Hi Ed,

Congrats on your magazines, and welcome to Typophile.

On first glance, the overall appearance of this magazine is quite nice, especially considering its "amateur" nature, as you say.

Some thoughts:

• Consider avoiding hyphenation on short, ragged-egde paragraphs (e.g. p.2 of each issue and much of your "Further reading" sections). You may also wish to consider avoiding hyphenating proper nouns. This is often a matter of personal preference, but I encourage practicing it.
• Something about the narrow gutter width distracts me, but I can't put my finger on it. Perhaps someone else can help me define it.
• The folio numbers look oversized to me, but again, maybe that's a matter of personal preference, too.
• Not type-related, but I thought the muted red of issue one contributed a better vibe throughout the magazine compared to the vibrant red of the second.
• Good correction of consistent type families for the second issue. I found the variation extremely distracting in the first; to the point that I wondered if one of them was an ad.
• PDF versions: After creating your PDF, you have the option for the viewer to see it like a magazine, with a cover and subsequent spreads. When the PDF finishes exporting, open it, press Command-D, go to "Initial View" and choose "Two-up (Cover page)" and then choose "Fit Page." Voila! A digital magazine! (I should specify that it will probably only open in the customized view with Adobe Acrobat/Reader, not Preview. Not sure about other third-party PDFers...)

Okay. I'm done boring you with nitpicky things that the others may find unnecessary. ; )

Nice stuff, and good luck!

Ray

Hi Ray,

Thanks for the quick response. Hyphenation is something I was planning to look at for the next issue. I'd like to keep the main body justified, so hyphens are kind of unavoidable there, but I will definitely try and keep them out of all of the ragged text next time. Certainly wouldn't hurt to set the "Further reading" ragged.

I liked the muted red on-screen as well, but the brighter one works much better in print. Although we print a small number and otherwise distribute by PDF, I'm more worried about the paper version looking nice than the electronic one. By "folio number" do you mean the numbering in the contents or at the bottom of the page? Either of them could drop a size probably to match the text in the "Team" section or "Further reading" bits.

Anyway, thanks again: it's great to have some input. I am just going on the advice of Bringhurst at the moment!

Sorry, yeah I meant "just" as in "solely" not as in "merely"... Bringhurst is a God among men, er, people :-)

Which bit gets cut off at the side? The front cover title in Issue 1? Yeah, I think I might use text with no box for the future issues, and could certainly bring the title further onto the page. The "s" motif at the top of the pages does print in pretty variable positions but I'm happy enough with it as it is. Maybe the text with the article titles next to it could use some extra space before the "s" though.

Yeah, that is a better look. Thanks.

Unrelated question which I wasn't sure where to ask: are the red square badges on the corners of people's avatars a sign of something or just a nod to the Typophile icon that they've added themselves?

> They were from a Typophile donation campaign a year or two ago. A tear, a heart, and I think a dagger with blood dripping or something. I think the values were $25, $50, and $100+ or so, respectively. I donated, but never affixed my tear badge, so just pretend.

The donation campaign is still in place, in the typophile shop: http://typophile.bigcartel.com/

Oh, and Ray – I tried to put in practice all the things you mentioned: being stricter with hypthenation, dropping page number size, increased gutter width (for 2 column pages) etc.

Also, a PDF with page spreads is here: www.ucl.ac.uk/~ucbpeal/sophia/issue3spreads-web.pdf