I find that books made with Bloom are not well designed. I love the concept of the software, but the books are unprofessional looking. Could we have a professional designer work on the templates? What do others think?
One advantage of Bloom is that people can easily create books without a lot of knowledge of computers or design/desktop publishing. The degree of professional/unprofessional look depends on the person creating the books. E.g. if you have high-quality images, that may make your books look more professional.
Bloom books have a āsimpleā design and a professional designer may find some of the restrictions difficult to work around. But if there are features you feel would be helpful, submit them as Features requests in the Forum, and others can vote on them.
With Bloom Enterprise Projects there is opportunity to add logos to the front/back cover, but this is a paid service.
I understand what youāre saying, and I agree that we need to keep it very simple, but the basic template could be much better. Iām not suggesting we have a lot of design and layout options, just a professional looking template. It would be great if we had a template maker that was like a simple DTP programme that could be used by designers, or if it were possible to convert Indesign or Publisher files to Bloom.
Having worked in layout and design, I know that it takes more than a good picture to create a good design. This sounds harsh, but none of the books Iāve seen in Bloom look particularly good.
It depends what you mean by āweā 
If you mean āI am a professional designer, and I would like to work on Bloom templatesā, then the answer is āyesā.
There are two parts to this:
One, does Bloom have the capabilities you need? Iāve just looked through my records and I show that you asked us to add 0.7 and 0.8 line spacing, and we did that. Whatās next on your list?
Two, can you then contribute your well designed template pages in the shipping Bloom for everyone to use? Sure, letās do it!
jh
Thanks John. The smaller line spacing for titles is great.
Yes āweā means āmeā. Iāve worked on a lot of books in the SIL context, and am frustrated that while we think of ourselves as professional and mostly are very much so, our publications are not. I have just posted a list of suggestions which may best be handled as a second template. I would be very willing to work with the Bloom team on better templates. At the moment the necessary limitations of the software, even the template starter, make it difficult to do what I have in mind. However, Iām going to take up the challenge and push it as far as I can. That will enable me to find out what other features would help.
Some of the features I request may be better reserved for the template starter, so that we donāt have people who know very little about design creating bad templates. Alternatively, an expanded template maker for designers could be a great asset. It could be part of the enterprise suite.
I think that we need to keep Bloom simple enough that anyone using the standard templates can make beautiful books, and that nobody can make ugly ones.
Once i have a template to share with you Iāll let you know so that you can tell me what to do with it.
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