#adobe indesign

the files have been prepared for printing into a physical book. this includes:

starting pages on the right-hand side

page counts for 12-page signatures

.125”/3.175mm of bleed

1”/2.54cm inner margin for ease of reading when pages are bound

spine width estimates: 1.25”/3.175cm (vol. 1); 1.5”/3.81cm (vol. 2)

about this project

after finishing GHD, I was thinking of binding it when I stumbled across @thetempleofmara’s original design, and I loved it so much - the font choices, the high fantasy style, the illustrations. the passion and sweat put into fanworks like GHD and mara's design has always been my inspiration.

as a designer, you never really make stuff for yourself that you personally like. I really wanted to design a book for my eyes, I wanted that challenge. I actually finished the typeset in a frenzy (~2 years ago), but this is my first time actually binding a book, so I worked on it off and on again until I actually got my shit together and actually finished it. I actually made 2 copies (4 books in total): a set to practice on, and the final product that you see here!

test-printing to check font sizes/spacing

after typesetting and testing, which took the bulk of the time spent on this, I printed mara's cover designs out onto paper and transferred it to the book cloth in gold foil using a foil quill. I wanted to do some custom spine designs, but at this point I was just so tired that I decided that, hey, done is better than perfect. and I really like how they turned out - I didn't expect them to be so heavy, though! xD

designer's log (warning: very long and rambly)

I did not do any editing of the original text such as spell-checking, save for deleting extra spaces and other small touches. to me, the small flaws are valuable, a visible mark of how the work was made.

I did my own typeset of the entire manuscript, removing dangling words at the beginning and end of paragraphs/pages. this makes the text much smoother to read.

all hyphens used for a pause in speech have been replaced with em-dashes (—). this is how it's done in traditional books, and my personal preference :P

in the table of contents, in keeping with the traditional, Eragon-esque high fantasy style of the book, the nsfw warnings appended to each chapter title have been changed to the fashionable and eminently stylish “dagger”.

the glossary now has a style guide. it's........... very long.

added a colophon, a traditional blurb at the back of the book that is basically about how it was made. including a colophon is a designerly sign that a lot of care and effort went into the book!

the body text is 11pt, which is on the larger side. but for a long text like GHD, I opted for a more comfortable and inviting reading experience.

changed the placement of many illustrations so they appear in the part of the story where they are mentioned.

i added the flowers, stars, watermark and white border in InDesign

no-flower/star versions: