Research Blog 6

Preparing Pages to Print, Finalizing Online Order

This past week, I have been finalizing all of my book pages and getting them ready to export. My goal was to have my book done this week to allow for ample printing and delivery time.

 

My biggest challenge was trying to figure out the gutter margins for print. When I did research, the general rule was 0.5" or 0.75". Shutterfly has a shadow on the page sides, which I took as a guide for where text shouldn't be bleeding in to. After some trial and error, it seemed like the 1" margin is what worked best to keep text out of the shadow.

Another challenge I encountered was having an odd number of pages for some of the participants I wrote about. For example, a few people had 3 pages, and I didn't want the fourth page to start with a name page, just because I felt like it disrupted the flow. So, I ended up creating "transition" pages, which included quotes from Shakespeare plays. During the last in progress critique, a classmate suggest implementing more pages with quotes, so I took that suggestion and it ended up working out really well!