Podcasts about indesign

Adobe InDesign is a must-have tool for AEC marketers, but let's be honest—many of us honed our proposal design skills on the job, often under a deadline. Even experienced users sometimes wonder: Am I using the best approach? In this episode of The Shortlist, host Wendy Simmons sits down with some of Middle of Six's InDesign "power users" Allison Tivnon, Becky Ellison, and Lauren Jane Peterson to explore the many ways designers approach InDesign for proposals and marketing collateral. From file setup and text layout to graphics and formatting, every designer has their own techniques—but is there really a "right" way? The discussion covers key differences in workflow, including parent pages, grids, pagination, text styling, and shortcuts. They also rumble over linking vs. embedding graphics, managing color palettes, table styles, and columns vs. threaded text. With so many ways to get the job done, sharing insights can lead to game-changing discoveries. Whether you're a meticulous organizer or a creative risk-taker, this episode will challenge the way you think about design workflows. CPSM CEU Credits: 0.5 | Domain: 4 

Let us know what you think!Unlock the secrets of turning your family's rich history into a dynamic digital treasure trove with the help of Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing. Discover how digital publishing not only facilitates easy distribution but also creates a lasting resource for family reunions.1. Prepare Your Book for Publishing2. Publish via Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP)3. Choose Distribution Settings4. Set Your Pricing5. Share the Book with Your Family6. Gifting Copiesorder copies of your book at the author's cost (for print books) send gift copies of the Kindle versionFor Document conversions:Website: https://calibre-ebook.com/Related Blogs:"Reads over Royalties""EPUB with InDesign, Page Breaks""Secrets with the Trees" by John A BrandtBe sure to bookmark linktr.ee/hittinthebricks for your one stop access to Kathleen Brandt, the host of Hittin' the Bricks with Kathleen. And, visit us on YouTube: Off the Wall with Kathleen John and Chewey video recorded specials. Hittin' the Bricks is produced through the not-for-profit, 501c3 TracingAncestors.org.

Includes: Favorite font tricks Interview with Theresa Jackson InDesign 20.1 Obscure feature: Match Pasteboard to Theme Color News: 20.1 is in release rollout multi-find/change is now free Old (but still relevant!) InDesign Magazine articles, now on site: Designing Photo Albums in InDesign by Khara Plicanic Getting Started with GREP Styles in InDesign by Steve Caplin Working in Microsoft Word by Jamie McKee Designing with Type: Grunge, Punk, and Futurism by Nigel French InDesign Nightmares by David and Anne-Marie Theresa Jackson: Articles and videos Old (but fun!) Interview Font Tricks: How to change the underlying default font for a document (see Don Ayer's comment at end for an easier solution) OpenType text and text frame adornments Obscure Feature: Match Pasteboard to Theme Color

In this episode, the Team chats with Haley Moore, VP of Design, about her career path from designer to manager and how she came to terms with embracing her natural ability to lead projects and being comfortable managing a team of very skilled designers. She discusses taking leaps in her career in order to not lean away from her natural skillsets, even if they are hard to recognize, and being ok with the concept of not being the best at something. Haley also discusses the traits and qualities she looks for when hiring a new designer, including how to share a bit of yourself with your interviewers. Kristen discusses Bigfoot (again), and Haley unwinds with snacks on the floor to deal with burnout.Host, Producer, & Editor - Mark CelaHost, Director, & Script Writer - Kristen PericleousHost, Social Media Manager, Social Media Content Creator, & Editor - Dan LawsonHost, Website Director - Lauren DeMarks

We're kicking off the new year at Did I Do That? with something old, something new (to some of you), and something borrowed, so don't be blue: it's our live show from Seattle Design Festival 2024! Seattle's own Terry Marks joined Sean on the mainstage in Lake Union Park to talk through Hey Reb!'s proportions, the curse of eternal life (via stock photo modeling), and InDesign's spellcheck dictionary.If you want to find more about Terry's work, the best place to visit is tmarksdesign.com! While I am happy to direct any calls back to Terry, feel free to reach out to him if you're interested in the reprint edition of Mr. Crumbley Dreams a Tiger.While this is an audio-only version of the outdoor recording, you can watch the video version of this episode on SDF's YouTube channel. Too, while I've done my best to clean up the ambient noise present on the day, you may hear the odd bit of wind noise as well as more than a few seagulls. May these soothing sounds of summer help warm you through a chilly January.Big thanks to Terry Marks for being a part, as well as to the whole crew at Seattle Design Festival! It was such a treat to be a part of it! Thanks to Annalee Shum for coordinating and programming us, to our volunteer Maxine to helping with the production, and to Adrian Pacheco who both worked the boards for the event and was kind enough to share these files! Thanks, and goodnight, Seattle! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Follow-up DIGI Sun sensors, Jared Isaacman, Blue Origin New Glenn, Deep Space Gateway, Re #677 → NMBS ziet definitief af van wifi in Belgische treinen Onderwerpen De eindejaarslijstjes, het beste (of slechtste) van 2️⃣0️⃣2️⃣4️⃣ Beste film

Table Scripts: Switching Rows and Columns in an InDesign Table Sort tables Setting Table Column Widths Easier Table Formatting Sizing Columns and Rows with a Script Calculations in InDesign Active Tables plug-in from DTP Tools Fixed Issues in InDesign 20.0.1 CreativePro Events: The Design + AI Summit, CreativePro Week, and more Obscure Feature: Cell Division

Ep 247Cloudflare took down our website after trying to force us to pay 120k$ within 24hBelkin Recalls BoostCharge Pro Power Bank With Apple Watch Charger Due to Fire HazardApple's Find My enables sharing location of lost items with third partiesApple Under Pressure to Remove Geo-Blocking Restrictions in the EUBleepingComputer:VMware has announced that its VMware Fusion and VMware Workstation desktop hypervisors are now free to everyone for commercial, educational, and personal use.YT/dosdude1: UPGRADING a Brand NEW M4 Mac miniMac mini (2024) SSD Module - Apple SupportPaul Haddad: Holy low idle power usage Batman. M4 non pro. Mini pro idles at around the same 1.2/1.3W with nothing connected.Jeff Geerling: The M4 Mac mini's RIDICULOUS efficiencyAlex Cheema: M4 Mac Mini AI ClusterKen Case: A fun discovery this week is that a Mac mini M4 (not Pro, 4P + 6E) does a clean build of OmniFocus 1.45x faster than an M1 Ultra Mac Studio (16P + 4E).optimum: Apple has my attention - M4 Mac MiniInside M4 chips: E and P cores (The Eclectic Light Company)Uglavnom, radim u Adobe suite na PC već sto godina, većinom Illustrator, InDesign i manje Photoshop, pripremam razne materijale za tisak. Trenutno vrtim PC s Intelom i9-13900K, 64 GB RAM, AMD Radeon RX 7700 XT na dva 4k monitora. Sve to radi OK ali mi je zapeo za oko novi Mac Mini M4 pa me zanima ima li uopće smisla (pored ovog PC kojeg imam) nabaviti novi Mac mini i da li bi on radio brže/bolje s Adobe paketom? Nekako gađam Mac Mini M4 Pro, 48 GB RAM i 1T disk. Ne zanima me igranje na Macu, isključivo Adobe paket i eventualno QGis.ArtIsRight: Testing All M4 SoC MacBook Pro, Which one is best for Pro Photo/Video Workflow?Apple Releases Final Cut Pro 11 for MacApple Releases Logic Pro 11.1 for MacBill Atkinson Diagnosed with Pancreatic Cancer - TidBITSHarry McCracken:Tom Kurtz, who co-invented BASIC—probably the piece of software that has meant the most to me — has died at age 96.ZahvalniceSnimano 23.11.2024.Uvodna muzika by Vladimir Tošić, stari sajt je ovde.Logotip by Aleksandra Ilić.Artwork epizode by Saša Montiljo, njegov kutak na Devianartupastel na papiru

What's New in InDesign 2025: Adobe's update page How to Avoid Print Problems with MathML in InDesign New Accessibility Features in InDesign 2025 James Wamser's New Features Guide Creative Cloud Storage: Where Does Your Work Go? New "wow" products at MAX Project Neo Substance 3D Viewer Amazing ProjectTurntable from Sneaks Interview with: Karen Brewer, Adobe Obscure Feature: "Show Subset" Five Ways InDesign Libraries Are Better Than CC Libraries

News More CreativePro events coming up Update on InDesign 19.5 *beta* feature CreativePro Magazine 25 Years of Tips and Tricks! Catch Anne-Marie Sept 19 at the L.A. InDesign User Group (online) Sponsored by PageProof The Benefits of Online Proofing for the Creative Workflow PageProof review PageProof's website Update note on InDesign 19.5 Remember that GenAI stuff in 19.5 is beta! Three interesting InDesign Secrets forum posts How to get text to sit outside the text frame More on First Baseline Offset How to compare two PDF files PDF Comparator from Premedia Systems Comparing images or pages using effects blend modes The background to my AI or PDF files is no longer transparent Understanding InDesign's Place PDF Options How to Place CC Library Items with Transparency Obscure Feature: Contextual Task Bar (everyone loves it… not)

We're excited to have professional Photographer Todd Kuhns on this episode, where he talks about the state of photography as an industry, advice for young photographers and designers, and how design could learn from the last 20 years of how photography has evolved.  Todd's work may be found at his website and YouTube channel:Studio12online.comTodd Kuhns on YouTubeHost, Producer, & Editor - Mark CelaHost, Director, & Script Writer - Kristen PericleousHost, Social Media Manager, Social Media Content Creator, & Editor - Dan LawsonHost, Website Director - Lauren DeMarks

In this episode, Kristen, Dan, and Lauren discuss the importance and impact of soft skills in your design role and job hunting. The Team covers what soft skills are, how you can talk about them in interviews, and how you build on them throughout your career.Host, Producer, & Editor - Mark CelaHost, Director, & Script Writer - Kristen PericleousHost, Social Media Manager, Social Media Content Creator, & Editor - Dan LawsonHost, Website Director - Lauren DeMarks

News InDesign 19.5 released 2024 CreativePro Week available on-demand More CreativePro events coming up CreativePro Magazine latest issue Sponsored by PageProof The Benefits of Online Proofing for the Creative Workflow PageProof review PageProof's website Unboxing InDesign 19.5 InDesign 19.5 Adds Generative Expand, History Panel, and Find/Change Text Case Adobe's What's New in 19.5 page Change Case: Peter Kahrel's script  GREP Solution to Flawed Title Case Feature History panel: The way we used to do History panels  Accessing Document History Obscure Feature: .joboptions More on PDF presets      

At Live bootcamps people always ask how you can get the inside scoop. Carina always says what no one likes to hear and that is, you have to pay to play. That means you have to go to shows, network, join programs, and anything else that will help you learn the industry and talk to buyers and manufacturers. This is a key component that so many creatives miss because they are unwilling to put themselves out there.Episode 457  What Got Me The Inside Scoop When I Had No Network_________ Have you ever wondered what makes art sell? In her new book, Make Art that Sells!, Carina shares how to think like a customer and create art that people want to buy. She offers practical tips on market trends, pricing, and self-promotion. By understanding what buyers are looking for, you can make your art more appealing and boost your sales. Click below to learn morehttps://www.designsuitecourses.com/makeartthatsells__________About Carina Gardner:Carina Gardner is a fabric designer, paper designer, and design educator who is passionate about helping other designers fulfill their creative dreams by teaching them her strategies for making money as a designer. She has a Ph.D. in Design and taught design at the University of Minnesota before starting Carina Gardner, Inc.Carina Gardner, Inc design brand has been featured in dish ware, holiday decor, sewing patterns, and more. Her exclusive Design Suite Program helps creatives make money designing as they learn to design. Her programs include Illustrator and Photoshop training, surface pattern design, paper design, Silhouette & Cricut file design, and running a design business. She started the Make and Design Podcast so that she could share inspiration, stories, and experiences about design and life with crafters and designers.Find out more at https://www.carinagardner.comWatch this episode as a video at https://www.makeanddesign.com/Have you ever wanted to create your own personalized planner. Whether you want to create one just for yourself or you want to sell your unique planner, you will not want to miss my workshop coming up on July 24th. This is a 3 hour workshop on Illustrator and InDesign and it's currently 50% off. Join athttps://www.designsuitecourses.com/planner-workshop

Carina goes through several of the "Day in a Life's from Erin Austen Abbott's book How to Make It. She looks at the daily activities of people who are doing their creative work for a living and things you can do to mimic their activities.Episode 456 How to MAKE it: Lessons From the Book of 25 Creatives_________ Have you ever wondered what makes art sell? In her new book, Make Art that Sells!, Carina shares how to think like a customer and create art that people want to buy. She offers practical tips on market trends, pricing, and self-promotion. By understanding what buyers are looking for, you can make your art more appealing and boost your sales. Click below to learn morehttps://www.designsuitecourses.com/makeartthatsells__________About Carina Gardner:Carina Gardner is a fabric designer, paper designer, and design educator who is passionate about helping other designers fulfill their creative dreams by teaching them her strategies for making money as a designer. She has a Ph.D. in Design and taught design at the University of Minnesota before starting Carina Gardner, Inc.Carina Gardner, Inc design brand has been featured in dish ware, holiday decor, sewing patterns, and more. Her exclusive Design Suite Program helps creatives make money designing as they learn to design. Her programs include Illustrator and Photoshop training, surface pattern design, paper design, Silhouette & Cricut file design, and running a design business. She started the Make and Design Podcast so that she could share inspiration, stories, and experiences about design and life with crafters and designers.Find out more at https://www.carinagardner.comWatch this episode as a video at https://www.makeanddesign.com/Have you ever wanted to create your own personalized planner. Whether you want to create one just for yourself or you want to sell your unique planner, you will not want to miss my workshop coming up on July 24th. This is a 3 hour workshop on Illustrator and InDesign and it's currently 50% off. Join athttps://www.designsuitecourses.com/planner-workshop

If you are wanting a "do over" in your creative process, Carina talks about two things you can do that she teaches on from the Artist's Way. She has recently been working on a new course from the University of Arts & Design Business that incorporates the principles from the Artist's Way. Learn how these two things that help you be more creative than ever before!Episode  455  Revitalizing Your Creative Process with the Artist's Way_________ Have you ever wanted to create your own personalized planner. Whether you want to create one just for yourself or you want to sell your unique planner, you will not want to miss my workshop coming up on July 24th. This is a 3 hour workshop on Illustrator and InDesign and it's currently 50% off. Join athttps://www.designsuitecourses.com/planner-workshop__________About Carina Gardner:Carina Gardner is a fabric designer, paper designer, and design educator who is passionate about helping other designers fulfill their creative dreams by teaching them her strategies for making money as a designer. She has a Ph.D. in Design and taught design at the University of Minnesota before starting Carina Gardner, Inc.Carina Gardner, Inc design brand has been featured in dish ware, holiday decor, sewing patterns, and more. Her exclusive Design Suite Program helps creatives make money designing as they learn to design. Her programs include Illustrator and Photoshop training, surface pattern design, paper design, Silhouette & Cricut file design, and running a design business. She started the Make and Design Podcast so that she could share inspiration, stories, and experiences about design and life with crafters and designers.Find out more at https://www.carinagardner.comWatch this episode as a video at https://www.makeanddesign.com/Have you ever wanted to create your own personalized planner. Whether you want to create one just for yourself or you want to sell your unique planner, you will not want to miss my workshop coming up on July 24th. This is a 3 hour workshop on Illustrator and InDesign and it's currently 50% off. Join athttps://www.designsuitecourses.com/planner-workshop

EPISODE 23: Storytelling Your WorkOn this episode, the Team discusses tips and tactics for presenting your creative work and ideas in a storytelling narrative. We present ideas for ways to mesh verbal and visual cues to guide you and the audience through your work and how to present ideas in the most professional and goal-oriented manner. We give ideas for how to streamline your narrative, show off your creative process, set up your website, and, sometimes most difficult of all, how to verbally wrap up the story of each piece. Finally, we talk about how these storytelling skills will continue with you in your career, often being utilized to sell ideas to clients and non-designers.Host, Producer, & Editor - Mark CelaHost, Director, & Script Writer - Kristen PericleousHost, Social Media Manager, Social Media Content Creator, & Editor - Dan LawsonHost, Website Director - Lauren DeMarks

In this episode, the Team talks about professional mentorship in design. They discuss how mentor/mentee relationships are different from what you may have experienced in school, how those relationships form, and what it means to be a good mentor. Egg-timer news this week covers the team's favorite features announced at Apple's WWDC event. Digressions include how to pronounce “biopic,” business card design, and poorly drawn billboards. Host, Producer, & Editor - Mark CelaHost, Director, & Script Writer - Kristen PericleousHost, Social Media Manager, Social Media Content Creator, & Editor - Dan LawsonHost, Website Director - Lauren DeMarks

On this episode, the Team celebrates the start of season three by welcoming new, full-time host, Lauren DeMarks! Egg Timer News covers the launch and huge take off of artist-friendly social media site, Cara, along with our predictions for its future. We then dive into the dreaded world of group projects, focusing on working with other disciplines and their ways of problem solving, the importance of communication and speaking up, and also time management. We share tips on planning for successful group meetings, tactics for handling how to get started, and tools for project management. Finally, the Team covers how to work with different aesthetics within group members, sharing team projects in your portfolio, and the best way to wrap up any group project. We hope you enjoy Episode 21!Host, Producer, & Editor - Mark CelaHost, Director, & Script Writer - Kristen PericleousHost, Social Media Manager, Social Media Content Creator, & Editor - Dan LawsonHost, Website Director - Lauren DeMarks

Welcome to a special edition as we wrap up Season 2; the Ok, Team Lounge! In this episode, your hosts will cover a variety of topics outside the world of design and discuss their passions. Buckle up, as the Team covers Dan's new podcast, horror movies, video games, tv shows we're loving, D&D, Nicholas Cage's acting prowess, and Kristen's favorite cryptid; Bigfoot. We also have a special announcement; Lauren DeMarks will be joining us next season as a full time host! Host, Producer, & Editor - Mark CelaHost, Director, & Script Writer - Kristen PericleousHost, Social Media Manager, Social Media Content Creator, & Editor - Dan Lawson

244 - Welcome back to the Freedom Focus Photography Podcast! I'm your host, Nicole Begley, and today we have a very special guest, Daniel Usenko, the creative force behind Pixellu, developers of my favorite album design software, Smart Albums.Whether you're a seasoned pro or just starting to explore the possibility of adding albums to your services, this episode is packed with insights that will inspire you to not only streamline your workflow, but also potentially utilize albums in your marketing. Daniel will share how Smart Albums can transform the tedious task of album creation into a swift, enjoyable process, enhancing both your product offering and client experience. So, buckle up as we uncover the potential for offering gorgeous albums to your clients.WHAT TO LISTEN FOR:The Value of Print:Daniel discusses the importance of printed albums in today's digital age and how they can distinguish your services from others, providing a tangible product that clients treasure.Advice for Incorporating Albums into Your Business:   Daniel gives practical advice on how photographers can seamlessly integrate album sales into their offerings, enhancing client satisfaction and boosting their bottom line.Improving Photographer Efficiency: Discover how Smart Albums can drastically reduce the time spent on album designs, enabling photographers to pre-design albums for sales sessions and increase their profitability.The Origins of Smart Albums:   Daniel shares the journey from the early days of album design, which required days of work using Photoshop or InDesign, to the development of Smart Albums, which now allows photographers to design beautiful albums in less than 10 minutes.Utilizing Albums for Marketing:   Explore innovative ways to use albums as a marketing tool, whether it's showcasing your work at events or creating bespoke client albums that drive new business.Resources From This Episode:Ready to save 15% on your first year of SmartAlbums?  Use the code: FREEDOMFOCUSHair of the Dog Academy Elevate Coaching ProgramFreedom Focus FormulaJOIN THE PARTY: Connect with us on Instagram Explore valuable pet photography resources here Discover effective pricing and sales strategies for all portrait photographers. Ready to grow your business? Elevate helps you do just that. Check out our recommended gear and favorite books.

Indiana State University Professor Nancy Nicols-Pethick joins the team to talk shop and how she uses her unique experiences to push students to find passion in their work, learn how to address failures, and recognize how to aim for higher personal standards rather than settling for their current skill level. We cover mastering creative foundations, work/life balance, and, of course, her thoughts on AI. Join us and our wonderful guest as we discuss art, passion, and finding creativity in the seemingly mundane. Nancy's WebsiteThrough the Eyes of an Artist - Nancy Nichols-PethickAmazon Affiliate Link: Why Art Cannot Be Taught: A Handbook for Art StudentsHost, Producer, & Editor - Mark CelaHost, Director, & Script Writer - Kristen PericleousHost, Social Media Manager, Social Media Content Creator, & Editor - Dan Lawson

News InDesign 19.4 new features Note: 19.4 wasn't fully released when we recorded this podcast! You can learn more about the new features here. Online Events and CreativePro Week CreativePro Magazine latest issue Kara Plicanic interview Khara's web site Interview with Khara Khara's CreativePro articles and videos Secrets of the Live Preflight Panel Finding Overset Text With Preflight Customizing a Preflight Profile Finding Hidden Items With Preflight Profiles Use Live Preflight to Manage Page Sizes How to Create Preflight Profiles in InDesign Using the Book Panel to Preflight Multiple Documents More Preflight articles Obscure Feature of the Week: Recompose All Stories When Modified Anne-Marie's post and comment about it InDesign documentation Recompose All Text keyboard shortcut: Control-Alt-/ or Command-Option-/  

Learn our favorite tips, tricks, and shortcuts to creating accessible documents in Indesign! Every application has hidden secrets, some so good you wish you knew them sooner. Join Chad Chelius and Dax Castro as they share their experiences behind these shortcuts, how they found them, and how each tip can help you become a quicker, more proficient document accessibility expert.   In this episode, we will cover how to name and outline heading levels, adding styles to headers, editing all export tags, different techniques to add Items to the articles panel, using the escape key to select the table cell, creating an object style for artifacting, and creating shortcuts to assign a heading level. Find the Accessible InDesign Starter Template by visiting: https://www.accessibilityunraveled.com/accessible-indesign-styles/  Get a demonstration of MadeToTag by visiting:  Accessibilityunraveled.com/axesWord Time Stamps 0:00: Introduction 3:30 - Topic Introduction 5:57 - Name and Outline Headers 12:56 - Adding Styles to Headers 17:09 - Edit All Export Tags 20:13 - Adding Items to the Articles Panel  24:19 - Use Escape to Select the Table Cell 25:06 - Creating an Object Style for Artifacting 29:16 - Creating Shortcuts to Assign Heading Levels

In this episode, guest Crystal Black talks about issues related to doing design work for friends and the pitfalls of not using a contract. Egg Timer News: Canva buys Affinity!Host, Producer, & Editor - Mark CelaHost, Director, & Script Writer - Kristen PericleousHost, Social Media Manager, Social Media Content Creator, & Editor - Dan Lawson

News Fixed issues in 19.3 Earn an InDesign Certificate on LinkedIn Learning Online Events and CreativePro Week Hot Threads: How to create a grid of images (or images and captions) so they'll autoflow and are easy to rearrange? Swapping Images script Auto-Reflowing Images in a Grid Loic's Inline Merge script to create a grid Video on using Data Merge scripts Using Kelly's TOC trick Client wants the font to be "a little heavier" after the almost-final proof, best way to do that? Obscure Feature of the Week: Proxy

In this episode, The Team attempts to stay on task and talk about work-life balance for Graphic Designers. Host, Producer, & Editor - Mark CelaHost, Director, & Script Writer - Kristen PericleousHost, Social Media Manager, Social Media Content Creator, & Editor - Dan Lawson

Is your agency leveraging CRMs to tailor personalized client experiences and nurture long-term client relationships? Are you tracking customer interactions from first message to delivery? In the dynamic world of agency-client interactions, CRM tools play a pivotal role in streamlining operations and enhancing customer experiences. Today's guest has made customer satisfaction his focus even since his start as a graphic designer and now offers a CRM system designed specifically with agencies in mind. Tune in to learn valuable insights on client management and relationship-building strategies for agencies. Steve Holm is the CEO of Copper, a CRM company that helps agencies track clients from initial interest to project delivery. He discusses the importance of building better relationships with clients and shares his background as a graphic designer and his experience in digital product development. In this episode, we'll discuss: How design can translate to customer value. Crafting a success path for designers at your agency. How to effectively use CRM to navigate customer relationships. One CRM designed specifically for agencies. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio Understanding How Design Can Translate to Customer Value Steve's journey began as a graphic designer, crafting yearbooks for elementary schools using InDesign. He then transitioned to digital design at an agency collaborating with Facebook on feature and product development. Through his network of industry connections, Steve ventured into partnerships with various companies, eventually assuming a leadership role in product management. His background in design and product management equipped Steve with the skills to create a vision and roadmap for his company based on the impact they aim to have on customers. Since the beginning, Steve has seen that design can directly impact customer satisfaction and, as a result, business success. To him, the most important thing to keep in mind as you design is “what is the value this is giving to customers and how can I make a connection between my design and the value they're receiving?” Making this connection leads to increased revenue or reduced turnover. In his view, this approach translated well into the role of CEO, as he understood the significance of prioritizing customers, designing with the end consumer in mind, and working backward to the technology, rather than starting with the technology and trying to sell it. It's a philosophy very similar to that of Steve Jobs, who believed in designing products that cater to the needs and desires of customers. Establishing a Clear Path to Success for Designers at Your Agency As a designer who eventually transitioned to management roles, Steve knows that trajectory depends on the person. Throughout his professional journey, he has strived to elevate the role of design within strategic discussions to provide more avenues for designers to find fulfillment. Establishing a clear career path for designers, encompassing both technical expertise and management responsibilities, is crucial for retaining top talent. However, not all designers aspire to or are suited for managerial positions; some excel as creatives and prefer to stay in that role. The problem is that in certain organizations managerial roles are perceived as the sole route for designers to have a significant impact on the broader vision. At his organization, Steve focused on granting design a strategic role in project development. Addressing the issue of impact makes it easier to understand a designer's motivations for role transitions, their objectives, and how to support their success. When designers only see themselves getting ahead by moving into manager roles, Steve perceives it as a flaw in company operations. Designers should have more participation in strategic decisions. By exposing them to the right conversations and strategies, agencies can leverage their expertise to drive innovation and create customer-centric solutions. Navigating Your Agency's Customer Relationships with CRM Customer relationship management (CRM) is a crucial aspect of any business and, as such, agencies should provide world-class relationship building across every touchpoint in the customer journey. It's the way to engage prospects and close more deals, as well as, retain existing clients to grow those accounts. With ten years of experience in CRM and looking at it from end to end Steve believes it's important to provide the utmost quality at every step of the process. How are you engaging with customers from the moment they reach out? How are you interacting? Are you making sure to get feedback on what went well and what can be improved post-interaction? The right answers to these questions will help you remarket and grow your business from existing clients. For Steve, a key practice in this process is to have a CRM that tracks all these interactions, documents, and tasks for the post-sales, and project delivery stages all in one place, as well as trying to automate as much as you can. Automating relationship building at scale will allow you to improve overall efficiency across the customer journey. Two Key Aspects to Get Better Results from Your CRM System The main problem with CRM is data integrity because it is only as good as the data you put into it. Do you have the right data in the system? Without accurate and up-to-date data, the CRM system becomes ineffective and may lead to missed opportunities or miscommunication with clients. In this sense, Steve recommends automating data entry and integration with other tools such as email and calendar platforms to ensure your CRM system remains reliable and useful for managing customer relationships. Another key aspect of using CRM effectively is customization. Different businesses have unique workflows and processes, so it is essential to have a CRM system that can be easily customized to fit specific needs. This includes setting up multiple pipelines for different types of customers or projects, and being able to adjust and tweak the system as needed to align with changing business requirements. The CRM Designed Specifically for Agencies Copper CRM, Steve's business, recently reset their focus to relationship-intensive businesses, such as agencies, consulting firms, and financial services, which rely heavily on building and maintaining strong relationships with their clients, rather than focusing on high-volume leads and deals. Copper serves as both a CRM and project management system, which sets it apart from similar businesses. This integration allows clients to seamlessly track the entire client relationship, from pre-sales to post-sales, in one tool. With Copper, agencies can focus on growing their business knowing their CRM is set up for success. Do You Want to Transform Your Agency from a Liability to an Asset? Looking to dig deeper into your agency's potential? Check out our Agency Blueprint. Designed for agency owners like you, our Agency Blueprint helps you uncover growth opportunities, tackle obstacles, and craft a customized blueprint for your agency's success.

In this episode, The Team explore different software used in professional graphic design. Host, Producer, & Editor - Mark CelaHost, Director, & Script Writer - Kristen PericleousHost, Social Media Manager, Social Media Content Creator, & Editor - Dan Lawson

Follow along and subscribe/rate/review at https://www.briancovey.com/podcast/We all have a purpose! In order to succeed we have to continually learn who we are, what we're called to do, and show up as our authentic selves..When it comes to personal branding, following the trends or mimicking popular influencers in your industry won't get you far. If you want to grow your network and your wealth, you need to own your greatness and do what you've been hard-wired to do!On the latest episode of Finding Your Competitive Edge, guest Roland Cochrun - Founder of InDesign, Speaker, and Coach - breaks down what it takes to be successful & fulfill your purpose in your personal brand and your life.“Imagine if you trusted yourself…it's my belief that if you can learn that you are here for something and you can start to listen to it rather than obsessively hiring coaches and obsessively reading every book…the ROI is different and, if you're measuring it monetarily I'm going to tell you right now there's no promise that your purpose is going to make you a ton of money…I can promise you this though: it will give you a sense of fulfillment that is better than money.” -Roland Cochrun

Follow along and subscribe/rate/review at https://www.briancovey.com/podcast/When it comes to personal branding, following the trends or mimicking popular influencers in your industry won't get you far. If you want to grow your network and your wealth, you need to own your greatness and do what you've been hard-wired to do!On this episode of Finding Your Competitive Edge, guest Roland Cochrun - Founder of InDesign, Speaker, and Coach - breaks down what it takes to be successful & fulfill your purpose in your personal brand and your life by continually learning who you are, what you're called to do, and showing up as your authentic self.“Imagine if you trusted yourself…it's my belief that if you can learn that you are here for something and you can start to listen to it rather than obsessively hiring coaches and obsessively reading every book…the ROI is different and, if you're measuring it monetarily I'm going to tell you right now there's no promise that your purpose is going to make you a ton of money…I can promise you this though: it will give you a sense of fulfillment that is better than money.” -Roland Cochrun

In this episode, The Team explores the graphic design interviewing process and the tough questions and situations that may arise during the process. Host, Producer, & Editor - Mark CelaHost, Director, & Script Writer - Kristen PericleousHost, Social Media Manager, Social Media Content Creator, & Editor - Dan Lawson

In this episode The Team Interviews UX Designer Lauren DeMarks! Lauren talks about her time as a design student, intern, and Senior UX Designer.Host, Producer, & Editor - Mark CelaHost, Director, & Script Writer - Kristen PericleousHost, Social Media Manager, Social Media Content Creator, & Editor - Dan Lawson

News InDesign 19.2 fixes some issues Discontinuation of Creative Cloud Synced files The InDesign + Long Documents Summit (use discount code CPSECRETS for $100 off!) CreativePro Week (use CPSECRETS for $100 off any multi-day pass) Julie Shaffer Shaffer Creative Certified Professional Services Marketer (CPSM) program, from SMPS: https://www.smps.org/certification/ Interview with Julie Shaffer, Certified Marketing Pro Don't Let Adobe InDesign/InCopy Notes Go Unnoticed Secrets of the Scripts Panel What Do the Default Sample Scripts Do in InDesign? Community Scripts for All Organizing Scripts into Folders Managing InDesign Scripts Easily manage dozens of scripts among multiple InDesign versions (from InDesign Tips for Design Geeks) Unicode Injector: such a cool script! Assigning Keyboard Shortcuts to Scripts Using Quick Apply to Run Scripts Obscure Feature of the Week: Wavy How to Fix the Fill on Items with Wavy Strokes InDesign How-to: Use Conditional Text More articles on Conditional Text

Full Transcript We are thrilled to have two leaders and colleagues in the digital document accessibility space on Article 19! They are Chad Chelius and Dax Castro, hosts of the Chax Chat podcast and co-founders of Chax Training and Consulting.  Join Tamman President Marty Molloy and Article 19 Podcast Host Kristen Witucki as they talk with Chad and Dax on a thrilling announcement, the origins of Chax Training and Consulting, and what they anticipate for the future of digital documents and digital accessibility as a whole.  - Chad Chelius is an Adobe Certified Instructor, Trainer, and Expert, he is an  Accessibility Document Specialist (ADS), author, consultant, and has spoken at the InDesign Summit, M-Enabling, CSUN, Tech Access, Creative Pro Week, Adobe MAX, and the Design + Accessibility Summit. As an Adobe Certified Instructor and consultant he teaches and advises on all Adobe print and web products, specializing in InDesign and InCopy workflows, Illustrator, automation, and PDF accessibility using InDesign, Word, and Adobe Acrobat. Dax Castro is an award-winning, Adobe Certified PDF Accessibility Trainer and certified Accessible Document Specialist (ADS) with more than two decades of experience in the marketing and communications industry. He has more than 200 hours of training, is an online influencer, trainer, speaker, and accessibility advocate that pushes the envelope of technology to produce more robust accessible documents. He has spoken at Creative Pro Week, Adobe MAX, Design + Accessibility Summit, CSUN, Assistive Technology Conference, and the SMPS (Society for Marketing Professional Services).

In this episode, The Team chats about the positive and negative influences of Artificial Intelligence on Graphic Design and Design Education. Host, Producer, & Editor - Mark CelaHost, Director, & Script Writer - Kristen PericleousHost, Social Media Manager, Social Media Content Creator, & Editor - Dan Lawson

In this episode, The Team answers listener questions, discusses ImagineFX Magazine, and finally answers the question, "Does Kristen own a tiara?"Time stamp information:(07:41) How do you overcome imposter syndrome when starting your job?(08:24) I'm going to be a new designer  going into the field after getting married, my partners job often has us relocate to different states semi- often. How do I search for jobs and communicate my situation without making myself seem like a weakness/ liability?(10:56) What is the best way to deal with not being graded for the first time? (i.e. how do you measure success without a letter grade?)(12:22) Can you talk about the equipment you use in your line of work? For starters, laptop vs desktop? Mouse vs trackpad? Etc. (17:22)What are some good goals to set when starting out in your first year of work?(19:17) How do you guys go about, deal with, and take the next step after making a costly design mistake at your job?(22:55) What are some projects that you were not sure about taking on, but you're glad you did because it turned out cool/the experience was great?(25:15) How do you deal with disappointments and failures in your career, with yourself and clients you might be working with?How do you deal with disappointments in your career? When something doesn't go perfect I take it very personally, how do you get over the disappointment?(26:29) Is it OK to add your own personal touch to a piece that some believe should be done a certain way? (something personal like a mark or a shape that only the artist would know or even realize was there.)(30:09) What does your typical work flow look like and do you work on more than one project at a time?(33:00) For someone pursuing a career in graphic design, what are employers looking for in a portfolio? How many different projects should be included? Do employers want to see sketches/before and afters? Is there such thing as too much in a portfolio? Is creating your own website to display your work better than some of the portfolio building apps (apps such as Behance)?(35:49) What will my first day on the job be like?(37:22) I love my job, and the co-workers and benefits are great, but im feeling bored. What should I do?(39:44) I'm ready to change jobs. How do I go about scheduling interviews while still working at my current job?(41:40) I'm a design student discouraged by my professors' negative talk of the profession. So I want to ask you: do love the work, why? and how to stay motivated and driven? (45:34) What should I expect my boss to talk about in my first year review? (47:22) How should I address my superiors at work?(48:19) I see a lot of job listings that only mention Canva as their main program. I find that program very limiting both creatively and aesthetically. Do I just apply for these jobs so I can get a paycheck and experience or do I hold out for a job that is more in the world of adobe products?(51:38) How do you give critique that is honest, but not hurtful?(53:29) What are the top three things new designers should be really good at?Host, Producer, & Editor - Mark CelaHost, Director, & Script Writer - Kristen PericleousHost, Social Media Manager, Social Media Content Creator, & Editor - Dan Lawson

In the news InDesign 19.1 (second attempt) released! Fingers crossed Upcoming online-only events:  The Presentation Design Conference, March 6-8 The InDesign + Long Documents Summit, April 5  CreativePro Week 2024, July 8–12, Washington, DC and online CreativePro Magazine February 2024 lead story: Presentation Design January 2024 lead story: AI in AI ;-)  Interview with Nolan Haims, presentation designer extraordinaire Secrets of the "Panel With The Longest Name" Obscure Feature of the Week: Apply to Parent Page Only Links mentioned in this podcast What's new in InDesign 19.1 BUT don't use ID 2024 (19.x) with Hebrew, Arabic, or RTL text (bug reports on facebook) and (bug reports in uservoice) Interview with Nolan Haims Nolan's Better Deck Deck (CreativePro members get 8 free!) Creating Paragraph Styles in PowerPoint Other great articles by Nolan The Presentation Podcast Speaking at The Presentation Design Conference EPUB Interactivity Preview Panel Using the EPUB Interactivity Preview Panel Faster Interactive Previews Saving Your Workspaces Join us for daily discussions and Q&A InDesignSecrets group on Facebook  InDesignSecrets group on LinkedIn 

In this episode, Dax Castro and Chad Chelius talk about the troubles with creating QR codes and reveal the common mistakes people make when trying to make them accessible. They show you how to create them, how to set the placement correctly, and what your options are when it comes to making accessible QR codes for your documents. Chad even shows how you can use InDesign to make your QR codes right in the program. If you struggle with accessible QR codes definitely tune into this episode!

In this episode, The Team covers salary negotiating techniques, cost of living considerations, and how to calculate how much you should ask for when negotiating your salary for a graphic design job!Host, Producer, & Editor - Mark CelaHost, Director, & Script Writer - Kristen PericleousHost, Social Media Manager, Social Media Content Creator, & Editor - Dan Lawson

In this episode The Team explores how and why designers should catalog their successes in order to become more confident and well-rounded in their careers. 

In the news InDesign 19.1 here and gone Upcoming CreativePro Online Events CreativePro Magazine December 2023: Charts and Graphs In honor of podcast 3.14, all about Pi fonts! Obscure Feature of the Week: Ruler on Spine Links mentioned in this podcast Don't use ID 2024 (19.0) with Hebrew, Arabic, or RTL text (bug reports on facebook) and (bug reports in uservoice) InDesign on Sonoma (Mac) has UI flashing problems; waiting for Apple to update for fix (bug report in uservoice)Bugs: Colin's article about bar graphs: Making Variable Bar Graphs in InDesign with Data Merge All about Pi… Pies in Ace Hardware stores (and elsewhere): https://www.thepieco.com/map-locations David's book about pi: The Joy of Pi How to type pi: https://creativepro.com/6-ways-type-pi-symbol-indesign/ Pi fonts (symbols/dingbats) Some fonts have "pi" in their name (e.g. Universal News & Commercial Pi) https://fonts.adobe.com/fonts/adobe-pi-std https://fonts.adobe.com/fonts/interstate-pi Adobe Fonts ornaments tag Easy as Pi (Jim Felici) We Heart Dingbats (Pam Pfiffner) Transforming Pages (David was wrong… this can be done without scripting… but you shouldn't): https://creativepro.com/transforming-pages-in-cs5/

In this episode The Team talks about what they do to overcome creative ruts, advice on coming up with unique ideas, and how the struggle to be original is actually positive for you. 

Have you contemplated designing your own book cover, or wondered what to expect if you hire a professional? Joining today's conversation is Katia Balab, who has joined the MiblArt family, a book cover design company that's based in the Ukraine. They have been helping self-publishing authors and publishers create book covers that are not only aesthetically pleasing but also an effective marketing tool.Thanks to Katia's expertise, you'll learn about the science behind effective cover design practices, how to foster a good working relationship with your designer, and a plethora of online resources to help you tackle as much as you want.Topics discussed in this episode: Why book cover design mattersPros & cons of designing your own coverEstablishing expectations with your cover designerCreating your creative briefCommunicating effectively with your designerUnderstanding bleed size and trimScience behind a good coverTypography, don't underestimate itThe good and bad of AI imagesGetting feedbackOnline tools and resourcesSpecial offer for PWW listenersConnect with Katia: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/katiabalab/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/katia.bookcoverdesign/ Website: https://miblart.com/?ref=nmy2owv Resources discussed during the show: Learning resources: Udemy, Skillshare, Coursera, LinkedIn Learning, YouTube tutorials like Bring Your Own LaptopSoftware: Illustrator, Photoshop, InDesign, Book Brush, and Affinity Publisher, CanvaStock images: Adobe Stock, Deposit Photos, Pexels, Unsplash, PixabayFonts: 1001 Free Fonts, Font Squirrel, DaFont, Google Fonts, Font GigDiscount code for MiblArt: PWW10Ready to stop circling around your manuscript? As an experienced professional editor, I can help you finish your book with confidence and direction. Learn more by visiting ParentsWhoWrite.com/editing, and book a free 30-minute call with me to discuss what's right for you.

Hello hello! Today I've got for you another between-season bonus episode. This time we're breaking format to talk about i know the end, a module I published earlier this year about going back home after a long time away and all the horrors that entails. Because if you can't occasionally publish something self-indulgent in your podcast feed, what's even the point of having one?My cohost for this is my friend Nico MacDougall, the current organizer of The Awards, who edited i know the end and had almost as much to say about it as I did.For maximum understanding of this episode, you can pick up a free copy of the module here and follow along (or skim it in advance).Further reading:The original i know the end cover artThe “oops all PBTA moves” version of i know the endThree of my short filmsMy previous written designer commentaries on Space Train Space Heist and CouriersJohn Harper talking with Andrew Gillis about the origins of Blades in the DarkThe official designer commentary podcasts for Spire and HeartAaron Lim's An Altogether Different River, which comes with a designer commentary versionCamera Lucida by Roland Barthes, a photography theory book that we talked about during recording but which I later cut because I remembered most of the details about it incorrectlyWhat Is Risograph Printing, another topic cut from the final recording because I got basically everything about it wrong while recording (the background texture of the module is a risograph printed texture)Before Sunrise by Richard LinklaterQuestionable Content by Jeph JacquesSocials:Nico's carrd page, which includes links to their socials, editing rates, and The Awards.Sam on Bluesky, Twitter, dice.camp, and itch.The Dice Exploder logo was designed by sporgory, and our theme song is Sunset Bridge by Purely Grey.Join the Dice Exploder Discord to talk about the show!Transcript:Sam: Hello and welcome to Dice Exploder. Normally each week we take a tabletop RPG mechanic, bait our lines with it, and cast them out to see, to see what we can catch. But you hear that different intro music? That means this episode I'm doing something much more self indulgent, a designer commentary on a module I released earlier this year called I Know the End.And just a heads up here at the top, to get the most out of this, you probably want to have at least read through the module in question before, or as, you're listening. I threw a bunch of free copies up on itch for exactly this purpose, so feel free to go run and grab one. I'll wait.Anyway, I love designer commentaries. You can find a few of my old written ones, as well as links to a few of my favorites from other people, in the show notes. But I wanted to try releasing one as a podcast, because one, that sounds fun, and two, what's the point of having a podcast feed if you can't be ridiculously self indulgent in it on occasion?And I picked I Know The End to talk about because it is... weird. I don't know. It's weird. I describe it on itch as a short scenario about returning home and all the horrors that entails. But you'll hear us take issue with, I don't know, maybe every word in that sentence over the course of this commentary. It was a strange experience to make this thing, and I figured that might be interesting to hear about.It was also the first time I ever worked with an editor Nico MacDougall my friend and the organizer behind The Awards since 2023. Nico was excellent to work with and you can find their rates and such in the show notes and they are with me today to talk through this thing in excruciating detail as you probably noticed from the runtime we had a lot to say. Definitely contracted two guys on a podcast disease. Anyway, I hope you enjoy this. But regardless, I'd love to hear what you think of it. Should I do more? Never again? Want to organize the Dice Exploder Game Jam we mused about doing at the end of this? Hit me up! I'd love to hear from you. And now, here is myself, I guess, and Nico MacDougall, with a full designer's commentary on I Know The End.Nico: Well, Sam, thanks for being here on your podcast to discuss your... adventure.Sam: You're welcome.Nico: Yes.Sam: for having me.Nico: Very first question is adventure: is that really, like, the right term for this?Sam: Are we really starting here? Like, I, I don't know. I, I feel like I got, I really went into this thing with true intentions to write a proper module, you know? Like I was thinking about OSR style play for like the first time in my life, and like, we were both coming out of the awards 2022 judging, and a lot of the submissions for 2022 the Awards were modules. I thought that was great but it really was sort of like opening the floodgates of this style of play that I knew basically nothing about. And, at the same time that we were reading through all 200 submissions for the awards, I was also reading Marcia B's list of 100 OSR blog posts of some influence.And so I was really drinking from the fire hose of this style of play, and also, I wasn't playing any of it. Like, I was experimenting with Trophy Gold a little bit, which is this story game that is designed to try to play OSR modules and dungeons as, like, a story game kind of experience. And I was kind of figuring out how it works and like how I wanted to run it and how to make it go And Joe DeSimone, who was running the awards at the time was just encouraging everyone to make weirder shit and like, that was his ethos and those were the people that he got to submit to the awards. Like, it was just the weirdest stuff that I had ever read in the RPG space and... That's probably a lie. There's some weird stuff out there.It was just like so much weird stuff. It was like stuff on the bleeding edge of a whole side of the hobby that I didn't participate in in the first place. My intro to this part of the hobby was the bleeding edge of it. And I was like, alright, I, I just wanna make something there, I wanna try playing around there and see what happens.And Joe tweeted out the tweet was like, Now we're all making modules based on songs that make us cry. And I was listening to the Phoebe Bridgers album Punisher on loop at the time to inspire a screenplay I was working on. And the last track is called I Know the End, and just ends with this, primal scream.And it was, it was a hard fall for me, at the time. And the primal scream felt really cathartic. And I was spending a lot of time in the, small town where I grew up. And, this horror monster idea of a town that is, itself, an entity and like is a whole monster, and like, what does that mean exactly? I don't know, but intuitively, I like, understand it, and we're just gonna kind of drive... towards my intuitive understanding of what this thing is supposed to be. I just decided to do that and see what happened. And did that give us an adventure in the end? I don't know. Did that give us a 32 page long bestiary entry in the form of a module? Like, that sounds closer to right to me, but also, taxonomies are a lie and foolish anyways.I don't know, I made a weird thing, here it is. Nico: Yeah. So I was scrolling back in our, in our conversation to where you first shared this with me, and I... I would like to share with the audience the text that accompanied it. It was the Google Doc, and then it said, This might be completely unplayable, it might actually be a short story, or, like, a movie, but I'm gonna publish it anyway, and, you know... If that isn't exactly it, like...Sam: Yeah I like that stuff. I don't know, another thing I've been thinking about a lot this fall is writing by stream of consciousness. Like, I realized that I don't have a lot of confidence in any of my work that I feel like I created quickly. Like, the RPG thing I'm most well known for, I think, is Doskvol Breathes, which I just pumped out in an afternoon. It was just a thought that I had on a whim about how you might play blades in the dark maybe. And I finished it and then I released it and people were like, this is amazing. And I still get complimented on it all the time. I'm still really proud of it, but it, I don't have any confidence in it because it came so quickly.And, like, I know that this is something I need to, like, talk about in therapy, you know, about, like, It's not real art unless I worked on it for six months straight, like, really worked my ass off. But this process, I sort of looked back over my career as a screenwriter, as a short filmmaker, as a game designer, and started realizing just how many of my favorite things that I've made came from exactly that process of the whole idea kind of coming together all at once in like one sitting. And even if it then took like a bunch of months of like refining like it's wild to me How much of my favorite work was created by following my intuition, and then just leaving it be afterwards.Nico: Yeah, I actually did want to ask about the similarity between your, like, process for TTRPG design versus screenwriting, cause... While I have read, you know, edited this, but also, like, read your your game design work and know relatively well your thoughts on, like, you know, just game design sort of theory and stuff in general, I have never read any, like, screenwriting stuff that you've done. Although, lord knows I hope to see it someday. Sam: Well, listen, if anyone listening to this wants to read my screenplays, I'm on Discord. You can find me and I'll happily share them all. My old short films are largely available on the internet, too. You know, maybe I'll link a couple in the show notes.Nico: oh yeah,Sam: But I I think of my process for screenwriting as really, really structural.Like, I, I'm a person who really came out of needing a plot and needing to know what happens in a story, and to really especially need to know the ending of a story so I know kind of what I'm going towards as I'm writing the thing. I outline like really extensively before I write feature or a pilot, like there's so much planning you have to do, I think it is really, really hard to write any kind of screenplay and not have to revise it over and over and over again, or at least like plan really carefully ahead of time and like really think about all the details, revise a lot, run it by a lot of people for feedback over and over. But especially for me that, that having an ending, like a target in mind when I'm writing is so important. I just don't know how to do it without that.Except occasionally when I get some sort of idea like this one where I have a feeling of vibe and I just start writing that thing and then eventually it's done. And I, I've never had that happen for a feature film screenplay or like a TV pilot kind of screenplay.But I have had a couple of short films come together that way where I don't know what the thing is, I just know what I am writing right now, and then it's done, and then I go make it. And I I don't know why that happens sometimes. Nico: Yeah, I mean I would imagine length plays a factor in it, right? Like a short film, or, I mean, gosh, how many pages did I know the end, end, end up being? Sam: 36. Nico: But I find that really fascinating that, too, that you say that when you're screenwriting, you have to have it really structural, really outlined, an end specifically in mind, when, to me, that almost feels like, well, not the outlining part, but having an end in mind feels almost antithetical to even the idea of, like, game design, or, I guess, TTRPG design, right?Even the most sort of relatively pre structured, Eat the Reich, Yazeeba's Bed and Breakfast, like, Lady Blackbird games, where the characters are pretty well defined before any human player starts interacting with them, you can never know how it's going to end. And it's kind of almost against the idea of the game or the, the sort of art form as a whole to really know that.Even games that are play to lose, like, there are many games now where it's like, you will die at the end. And it's like, okay, but like, that's not really the actual end. Like, sure, it's technically the end, but it's like, we have no idea what's gonna be the moment right before that, or the moment before that. As opposed to screenwriting Sam: yeah, it's a, it's a really different medium. I still think my need to have a target in mind is something that is really true about my game design process too.Like the other game that I'm well known for, well known for being relative here, but is Space Train Space Heist, where I was like, I have a very clear goal, I want to run a Blades in the Dark as a one shot at Games on Demand in a two hour slot. And Blades in the Dark is not a game that is built to do that well, so I want to make a game that is built to do that well, but like, captures everything about the one shot Blades in the Dark experience that I think is good and fun .And that may not be a sort of thematic statement kind of ending, like that's what I'm kind of looking for when I'm writing a screenplay, but that is a clear goal for a design of a game.Nico: Yeah. even In the context of I know the end, and to start talking a little bit about my role in this as well, as, as the editor, I think the point of view, the vibe, the, like, desired sort of aesthetic end point Was very clear from the start, from the jump. And I think that in many ways sort of substitutes for knowing the end of the story in your screenwriting process.So that really helped when I was editing it by focusing on like, okay, here's the pitch. How can I help sort of whittle it down or enhance it or change stuff in order to help realize that goal.And sometimes it kind of surprises me even, like, how much my games shift and change as they reach that goal. Like, sometimes you can, like, look back at old versions of it, and you're like, wow, so little of this is still present. But, like, you can see the throughline, very sort of Ship of Theseus, right? Like, you're like, wow, everything has been replaced, and yet, it's, like, still the thing that I wanted to end up at.Sam: Yeah, another thing that is, I think, more true of my screenwriting process than my game design process is how very common that in the middle of the process I will have to step back and take stock of what was I trying to do again? Like, what was my original goal? I've gotten all these notes from a lot of different people and, like, I've done a lot of work and I've found stuff that I like.And what was I trying to do? Like, I have, all this material on the table now, I have, like, clay on the wheel, and, like, I just gotta step back and take a break and refocus on, like, what are we trying to do. I Think it's really important to be able to do that in any creative process.To Tie together a couple of threads that we've talked about here, talked at the beginning of this about how much this felt like a stream of consciousness project for me, that I really just like, dumped this out and then like, let it rip.But also, I mean, this was my first time working with an editor, and I think you did a lot of work on this to make it way better, like really polish it up and make those edges the kind of pointy that they wanted to be, that this game really called for. And that makes this, in some ways, both a really unstructured process for me, and then a really structured process, and... I don't know what to make of that. I think there's something cool about having both of those components involved in a process. Nico: Yeah, it is. I I very much agree that like, yeah, most of my sort of design stuff have, has proceeded very much the same way of just kind of like sporadically working on it, changing stuff, like revamping it, whatever. And it's like, it's sort of, yeah, in a constant state of fluxx up until the moment where I'm like, okay, I guess it's done now.What I was gonna say, I was gonna jump back just a point or two which is you mentioned Clayton Notestein's Explorer's Design Jam. And I was curious, like, what was your experience, like, using that design template? Sam: Yeah I really enjoyed it, I really had a good time with it. I had already gotten really comfortable with InDesign just teaching myself during lockdown. Like, that's what I did for 2020, was I, like, laid out a bunch of games myself and they all looked like shit, but they all taught me how to use InDesign as a program.And I think templates are really, really valuable. Like it's so much easier to reconfigure the guts of another template than it is to create something from scratch.And I like Clayton's template. I think it's nice and clean. I think you can see in all the publications that have come out using Clayton's template, how recognizable it is. How little most people stray from the bones of it, and on the one hand, I think it's amazing that you can just use the template and go really quickly and like, get something out.And also I just want to push on it a little bit more. I want something, like the template is designed to be a template. It is not a suit tailored to whatever your particular project is. But also, I think if I had tried to lay this out without a template, it would look substantially worse, and there are a few notable breaks here and there that I, you know, I enjoyed experimenting with. I like the use of the comments column for little artwork. I think that was a nice little innovation that I added.And, you know, I didn't write this originally to have that sort of commentary column as a part of it. Like, all of the text was just in the main body of it. And I like the way it turned out to have that sort of, like, director's commentary thing hanging out in the wings. lot of people have talked about how much they like that in Clayton's template. so I, I don't know, like I, think that on the one hand a template really opens up a lot of possibilities for a lot of people and really opened up a lot of possibilities for me, and on the other hand I do still look at it and I see the template And I'm like, I hope this doesn't look too much like every other person whoNico: Right, right. I mean, that is definitely the difficulty of providing those kinds of tools, because like, it makes it very easy to make things especially if you're sort of just getting started, or if you don't have a lot of confidence or familiarity with it inDesign or anything like that. But ultimately, I feel like Clayton himself would say that the Explorer's Design Template is not intended to be, like, the final template, right? It's intended to be, like, a tool that you can use to varying effects, right?Yeah, I was thinking about it when I was going through this earlier, and I was like, Oh, yeah, like, you only use the comments, column a few times, and then I literally only realized maybe five minutes before you said it, I was like, oh, wait, all the little artwork is also in that little column thing, like you just said, and I was like, oh, that's like, that's actually a really cool way to use the template, because that space is already provided if you include that column, but just because you have the column that's, you know, quote unquote, intended for commentary, doesn't mean you have to use it for commentary, doesn't mean you have to put text in there.Sam: Yeah, you definitely like learn a lot of stuff about the guts of the thing as you start playing with it.Nico: Yeah. is probably getting on the level of, like, pretty pointless, sort of what ifs, but I'm curious... If Clayton hadn't done the Explorer's Design Template Jam, or if you had, for whatever reason, like, not been inspired to use that as the impetus to, like, make this and get it edited and laid out and published or whatever, like, Do you think you still would have tried to use that template, or would you have just tried to lay it out yourself, like you've done in the past?Sam: Honestly, I think without the jam this wouldn't exist. I have like a long to do list of things at any given time, like creative projects I wanna on, youNico: Oh, yeah,Sam: know? And the thing that brought this to the top of that to do list was just wanting to have something to submit into that jam. You know, I wanted to work with you as an editor. I Always want to clear something off the to do list. I always want to have some kind of creative project. And, I wanted to submit something to that jam, but I think if you took any one of those away, I might not have put the thing out at all. Nico: Yeah, that's really interesting. But I guess that's also, again, kind of what a good template or layout or just tool in general can help is actually get these things made. Sam: That's what a good jam can do, too, right? I mean, there's a reason the Golden Cobra contest is something that I love. It's like 40 new LARPs every year and they only exist because the Golden Cobra is throwing down the gauntlet.Nico: That's very true. Well, maybe it's time to move along to more practical concerns Sam: Maybe it's time to do the actual commentary part of this episodeWe've done the waxing philosophical part, butNico: we, yeah, checked off that Dice Exploder box. Now it's time to do the actual game talk.Sam: your bingo cards Nico: Yeah, Sam: Yeah, so let's start with the cover.Nico: Yes, the cover, which I only realized it was a teeth, that it was a mouth with teeth open when you said in the outline, ah yes, it's a mouth with teeth. And I looked at it and I was like... Oh my god, it is. Like,Sam: I did my job so well. I wanted it to be subtle, but I always like looked at it and was like it's so obviously teeth, I'm never gonna get this subtle enough. But I'm I'm glad to hear that I succeeded.Nico: I truly don't know what I thought it was before, but it definitely wasn't teeth.Sam: Yeah. Well, it started as I'll share this in the show notes. It started as this image. It was like a 6x9 layout, and, the teeth were still there, and it was like, all black, and the teeth were this much wider, gaping maw, like, inhuman, unhinged jaw kind of situation. And then, in the middle of it, was a, like, live laugh love kind of Airbnb sign with I Know The End on it. It was like the mouth, like, eating the sign.And I liked that. I felt like, the problem with that was that... As much as creepy, live, laugh, love sign is kind of the like, vibe of this, I didn't really want to bring in the like, kitsch of that at all, like, I felt like that kitschiness would hang over the whole thing if I made it the cover, and I mean, this whole thing is just about my own personal emotional repression, right? And my feelings about my small town that I'm from, andabout like, my ambition, and, exactly, yeah.But I, I write a lot, and I make a lot of art about emotional repression , and I think the particular vibe of this game's repression doesn't have space for irony, or satire, or like, Do you wanna live, laugh, love? Like, I don't know how else to put it. Like, it just felt really wrong.It was like, if you put that into the space at all, it's gonna curdle the whole feeling. Nico: it's about the framing of it. I, know that Spencer Campbell of Gila RPGs has written something about this on his blog. I don't remember specifically what the context is, but he's a psychologist by training and is talking about how, like, the way that you frame something matters a lot to how people respond to it, right?So you like, if you're framing it as like, oh, you have, twelve things and I take away six from you, versus like, oh, you have nothing and then you are given six things. It's like, both scenarios, you like, end up with six but Sam: One feels like a letdown and one feels great. Yeah,Nico: yeah, and so I think in his article he was talking about in the, yeah, you know, tying that into the game design context, obviously.And I think it matches here where like, sort of runs the risk of like, priming people to expect kitsch, and I don't think that that's really present in the rest of the game. And that kind of mismatched expectations could really, like, lead to some problems when people are trying to, like, play the game.Sam: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I mean this cover is just kind of like, oh. Like, it doesn't it doesn't really tell you much other than just like there's something back there that's maybe vaguely menacing, and that's kind of it. That's kind of Nico: Yeah.Sam: Alright, speaking of which can we, can we talk about my favorite interaction between the two of us as we were working on this?Nico: Oh, yeah, I was not sure how to bring that up. yes, please do. Now that we're moving on to... For everyone following along at home, we are proceeding to the credits page.Sam: The comment I got from you while you were editing this was, IDK if it would look different in print, but having the text so close to the edge of the page is activating my fight or flight response. And I just replied, working as intended.Nico: It yeah, I had the feeling, I think, even when I sent that, I was like, this, this is not like an accident. Like, like, like no one makes this like no one does this by accident. But, yes, truly, I hope that you are following along at home because I believe that Sam generously gave a whole bunch of community copies of this game, or made them available. Sam: I believe it was 42, 069 I'm usually doing some number like that. This game, I might have done a different number, but that's, the other games that I've done.Nico: So, but the text on this, for credits page specifically, it's truly, like, at the edge of the page. Like, it looks like it could be cut off. It's like, in print, it would be like, cut off by the process of actually like, making it. In fact, feels like if you try to send it to a printer, they could almost send it back and be like, you've gotta give us some space there. Like, you simply can't do that. There needs to be a gutter, or bleed, or whatever the term is. Like, Sam: I love it. maybe one day I will print this. Honestly, like if I become a super famous game designer or something, like, this is one of the ones that I Nico: screen, slash screenwriter.Sam: yeah, yeah. This is one of the ones I'd like to go back and hold in my hand, but I also I don't know, I just love it. I, I love designing for digital as, like, a primary thing, because I just feel like most people who play the thing are gonna play it out of digital.And I don't know if that's, like, the primary audience for a lot of modules. Like, I think there are a ton of people out there who just, like, buy the zine and hold the zine in their hand and probably never get around to playing it. But I, I love the digital. I've always loved the digital. I don't know, I just like making for it.Nico: Well I mean I was even thinking about it in the context of like, you know, how you talked about how you changed the aspect ratio, I was like thinking about that and I was like, I mean, it's not like that would be impossible to print, but like, most standard commercial printers operate in like, one of the more standard like, page sizes. Even the risograph you said is what it's called, right?Sam: The, the RISO. Yeah, I don't know if it's Rizzo or RISO, but I'm gonna sayNico: The RISO background also makes the, again, just from like a fully practical point of view, it's like you're adding color to the whole thing,Like there are many potential barriers to this as like a physical product that would, that are simply not there when you're designing for digital, so like, it is nice to have that sort of freedom, like, when you're thinking about how to lay this out or, or put stuff on here, it's like, you're freed from a lot of those practical considerations.Sam: There's a few other details I want to talk about on this page just kind of like references I'm making that are not obvious.So the first is that the header font and title font of I Know The End is a font that I ripped from Lilancholy, which is this amazing book by Snow, which is ostensibly a game, but but also a reflection on childhood and personal relationship to emotions and trauma.And I love the look of the font, but I also intentionally wanted to reference that game while I was making something that felt really personal in a similar vein. And another another reference here is that the color of the whole game, like this red, is pulled from the cover art for the Phoebe Bridgers album Punisher that I know the end is off of. I, I just found the, like, most saturated red pixel that I could on the album and was like, that's the color! I love hiding little references in every little detail that I can. Nico: Yeah, it's so interesting because I did not know any of that, you know, prior to this conversation or seeing that stuff on the outline. What did you sort of hope to achieve with those references, right? Because I can't imagine that you're plan was like, for someone to look at it and be like, oh my god, that's the Lilancholy font, and that's the Phoebe Bridgers album Sam: that's one pixel from that album cover.Yeah.What am I trying to achieve? I don't know, like there's, so the Paul Thomas Anderson movie Phantom Thread Is an amazing movie, and it's about Daniel Day Lewis being incredibly serious, scary Daniel Day Lewis, making dresses, being a tailor, and an element of the movie is that he hides his initials inside the dresses, like, when he's making them, he, like, sews his initials in.And that's a real thing that, that people did, and maybe it's just for him. It's also kind of an arrogant thing to do, you know, that all these, like, women are gonna be walking around wearing these dresses with, like, his initials kind of, like, carved, it's like this power thing. But my favorite part of it is that Phantom Thread is PT, also known as Paul Thomas Anderson.Nico: Ha Sam: And, like, like, I, I just feel like when you're doing that kind of thing, it's just, what an act, it's just so beautiful and arrogant and satisfying. Like I think doing that kind of little reference and joke for myself brings me into the mindset of what I am trying to convey with the game.Like, if I'm thinking in the detail of the font selection, what do I want to reference? What do I want to bring to this game? Then, I'm gonna be I'm gonna be thinking about that in every other choice I'm making for the game, too. And even if half of those choices end up being just for me, I will have been in the headspace to make the other half that are for everyone else, too.Nico: Mm hmm. Yeah. Yeah. like, You could almost even call these, like, Easter eggs, right?But it also made me think about, I had to look this up actually as you were talking, because I was like, about that, the CalArts classroom number that like all of the animators that studied there fit into like Pixar movies and stuff, like, A113, A113. And I think that's also sort of a good example of it in some ways, because it's like now, with the advent of the internet, and you know, and a certain way of engaging with media, like, everyone knows what that, what that means now, or they could if they just looked it up, or they just see some BuzzFeed, you know, article that's like, you know, 50 easter eggs that you missed in the latest Pixar movie.But yeah, it's like, it's very interesting because it kind of asks who is the movie for? What's the intended or imagined audience for all of these things? And it sort of shows that, like, you can have multiple audiences or multiple levels of engagement with the same audience, like, at the same time. Maybe, I would say, it's very unlikely that any random person would just like, look at the cover of I Know The End and be like, oh, that's the Lilancholy font, but,Sam: I have had someone say that to me, though. Yeah.Nico: but, so, what I was just gonna say is like, but I don't think it's hard to imagine that like, the type of person who would, who would buy, who would be interested in I Know The End or Lilancholy, I think there's a pretty decent chance that they would be interested in the other if they're interested in one of them, right?And so it is interesting as well, where it's like, I am often surprised by like the ability of people to sort of interpret or decipher things that far outweighs my sort of expectations of their ability to do so.If only just because I have the arrogance to be like, well no one could ever have a mind like mine. Like, no one could ever think in the specific bizarre way that I do. Then it's like actually a surprising number of people think in a very similar way. Sam: Another thing I think about with making these really, really tiny references, easter eggs, it's the, not making a decision is making a decision, right? CentrismNico: Oh,Sam: Like, if you have literally anything that you have not made a choice about with intention, that is a missed opportunity, I think.And... I have so much respect for people who will just pump something out, like, write a page of a game and, like, upload as a DocX to itch. Like, Aaron King is a genius, and I know a lot of games that are put out that way, and I love that stuff. But for me, like, the kind of art creation process that I enjoy and like doing is so based on finding meaning in every crevice, finding a way to express yourself in every detail. just love doing it.Nico: you are the English teacher that the, the curtains are blue meme is referencing, in fact.Sam: Yes.Nico: The curtains are blue in I Know The End because,Sam: Well, and I know the end they are red, but Nico: yes.Imagine that being the new version of the meme: the curtains in this are red because there's a Phoebe Bridgers album that has a single pixel that is that color.Sam: Yeah, I don't know. It's true, though.Nico: Exactly. it is in fact true. But so would, in some ways, any other interpretation of...Sam: Yeah.Nico: of the red color, right? It's like you picked it because of the association with the album cover. Someone else could be like, Oh, it means this otherthing. And like that interpretation is correct. Sam: Yeah, I mean, I also picked it because of its association with blood, you know, like I, I wanted to kind of evoke that feeling too, so.Shall we do the table of contents? HehNico: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think the most interesting thing to talk about, and I want to know when this entered the sort of the design process, is the blacked out Table of Contents entry which corresponds to an almost entirely blacked out, or in this case, redded out,Sam: Yeah, Nico: messily redacted,part of, the book,Sam: Yeah, I think this was always there, I think I started writing a list of locations very early on, and on that list of locations was, like, I work in Google Docs to begin with for most of my stuff, and it was a bullet pointed numbered list, and the last list item was struck through, and it was your mom's house.And I just thought that was a funny little joke. It's like really dark? Another, just like a little detail, I have such a great relationship with my parents. Like really just a better relationship with my parents than anyone I know. And, so much of my art ends up with these like, really bad, fucked up relationships with parents, and I don't know what that's about.But, there's, there's something about, there's a piece of your hometown that is like so traumatic that you can't bring yourself to look at it. There's a piece of yourself, or your childhood, or like, where you came up, there's something from your origin story that you can't bear to face is a lot of what this is about. And even as the climax of this thing is I think in a lot of ways turning to face everything that you left behind.I mean the whole module is about that but I think fact that even when you are doing that, there's one piece of it that you can't bear to look at is really tragic and a mood to me. You know, it really felt right. Nico: it's sort of like, yeah, I'm finally gonna stand my ground and face my fear, or whatever, except for that thing. That thing, that part over there, for whatever reason, because I'm actually just very afraid of it. It really, as always, is sort of like the exceptions to the rule make the rule, or emphasize the rule. You're kind of carving out the negative space around it. And it makes it clearer in so. so Well, Yeah, so like, then the first thing of the game text itself, so to speak, is like the front and back of a postcard. And where's the picture from? It looks kind of old timey in a sort of non specific way.Sam: It's from Wikimedia Commons, I believe. I was looking for pictures of old postcards, and I wanted a small town, and, this is what I found.The postcard image is actually like a hell of a photo bash too. The stamp on it is from a real postcard I received from my cousin. The handwriting was me on just like a piece of paper that I scanned, and then the postcard is another like open source postcard image.Nico: Yeah. I am, once again, sort of showing, showing a lot of my bias here. I am often kind of against a lot of little, like, accessories, or sort of, like, physical things that are often part of crowdfunding, like, stretch goals, you know, like, it's, I don't know. I don't think it's, like, ontologically evil or anything like that, it's just, I understand, it's part of the reality of crowdfunding, and, like, attracting attention, and yada yada yada, I just personally don't love that reality. Which, of course, is easy to criticize when you're not part of a project is trying to do that, but that aside, I think it would actually genuinely be very cool to have, like, this postcard as, like, a physical object like, if the game were to be printed.Sam: You gonna make me like, handwrite every one of the postcards too? Cause that isNico: I did not say that. Oh, is that really? Well, but then, then you have it already, you can just print it off, like, or you make that the, like, I don't know, the hundred dollar stretch goal, you know, they back it at that level and then the postcard just appears inside their mailbox. Like,Sam: That wa that is creepy. I will tell you that,Nico: You say that as though it's happened to you before. You're like, well, let meSam: well, I'm not, I, I revealing nothing. How autobiographical is this? Nico: Yeah. so I guess, yeah, so getting, So this is the introduction page, the background, the introduction, giving the context to what this module, extended bestiary, what have you, what it is. My question here from a sort of meta perspective is like, how much are you trying to sort of give away at the start of this? How do you pitch this to , like to someone you know?Sam: that's a great question. I'm pretty proud of the execution here. I think I do a good job of, like, leaving some juicy hints here as to what might be going on without giving anything away. Like, the fact that I advertise this as maybe closer to a bestiary entry than a module, like, uh, what? Like, like you, you have an idea of what that means, but also like, where's the monster, what is the thing that I'm looking like, that is kind of planted in your mind in a way that I think is intriguing and sets expectations without giving the whole thing away.And, also, this is just me, like, trying to figure out how to describe this thing in real time as I'm writing. It really came from intuition. Nico: yeah. I know that, you know you're on, very much on record talking about how, you know, like, taxonomy is fake and, you know, et cetera, et cetera. Sam: As much as I love it.Nico: right, right, exactly, I mean, I feel the same way, but I, I am curious as to like if you were trying to sell someone on the idea of even just playing this game, like, how effective do you think it is of like communicating whatever this is, you know, like, is it effective to say it's kind of this, or it's not this, or maybe it's this, like, Sam: I think this is going to be really good at reaching the kind of person who will love this, and really bad at selling this to like a mass audience, you know? But luckily, I'm not trying to sell this to a mass audience. I'm like trying to make Joe Dissimone proud, you know? Like I'm trying to make like something as weird as fucking possible.and I think there's a kind of person who really appreciates that and this struggle to define what this is using existing terminology, I think is going to really appeal to the people who like this.Nico: yeah, I agree, I think it signposts well hey, you, there, like, look at this thing. Isn't that interesting. And if they're like, If they're like, no, that's confusing and I don't know what to do with it, and they go somewhere else, in some ways, it could be argued that that is like, working as intended, right, likeSam: I kind of find it interesting in the sidebar here to watch me sort of like struggle with how you're supposed to play this game, like what rule system are you supposed to use?I do think with some distance from this, the best way to experience this is as a solo game. Like to just read the thing but pause and journal about your character's experience as you sort of walk through it. I have started playing more solo games since I wrote this in preparation for a Season 3 episode of the show, and I think this would serve that experience really well.I considered even, like, rewriting this to be more of explicitly a solo experience, but I, ultimately was really happy leaving it in its sort of nebulous, provocative, what if, is this, what is this sort of state. Nico: Yeah. I would genuinely be interested to have like, the two of us play the game, like this game, like one running it, one as the player, because I don't necessarily disagree with what you said, might be better suited as a solo game, but I really do think that there is something that can be gained about, like being in a room with, like, one other person, or, you know, being on a call with one other person, or whatever and going through this,Sam: Yeah, yeah, I can feel the intensity of that as you describe it. And it sounds harrowing and... Amazing. I do, I do have this dream of like running a Mork Borg dungeon, like over the course of like three sessions, and then like taking one of the players who survives and being like, I've got another module that I think we should play with the same character. Nico: yeah. Anyways, you go home and you think you're safe, but actually, like, Sam: I do think that this as a response to OSR play is really an interesting way to try to play the game, like to Nico: just sort of experienceSam: Yeah, to try to take the kind of character that you would have coming out of that and the experience you would have coming out of that and then like get tossed into this, like that disorientation I think would serve this really well and would do something that I found I really like to do with the OSR kind of play of like finding ways to bring in more character stuff, to just have people to reflect on their person, rather than on the logistical problem solving.Nico: Mm hmm. Which, of course, in some ways also is like, I don't want to say direct contradiction, but like, moving perpendicular to a lot of the sort of OSR principles, rightSam: But yeah, I mean, fuck em. Nico: exactly, I mean, I'm not, saying that to discourage you from doing it, I'm just saying, like, I just think it's an interesting for those to come into sort of, conflict or, or whatever in, in that specific way.Sam: I mean, that's what the bleeding edge of something is all about, right? It's like, what are our principles? What if we throw them out? What does thatNico: Right, right. What if we smash things together that, like, should sort of repel each other like magnets? Like,Sam: Yeah.Nico: Let's move on to the town?Sam: Yeah. So this is the, like, GM spoiler page.Nico: Right.Sam: I don't know that I have a lot to say about this particular page. It's, it's the town. There are, like, two suggestions in the first chunk of this book that came from you that I think are really valuable to this. Like, the first is that the town is always capitalized throughout. Which I like sort of was doing, but you really emphasized, and I think was a great decision.And, the second is that there aren't any contractions in this book except for possessives. And, that was another suggestion that came from you, to have this sort of stilted, formal, slightly off kind of language of not having contractions, that I think serves it really well and is just really cool.Nico: Yeah, I have to give credit for that, to the Questionable Content webcomic, which is a webcomic that has been running forSam: God, is it still going?Nico: oh, it very much is still going, I, it updates Monday to Friday, and I, am reading, I am seated and reading,Sam: stopped reading that like a decade ago.Nico: It is officially 20 years old. It started in 2003.but so one of the characters in that she initially never uses contractions. It is always, it is, it is never, it's. Do not, not, don't, you know, is not, not, isn't and over time, as the character sort of gets more comfortable and starts to open up about her kind of mysterious past, and they'll deal with a lot of the sort of like, serious emotional turmoil that is present in the character, she like, starts to use contractions.And so, it's a specific device that is very weirdly ingrained in my head at this point, because I remember, like, realizing that when it was called out the first time, and then I will fess up and say I have re read the webcomic from the beginning several times. I have a lot of time on my hands sometimes. And it is always kind of a delight to go back to the beginning and see this character and to really notice that device because you know where she ends up and how much more comfortable she is and so to see that difference in the beginning makes it very effective on a reread in a way that is sort of present in the maybe subconscious the first time on the way through.Thank you. And I feel like it's similar here, not quite the same because I don't know if you would ever necessarily actively realize, like, oh, there are no sort of contractions here.Sam: and the town is never gonna stop being a entity of repression.Nico: Yeah, exactly. And so it's giving this like underlying anxiety kind of like,like, you're just like, Ooh, this is Sam: Yeah. It's like, what is going on? What's wrong with the language here?Nico: Yeah. And you might not even really be able to, articulate it because it's sort of hard to articulate the absence of somethingSam: And like, that's the feeling of the whole module. yeah, It's, it's just, it's a great decision. Nico: Yeah. And then of course, capitalizing town, you know, are you even really a game designer if you're not capitalizing some random words in Sam: yeah. gotta have one at least, come on.Sam: I will say I really enjoy the fact that I give no origin story for the town. I think that's also really powerful, of leaving a hole that people can fill in if they want.The mom repression stuff is kinda like that too, the like, the blacking out sharpie. Of like, that's a hole you could fill in in play if you wanted to, but I, I'm not going to. I'm gonna intentionally leave that hole there.Nico: It also is the kind of thing, right, of like, oh gosh, Nova was saying this in the Dice Exploder Discord recently, where like, part of the reason the OSR can be so sort of rules light and stripped down is because like, it is relying a lot on the sort of cultural script of like, what is a fantasy role playing game, or even just like a fantasy story in general, you know? What your knowledge of an OSR game is.And this, in a similar way, is sort of like, you know what a hometown is. Like, you know, I don't need to tell you what the backstory of this is, because you know what it's like to be from somewhere. Cause it's also worth saying, like, this game does not give any character creation instructions, right? I mean, actually, I guess that's not entirely true, because underneath the postcard, you know, it just says, A decade or more gone since you fled the small backwater town that spawned you.And it's like, yeah, that's basically all the sort of character creation information you need, like,Sam: yeah, yeah, like wait, gonna play yourself and you're gonna be sad about this, like uh, Nico: Right, or, like, or if you're not playing yourself, you are playing a person who's sad about it, like, you know, it's like, it's kind of all you really need, Sam: you have internalized the tone of this thing, like, your character is in ways the negative space of the voice of the text. Nico: Like, a weird relationship with your small hometown, we just don't need to spend very much, time covering that broad background. It's much better spent covering the specific, like, locations and people in this town that also sort of help to convey that, feeling, that information.Sam: Temptations and terrors?Nico: Yes, probably The closest thing to a system that is in here, inasmuch as it's taken roughly verbatim from Trophy Dark Sam: yeah, I do think it is notable that when I wrote this I had not played Trophy Dark, and Trophy Dark is the one where you definitely die,Nico: Right. Right. Sam: My intention was not that you would definitely die in this. I really want escape to be a big possibility at the end and so it's interesting that I went with Trophy Dark as, like, the obvious system.Yeah, I like these lists. This is just a lot of tone setting, basically, right? I don't have a lot to say about the details here. The first terror, a children's toy, damp in a gutter, is a reference to another song that makes me cry. The Rebecca Sugar song for Adventure Time, Everything Stays.But most of the rest of this is just, vibes. Here's some vibes. I don't know, I re read these lists and I was like, yeah, they're fine, great, next page. But I don't know, is there anything that stands out to you here?Nico: I mean, I think the most important thing about these lists, these kinds of things, you could maybe even sort of broaden this to like pick lists in general, is that, they kinda need to do two things, like they need to both give you a good solid list of things to pick from, if you're like, at a loss, or if you just are like, looking through it, and you're like, this is good, I want to use this.Or, the other purpose of using it is to have it sort of identify the space that you're playing in to the point where you can come up with your own thing that like, could just be the next entry on that list, right? For me at least, the whole point of like, buying a game is like, I want something that I like, can't essentially come up with by myself, you know? Because I like to be surprised, I like to be sort of challenged, I like to be inspired, and so I think a really good game is one that you sort of like, read it, and you're like, okay, like, there's great things to use in here that I'm excited to use. I also, after having read this, am coming up with my own ideas. Like, equally long, if not longer, list of things that like, fit into this perfectlySam: Bring the vibes of your small town. Nico: Yeah, exactly, that I could also use. It's like, and so it's like, it's kind of funny that like, for me at least, the mark of a good game is like oh yeah, you both want to use everything that's contained in it, and also you immediately get way more of your own ideas than you could ever use when you're running the game.Sam: Yeah. Next?Nico: Yes. Act 1. Sam: I love this little guy, I love Wes he's just kind of a pathetic little dude, and I feel sad for him.Nico: It's so funny, too, because this particular little guy, like, doesn't look very pathetic to me. Like, he looks like he's kind of doing okay. Sam: I definitely like drew, like all the art in the book I drew, and I did it by just drawing a lot of little heads, and then assigning them to people. Like, there were a couple where they were defining details about how the people looked, that I knew I needed to draw specifically. But in general, I just drew a bunch of heads and then doled them out, and like, this is the one that ended up on Wes. And, I think that the contrast between, like, in my mind, Wes is this skinny, lanky, little kid, you know, he's like early 20s, finally making it on his own, and he has no idea what the hell's going on with the world, and he always looked up to you, and he's finally getting out of town. And then he's, he's like overcompensating with the beard for the fact that he's like balding really early, and like, you know, he's, I don't know, like, I think the contrast is just fun.Nico: I love this whole life that you have for this, this little, this little guy, like, which is, I can't stress this enough, mostly not contained in the text,Sam: Yeah. yeah. I think a good NPC is like that. I think it's really hard to transcribe the characters we get in our heads.Nico: yeah, Sam: I really like the, the pun in the Town Crier, I mean like the Town Crier feels like a horror movie trope, like the old man who's gonna be like, You got don't go up to the cabin! But it's also, like I wrote that down first and then just started describing this Wes guy and then I was like I'm gonna just like make a pun out of this.This is something I did all the time while writing this, was I had, like, a little oracle going, actually, at a certain point, like, in the same way that you would in a solo game with an oracle. Like, if I was stuck for an idea, I would just roll on the oracle table and then, like, fill in a detail that was somehow related to the oracle. Nico: Mhm. Sam: That, that didn't happen here, but the idea of, Oh, I want a little bit more description for this guy, like, what should I do? I, like, pulled the word crier, and then was like, Oh, that's really interesting, like, when would this guy have cried? Like, oh, that's a great question, let's just, like, put that to the player. I'm always, like, a thing in screenwriting that is really hard to do, and that I'm always looking for is, like, really good, pithy character descriptions.Like, a friend of mine loves the one like, this is a woman who always orders fajitas at a Mexican restaurant because she loves the attention that she gets when the fajitas come out.She hates fajitas. And that description just says Nico: That's Sam: much. It's so good, right? And that one's even a little bit long for like a screenplay, but it'd be great for like an RPG thing, right?And something about like Here's a little bit about this guy. You remember when he was crying once, like a baby? What was the deal with that? Like, it's such a, like, defines everything else about him. Like, I, I, I'm really proud that.Nico: Yeah. No, that's, that's how I felt a little bit with I ran Vampire Cruise at Big Bad Con this year. And that game has some of, like, the best random NPC generating tables that I've, like, ever seen and played with.I remember one specifically, it was, like, I was like, rolling to generate a passenger, and I think it was like, the secrets part of the table, or something like that, and what I rolled was like, regrets that she never got to see the dinosaurs, and it's like, what does that mean?Like, like, Sam: She had a traumatic experience at a science museum as a kid, or maybe she's like 10 million years old, like, I don't...Nico: or, yeah, or she's just like a weirdo who like really loves dinosaurs? It's like, it's, Like, it really gives you sort of what you need to just sort of like, spin a world out of that specific detail. Sam: It's weird because I like completely agree with you, and you know, I was tooting my own horn about like this question about Wes sobbing and also like, in every single spread of this thing, I'm taking like two full pages to talk about like one or two NPCs, which is a terrible way to do the thing that we are talking about doing. Like,Nico: That is true, that is, it must be said,Sam: it makes it feel so much more like a short story, or maybe like a solo game, right? It's like, eh, spend two pages, like, getting to know this guy. Nico: who won't come up again, spoiler alert, Sam: Yeah, it feels like the right call for this thing where like, I mean it's like the text is forcing you to sit with the memory of this guy, it's like forcing you to come in and like spend more time than you would like to like back at home with these people.And there's some like location context built into all these descriptions too, and we like learn about the bakery thing here and like old stories and stuff. And like, already it's like, do we need that shit to run this game? Like, absolutely not, like, get, get out of the way, like, but also, I don't know, it feels right?And it's one of the things that makes all this weird and, you know, unrunnable.Nico: Which is of course the goal, we don't want people to run this. Yeah, no, that's something that I've thought about in my own games as well, is, is, and just sort of like, my life, I guess, is sort of like, what makes a place that place, you know, like, what makes a town a town, what makes a city a city, like, is it the people who live there? Is it the places? Like, again, kind of back to the sort of Ship of Theseus metaphor, it's like, if everyone you know leaves, and a lot of the stores turnover, like, is that still your hometown? Like... Does your relationship to it change?And so I, in defense of, of what we're doing here, it makes a lot of sense to spend so much time thinking about the people and the places that are here because that also basically is the game, right?Like, like, this is not a dungeon crawl, right? Like, this is not a hack and slash thing, It's not a dungeon crawl, like, Sam: it's a person crawl. Nico: Yeah, exactly, you're yeah, the point of you coming home is you're trying to find Sidra, the person who sent you this postcard, asking you to come home, and yeah, you're basically doing a point crawl, trying to find this person.And then there are various conditions that need to be in place for you to actually find them = And yeah, so it's like, using more words than a sort of your standard OSR like dungeon crawl or point crawl or whatever, or hex crawl, but like, it's kind of the same way where it's like, yeah, but like, that's the game, that's the adventure, like, Sam: yeah, yeah. Another detail here I'm really proud of is the like, offhand remark about how Wes and Sidra aren't talking for what are probably romantic reasons. Because the implication, there's like a strong implication that you, player, have some sort of romantic history with Sidra, like, whether it was ever consummated or not. And I love the just sort of, like, offhand, Wes and Sidra had a thing that didn't work out, because it both... leaves open your potential romantic relationship with Sidra, but also like complicates it and like darkens it from whatever sort of nostalgic quote unquote pure like memory of it you had.And I love that it just sort of brings a little complexity into what happens when you leave for 15 years. And then like what it feels like when you like, hear, oh yeah, your ex has been like, dating someone for a couple years. What were we talking about? Like just that, like sometimes like a bolt of like, information about like, someone from your past that like, you care a lot about will just hit you and you'll be like, oh, wait, what? And we're just I'm supposed to just like, take that and move on? Like, yeah, yeah, Nico: It's also a very small town, right, where it's a sort of like, oh yeah, passing reference to this because everyone knows this already, right? Like, this is old news as well as, like, in a small town, it's like, there's a small pool of people your age that you're interested in, so, not like you're gonna get with all of them inevitably, but it's like, yeah, there's a pretty high chance that you might.Last thing I did wanna say on this, do you wanna share what Wes's name was in the first draft of this that I received?Sam: What was it? I don't rememberNico: It was Glup Shitto. It was, it was one of the first comments I left! It was one of the first comments I left! I was like, Sam, you've gotta know this can't be the final thing, right?Sam: knew it couldn't be the final name. But there was something really funny to me about like the one person who like doesn't fit into town, like this little fucking Star Wars fanboy like schmuck kid is just Glup Shitto. And he's leaving town cuz like when you got that name, it doesn't fit anymore. You gotta get the fuck out of there.No wonder the town couldn't absorb him. His name was Glup Shitto.Nico: I want to say, like, I might have, like, made my first round of comments because I was, like, yeah, feeling the same way of, like, okay, obviously this is not the finalSam: yeah, yeah, I just didn't change it and you were likebruh Nico: and then, yeah, and then you, like, made changes based on the comments that I left, and I went back to it, and I'm like, it's still Glup Shitto. Like, it simply can't be this! It's not allowed! It's, it's not legal! Like, Sam: there ought to be a law.Nico: yeah.Sam: Alright, let's do Act 2 gosh.Yeah, so I made this little map. I like the little map. This is just my hometown, incidentally. Like, there's so much in this that is just, like, pulling details directly from my hometown. That oracle that I mentioned earlier, like, Northfield, Minnesota was, like, one of the things on the oracle. And you can see that here in like, the riverwalk and this little bridge over it was very Northfield. the Rube, which we're getting to next, these two bars, the kind of cowboy themed bar thing was a thing.Nico: Again, it's a very small town of just like, no sort of reasonable business person would have these specific Sam: yeah, but they, they exist here for some reason Nico: it almost feels like the kind of thing where it's like, like they can exist in a really small town, because it's sort of like, well they're the only things here, and they can exist in like New York City Sam: yeah. Nico: everything's in New York city, and like every kind of place is there, but like anywhere in between, people would just be like, I don't understand, and then it goes out of business,Sam: Exactly. Yeah. Yeah, doctors always also a big portion of my childhood and my past always coming up in my stuff just because I spent so much time in hospitals as a kid. So the, inclusion of a doctor here is also very much something coming out of my hometown.I like the little mechanic here of, like, rolling and you, like, add one every, every time. I think that's a nice sort of way to handle trying to find Sidra. Nico: as like a classic Nico mechanic 'cause I simply haven't made and published that many things. But in my mind, my narcissistic fantasy, it is a classic me mechanic.Sam: I believe that came from you.Nico: I fucking love a table that like evolves over time.And it's not like I invented it, but like, I think my more standard thing is sort of like you have a table of like 12 things, and then you change which die you roll on it, you know, it's like, oh you can do like a d4 through d12 or whatever and that's like, I really like the ability to sort of go back to a table and, like, use it multiple times as opposed to, like, Okay, we have one table for this, we have a different table for that, you know.Sam: Additional persons. I really like this format for sort of generic NPCs, like, I'm not gonna tell you anything about this person, but I am gonna tell you what you think about them and your relationship to them.I think it's a really cool way of doing... Oh, do you just need to, like, bring someone in? You, like, met someone on the street or whatever? In a lot of other settings, you would just have, like, a random person, and it would be, like, the Vampire Cruise thing. If you give them an interesting detail in here, it'd be a cool thing.But I think, especially in, like, a small town format, the, like, here's your relationship to this person, because everyone knows everyone, and, every character that comes in, like, is gonna have to inspire some kind of feeling and past in you. I think this works really cool, reallyNico: It also feels very sort of true to life in terms of, at least, how I often GM things. Someone will be like, hey, can I, like, ask just, like, the next person I see on the street what they know about this thing? And I'm like, I mean, I fuckin I guess, like, it'll shock you to learn I don't have a name for that person, but, you know, I just have to, like, come up with, like, here's a weird voice, and like, a random thing they know, and like here's a name, Sam: This is a great way to turn that experience back on the player.Nico: exactly, yeah, there's this random person, you're like, alright, this is someone who owes you an apology, why is that?Like, Sam: yeah, Nico: I also wanna say that I feel like this was actually a relatively late addition to theSam: Yeah, it was. I always intended to write these, but it was like the last thing that I wrote.Nico: Yeah.Sam: Yeah.Nico: There was definitely some time when I sort of came back and looked at it, and all of a sudden there was this relatively large additional persons section in here, and I was like, huh, interesting.Sam: Yeah. I'm happy with how it came out. I think these are my best little guys. Nico: Oh yeah, Sam: I really like the unfinishedness of these little guys that you can project a little bit of yourself onto them while there's still some, like, major details there. This someone you seek vengeance upon looks a lot like a penis, and I don't know how I feel about that one, butNico: I was gonna say, I find that one fascinating as the ide

In the news InDesign 2024 updated to 19.01 Register for the Design + AI Summit! CreativePro Magazine November 2023: Multilingual Design, Glyph panel in depth  Secrets of the Align Panel and its weirdo cousin, the Gap tool Obscure Feature of the Week: Auto Update URL Status Links mentioned in this podcast Great article about Glyphs panel: https://creativepro.com/digging-into-the-glyphs-panel/ Align Panel Tutorials: Setting Exact Space Between Objects in InDesign What and Where is Distribute Spacing? InDesign How-to Video: Use the Align Panel Align Panel Enhancements InDesign How-to: Make a Mondrian-inspired Grid InDesign Basics: Making a Photo Grid The Right Way to Vertically Distribute Text Frames A quick way to abut the edges of 2 (or more) objects Gap Tool Articles: What Exactly Does That InDesign Tool Do?! Creating a Dynamic Autofit Effect for Image Grids With the Gap Tool The Gap Tool and Groups Split Images That Span Across Two Pages The "Spring Loaded Tool" tip: https://creativepro.com/spring-loaded-tools/ The Tool Hints panel: https://creativepro.com/using-tool-hints-panel/  

In the news Register for our Online Summits: Design + Accessibility, and Design + AI! CreativePro Magazine October 2023: Accessibility for Newbies All about Adobe InDesign 2024 (v19.0) Adobe MAX 2023 review and ID Tips from Attendees Obscure Feature of the Week: Show Structure Sponsor for this episode >>  Priint:Suite is an enterprise platform that reduces the time to create marketing publications up to 80% and enables creative marketers to focus on being creative.  Automate layouts following business/layout rules without limits on creative freedom. Instantly create personalized or language variants. Learn more about where and how to use it with InDesign here!  Links mentioned in this podcast The Design + Data Summit (on-demand) The Design + Accessibility Summit The Design + AI Summit CreativePro Week 2024: July 8-12, 2024 (DC and Online) What's new in InDesign 2024 https://helpx.adobe.com/indesign/using/whats-new.html Request a feature in InDesign https://indesign.uservoice.com/forums/601021-adobe-indesign-feature-requests David's conversation with Priint CEO of Priint USA: https://creativepro.com/creativepro-conversations-integrate-data-and-design-with-priintsuite/ Adam Pratt, CEO of Chaos to Memories Sarah Hyndman, author of Passive Aggressive Fonts and Why Fonts Matter Mark Heaps, Groq How to print a page range: https://creativepro.com/tip-of-the-week-the-easy-way-to-print-a-page-range/ Friendly Alien Easter Egg: https://creativepro.com/tip-of-the-week-friendly-alien-easter-egg/ Obscure Feature: Show Structure https://creativepro.com/getting-started-with-xml-in-indesign/ How to use Quick Apply to open or close Structure panel: https://creativepro.com/using-quick-apply-for-menu-commands/  

In the news Two more online Summits coming up, check them out! CreativePro Magazine September 2023 all about Editorial Workflows Our own InDesign Sneaks Obscure Feature of the Week: Text Rotation Sponsor for this episode >> Adobe MAX 2023 Creativity Conference is happening October 8–12 in Los Angeles, California. Learn from experts and innovators, top creatives in design, photography, illustration, video, 3D, and more. Of course, the highlight is that  many InDesign experts will be presenting, live and online — even the Adobe engineering team from India. Hope to see you there! Links mentioned in this podcast The Design + Data Summit (on-demand) The Design + Accessibility Summit The Design + AI Summit CreativePro Week 2024: July 8-12, 2024 (DC and Online) — Registration is open! Adobe Fonts: now there's a difference between "added" and "installed": read more here Data plugins you should know about: InData from Em Softwar DocsFlow and WordsFlow from Em Software Priint Suite Cacidi LiveMerge and Extreme EasyCatalog from 65bit DesignMerge from Meadows XMPie (check out their cool "kiosk" site for demos) Teacup DataLinker Adding layouts to CC Libraries (with Bridge or drag and drop) https://www.linkedin.com/learning/indesign-tips-for-design-geeks/add-indesign-layouts-to-creative-cloud-libraries Obscure Feature: Text Rotation How to rotate text inside a frame (separate from the frame) Keith Gilbert's script to rotate individual characters

In the news: Design & Data Summit, Sept 21–22, online only More online Summits coming up, check them out! CreativePro magazine September 2023 all about Editorial Workflows Adobe InDesign 18.5 released New free scripts we like Deep Dive into the Scripts panel Obscure Feature of the Week: Verbose Sponsor for this episode >> Santa Cruz Software is the maker of LinkerUI, a best-in-class extension that connects InDesign and other CC applications to your DAM and cloud-based services like Dropbox. Box, GoogleDrive and more. It enables direct searching, opening, placing, and syncing of assets. A new feature in LinkrUI called Smart-Linkr now automatically finds and fixes broken asset links at a single click, so you never need to search for lost assets again. Download LinkrUI for free today at SantaCruzSoftware.com Links mentioned in this podcast CreativePro Week 2024 OPENING SALE: Use code FIRST48 on Sept 7 or 8 to get $400 off any multi-day registration More on UXP plug-ins: https://developer.adobe.com/indesign/uxp/ AM's video of the best websites for free InDesign scripts: https://www.linkedin.com/learning/indesign-tips-for-design-geeks/top-sites-for-free-indesign-scripts Community scripts https://creativepro.com/community-scripts-for-all/ More on GitHub: https://github.com/AdobeInDesignScripts/directory How Unicode Injector Works Some new scripts Peter K: missing fonts: https://creativepro.com/scripts-for-fixing-missing-fonts-in-indesign/ flagging words: https://creativepro.com/a-script-to-flag-certain-words-in-indesign/ blind endnotes: https://creativepro.com/files/kahrel/indesign/footnotes.html Keith: Export SVG: https://creativepro.com/a-script-to-export-svg-content-from-indesign/ split pages for inside bleed: https://creativepro.com/a-script-to-allow-bleeds-on-the-spine-of-indesign-documents/ remove shared hyperlink destinations: https://creativepro.com/how-to-fix-shared-hyperlinks-in-indesign/ How to install scripts in InDesign Using Quick Apply to Run Scripts Assigning Keyboard Shortcuts to Scripts