Typesetter and ebook developer Laura Brady was the guest speaker for the second MBPR luncheon of the 2014-15 season: “Best Practices for Producing Print + Digital Content.”
She discussed overcoming the print-first mindset and creating flexible assets. To achieve elastic assets, Brady stressed style sheets, consistency, hierarchy, and structure as focal points. She also encouraged the use of built-in tools to create navigation, such as tables of contents, indexes, and endnotes. Brady explained that several old-school typesetting practices just don’t carry over into digital content, such as white spaces and hard hyphens. Instead, she recommended using non-breaking spaces, discretionary hyphens, variable text on master pages in InDesign, and naming assets without spaces or symbols. Furthermore, many font foundries will charge separately for print and digital use, doubling your font costs. She recommended using TrueType and open-source fonts, instead of PostScript fonts. The luncheon concluded with a Q&A delving into more minute details of built-in navigation tools.
An audio recording and a PDF of Brady’s presentation are available to members in Member Resources. Thanks to everyone for a great event! 
