Summary

Strangelet was a bimonthly literary magazine of fantasy, science fiction, and magical realism.

Description

For Strangelet, I typeset the book in Caslon with the display text as Marta. The title page typeface is Hightower and the cover a combination of typefaces to reflect the tone of the books: strange, bizarre, eerie. We produced bimonthly issues, around 50 to 70 pages each, and combined them in an omnibus at the end of the year.

By setting up the InDesign files myself, we were able to have a streamlined and efficient production process for the ebook edition. I also developed CSS for rendering poetry, at the bottom, and found here on Github.

Issue 0 was our proof-of-concept. Volume 1 and 2 followed

Issues from volume 1

Issues from volume 2. During this year, I took over the art acquisition duties

Ebook editions of all of our books, save the omnibuses

Title page, standard throughout the magazine’s run

For the ebook edition, I pulled colors from the covers as the link and highlight color.

Table of contents

For Vol 1, Issue 4, we had an illustrator create drawings for each of the pieces.

The opener for the same story. The illustration was moved to allow the reader to see the illustration in context.

Example of illustration treatment in reflowable ebook

Prose page spread

For the story “Running With,” shown above, I used these small sketches as the section breaks.

Running feet detail

Treatment of the author bio.

Demonstration of treatment of different text elements in the ebook edition: title, subtitle, author name, sub-sections, epigraphs, and author bio sections. Compare with print versions.

Poem treatment in print book. Compare with ebook version below.

Poem treatment in ebook. Poetry ebooks have long languished as after-thoughts for some publishers.

CSS for poetry below:

/*poetry*/
p.poem-1 {
	margin-left:1.5em;
	text-indent:-1.5em;}
		
p.poem-1-ind1-sa {
	margin-top:1em;
	margin-left: 3.5em; 
	text-indent:-1.5em;
}

p.poem-1-ind1 {
	margin-left: 3.5em; 
	text-indent:-1.5em;
}

p.poem-1-ind1-sb {
	margin-bottom:1em;
	margin-left: 3.5em; 
	text-indent:-1.5em;
}

p.poem-2 {
	margin-bottom:1em;
	margin-left: 1.5em; 
	text-indent:-1.5em;}

p.poem-2-sa {
	margin-top:1em;
	margin-left: 1.5em; 
	text-indent:-1.5em;
}

p.poem-2-ind1-sb {
	margin-bottom:1em;
	margin-left: 3.5em; 
	text-indent:-1.5em;
}

p.poem-1-ind2 {
	margin-left: 5.5em; 
	text-indent:-1.5em;
}

p.poem-2-ind2-sb {
	margin-bottom:1em;
	margin-left: 5.5em; 
	text-indent:-1.5em;
}