Sudoku Xtra Progress

(Yes, that’s not Slitherlink on the right but this is a mock-up at the moment!)

I’ve been working hard on Sudoku Xtra today and hopefully my new magazine will be ready really soon. Of course the first issue of anything will be more work than subsequent issues (I hope!), since there’s so much more stuff to do – from the title to the content to the basic design to all the infrastructure around it. Right now I’m just getting to the point where I’m happy with the page layouts and basic design, thus this posting to preview it.

Any design needs to print fine on black+white printers, but I’ve used a small amount of extra colour throughout for page top/bottoms so it looks a bit nicer when previewed on screen (and a little shinier if you have a colour printer), and I can vary this colour from issue to issue.

It’s an interesting task to design a print-it-yourself magazine because you can’t use very large areas of black/colour otherwise people won’t want to print it out (it will cost too much and on some inkjets will make the paper go all wrinkly), so with essentially just black+white and not much opportunity to use large shaded areas you’re pretty restrained – however all that said I think I’ve come up with a layout that works and won’t be too much work to update with new puzzles each issue.  There’s a small sample at the top of this post.

Going forward I imagine most pages will have 4 puzzles on, which seems to work well with the 8″ x 10″ page size.  People ordering a printed copy worldwide from Amazon.com will get it at exactly that size (and will get a bonus colour cover) for $9.99 and eligible for free super saver shipping.  I’ll also make it available in printed form from Lulu.com, which should be cheaper for UK residents – this will cost £5.99, although they add postage costs to this.  Oddly this will be supplied in A4 format due to the page sizes they support, but there’s no extra puzzle content in the extra space!  It will also be available for download, and the 8″ x 10″ page fits very nicely on both A4 and Letter pages without much wasted space.  You can also print it with two pages on one A4/Letter sheet if you don’t mind smaller puzzles, and it’s still perfectly legible and usable.  (I know this – I’ve tested it!).  Download copies will be £2.99 or $4.99 respectively.

PS As mentioned above if you look closely at the Slitherlink puzzles in the sample you’ll see they look suspiciously like Consecutive Sudoku puzzles – that’s because I haven’t substituted the graphics on that page yet!