Sunday, August 15, 2021

Name this Alchemical Book

My next project for HIS MAJESTY THE WORM is the alchemical system. It will be a product roughly equivalent to the Sorcery is a Sword Without a Hilt.

I have not and will not name this project. 

You will. 


Download the cover to see how it works. Click on the different Zodiac signs to generate different names.


How did you make this?

I tried a lot of different ways to create this effect and found a lot of dead ends, so I might as well write down what worked. I used the Adobe Creative Suite.

  1. In InDesign, create several different layers. In my case, the base layer has the white background and the instructional text. For convenience, name the different layers something recognizable. 
  2. Create buttons (Object -> Interactive -> Create buttons) out of boxes or text objects. In my case, I used invisible rectangles around the Zodiac symbols. 
  3. On each layer, add different colored backgrounds and text. Essentially, create the different layouts you want for your different final projects.  
  4. Turn off the visibility of all the layers except your base layer. This will set the default visible layers for your final product. 
  5. Export to Interactive PDF. Ensure that the "Create Acrobat Layers" box is checked.
  6. In your PDF, go to View- > Show/Hide -> Navigation Panes -> Layers to view the different layers. Select a layer that you want to display when a button is clicked. 
  7. Go to Tools -> Content -> Select Object to select the individual buttons you created. Double click on a button.
  8. In the Actions tab, select "Set layer visibility" and click Add. This makes the button Show/Hide the exact configuration of layers as you currently have it set. (For example, if you have Layer 1 visible and Layers 2-12 hidden when you set this action, the end user will only see Layer 1 when they click the button.)
  9. Repeat steps 6-8, setting different buttons to different layer configurations. 
  10. Save and voila. 

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