usual, whose beautiful show Amazing Rare Things at the Queen’s Gallery included an illustration of a poet’s narcissus, apparently the first narcissus to arrive on British shores way back when.

We’re also planning to make the theme available along with some instructions as to how to set up xlanguage to work in Welsh and English (if only to remind us how to do it). More on that story later.

Unfortunately they then sat in a box whilst ointment decided how best to release them into the wild. Fittingly enough, the launch is to take place in the location where the project started in the first place – Ty Canol woods in Pembrokeshire (a National Nature Reserve with 400 species of lichen amongst other things). And what better way to launch a book about artists walking, than with a selection of walks.

It all kicks off at 2pm on 26th July 2008, at the Urdd Centre, Canolfan Pentre Ifan, Felindre Farchog, Crymych, Pembrokeshire SA41 3XE with a selection of walks including: botanising; meanderthal; elasticated; outdoor philosophy and short, followed by the launch of the book and some ‘light refreshments’ – biscuits, booze or both.

All you need to do to take part is to let ointment know, by emailing enquiries[at]ointment.org.uk

Update: for those of you who simply can’t wait till then, you can now buy the book on amazon

Ros wanted to set up an informal but informative personal website to help spread the word about the work she’s doing internationally for the IBLF, Trigonos and others as well as to set up a platform for her other interests, writings and publications. Ros had also come across Maria Hayes, a North Wales based illustrator and artist (and client of papergecko) and commissioned Maria to produce a series of illustrations to use on the site and the associated publicity material.

The website address is: http://www.rostennyson.info

So, when Wobage came to update their site for the 2008 ceramics course syllabus, they got back in touch. We suggested that, rather than having to pay a web designer every time they need to update the site, we could redesign the site from scratch and build a user-friendly Content Management System at the same time.

We’re currently finalising colour schemes and page layout, and hope to relaunch a standards-based, accessible, user and search engine friendly site in the coming months.