Brian Lies’s A-ZF Picture Book Layout

Brian Lies’s A- ZF page layout system

This is my own personal layout system, for a 32-page horizontal picture book. Most systems go by page numbers, but my system uses letters (A-ZF), so that when you’re creating image files on the computer, if you name the files accordingly and either look for files within a folder or go to create a PDF dummy, the computer will arrange the files in the right order.

Think about it— if you use numbers, the computer will order your page files 1, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 2, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 3, 31, 32 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9.

But if you use A-ZF, your files will remain in order from A-Z, then STAY in order with the last pages ZA, ZB, ZC, ZD, ZF. And you can also add pages without having to re-order everything: a page between R and S can become RA, and it’ll stay where you intend it to be.

You can also add descriptions to your files (ZE bucket falls) to help remind you what’s in each image, and those descriptions won’t change the order in which the computer displays the files.

Feel free to print out these three pages and use them for your own work—but please do not use them for any other purpose without credit. It took me a while to figure the thing out!