Sulaco said:
I do hope that whatever the winner turns out to be it isn't just something that apes the look or style of the exisiting D&D/d20 books. I am getting pretty bored with the bog-standard "image border down the outside edge of the page" thing. It was something fresh when the 3e books did it, and SSS as pretty much the first 3rd-party d20 publisher put their own spin on it, but now every damn d20 product looks virtually identical.
Well, i don't like non-functional borders (wanna put cool, useful content down the border? great! wanna add eye-candy? no thanks.). And, while i've seen quite a few of the D20 books out there, i honestly don't pay much attention to the layout on a flip-through unless it's exceptional (good or bad), and i don't own any D20 books ('cept 2--neither from WotC, and neither using an outside-edge eye-candy border). So *i'm* not going to be making my work look like the WotC books (which i think are very ugly and hard to use for a number of reasons). But my version is intentionally a fairly straightforward layout, with no bells and whistles, and no art--that's how i like my reference works (and besides, i've got access to no appropriate art), so if the judges prefer flashy to functional, or somebody else makes a flashy-yet-functional version, i won't win. The strength of my version is (1) getting the page count down (woohoo, small type!) while still having good readability (woohoo, quality, readable typefaces!), (2) clean organization, with a clear hierarchy of headings (i hope), and (3) organization--that's, i hope, my strength. I've significantly reorganized the content from the RTFs, in the hopes of bringing some order to their mess, and minimizing duplication of content. I've done what i can to reorganize the content to have some sensible flow --without actually rewriting vast gobs of stuff (basically just cut'n'paste).
That said, what do people think about landscape vs. portrait for book layout? My preference is to go with landscape (8.5x11), because then a page basically fits perfectly on screen, and fits perfectly on the paper. But most people seem to dislike this, so i'm currently working on a portrait-orientation version. Less useful on-screen, but seems to upset fewer people when printed. Opinions?