Guidelines

The Gongfarmer’s Almanac guidelines are intended to help folks create and edit GFA materials. As we usually have about 40 or more people working on the GFA each year, it also helps provide some continuity so the materials can come together at the end faster and easier.

Regardless of how you are participating, if you review all the guidelines below you should have a much better idea of how to communicate effectively with the other volunteers that you will be working with and what they will be looking for when working with you.

Writers and editors

An editor’s primary role is to help authors get their submissions ready for handing off for publication. The editor is the author’s guide in this process. Every author has some cool unique thing they want to contribute and the editor is there to help make sure that what they want to say gets presented in the clearest possible way.

Editors are expected to engage with the author, focusing on the content, their voice, and the reader’s point of view to make suggestions and provide constructive feedback. Editors will proofread, but as a secondary focus, as there will be other rounds of final editing. An editor should help make it the best possible contribution, but above all let the author retain their ownership and have the final say in what gets submitted.

Text

Word Count: Preferred 2000 words or less for a single article (8-10 zine pages). Maximum of 5000 words (15-18 zine pages). To estimate your zine page count in Google docs, just use a 10 pt font for your text and then double your Google doc page count.
General: Review your text for spelling, punctuation, and grammar. Use a single space after a period when using a proportional font, two spaces after a period when using a monospace font. If you can’t tell, most “computer code” and some “typewriter” looking fonts are monospaced, while almost everything else isn’t.
DCC RPG: Follow the Crawl! Fanzine Style Guide for DCC/MCC standard language and stat formatting. If something is not covered there, review your DCC RPG or MCC RPG core book and look for examples.

Fonts

Prior Fonts: Fonts used in prior GFA publications include: 1979DotMatrix, AJensonPro, Alegreya, AlegreyaSC, Arial, Arkham, BigCaslon, Bitter, Blade, BodoniSvtyTwo, BookAntiqua, Calibri, Charter, CopperplateGothic, DCC-SharpDistressBlack, Duvall, FranklinGothic, Futura, Helvetica, HiddenHorzOCR, High Tower Text, Historical-FellType, LucidiaGrande, Luminari, Marion, MarkerFelt, MinionPro, MVBoli, Noteworth, Nyala, Optima, P22Typewriter, PTSans, Seravek, SFHallucination, ShockTherapyBB, SourceSansPro, SouvenirStd, Sylfaen, Symbol, Times (or TimesNewRoman), Titillum, TrajanPro, Trattatello, TrueCrimes, Valdemar, Venera, Vincastencil, Wingdings, and ZapfDingbatsITC.
New Fonts: If you are going to use a new font, please let us know so we can add it to our list. Please include the font name, the link of the page from which it was downloaded or purchased, and, if you know, what type of license the font has. In this way, we can help other authors and editors to identify those fonts and use them if they want to.
Font Size: The main font size should typically be 9-12 pt. for readability. Tables will typically be 8-10 pt., using a slightly smaller font size than the main text.
Font License Agreement: If you are going to use a font that has been used prior, be sure that you are legally allowed to do so under the font’s license agreement. Font Squirrel and Google Fonts are both good sources for free fonts with clear license agreements.

Artist and cartographer acknowledgements (editors only)

Artist Signatures: Artists and cartographers may sign or initial their artwork. These should never be removed or cropped out of the artwork during editing.
Artist Acknowledgements: All artwork should be credited in the volume credits. In addition, all major artwork should be accompanied by a “ by ” or “Artwork by ” or “Cartography by ” credit whenever possible. In-line credits for spot art is optional and, for aesthetics purposes, generally not done.

Artists and cartographers

Text considerations

Artists should design with the final artwork integration in mind. Talk to the article author to find out what types of text they may want to have appear on the same page as your artwork. For example:
- if you are going to create the artwork for the starting page of an article you probably need to leave space for the article title and author name, and
- if you are doing cartography you may need to leave space for the map name, room numbers, and a location key.

Artist signatures

Artists and cartographers may sign or initial their artwork. These should never be removed or cropped out of the artwork during editing.

Size, color, and format

Note that while the GFA page is 5.5”x8.5”, the printable area is smaller than that due to page margins and the gutter.

Art, Interior Full Page: 4.2”x7.5” (or 4.2”x7.4” if there is a line in the page footer, it is acceptable to hide the page number on full page art if the artwork would go right up to the line separating the page content from the page number).
Art, Interior Center Book: 5”x10” (or 7.4”x10” if there is a line in the page footer, spans two pages, center book art must be approved by a GFA Coordinator prior to submission as there is only one per volume) If you would like to do a two-page spread, please contact a GFA coordinator via email to discuss.
Ratio Conversion: at 300 dpi 4.2”x7.5” is roughly equivalent to 1260 x 2250 pixels.
Ratio Scaling: If you would like to work in a larger medium and scale it down when submitting, 4.2″ x 7.5″ is roughly equivalent to 6.3″ x 11.25″
Art, Other Sizes: Other sizes of art can be submitted (but use the full page as the maximum sizes for these submissions).
DPI: 300 or 600 dpi is preferable (150 dpi is the minimum, below 150 dpi artwork will appear visibly blurry in all print formats other than newspaper)
Color: black and white line art or grayscale/pencil (black and white line art is preferable to grayscale as it will print better)
Format: PNG or 100% quality JPG

Layout Editors

Page template

All layout editors should use one of the templates in the 2019 GFA Page Layout Templates for Word and InDesign CC, CS4, and CS2.

Page layout

Page Size: 5”x8.5” (a standard 8.5”x11” sheet of paper folder in half)
Content Area, Cover: Pending (we have already received the cover artwork for 2018 but Shyloh still needs to update this document with this info for future GFAs)
Content Area, Interior Full Page: 4.2”x7.5” (or 4.2”x7.4” if there is a line in the page footer)
Content Area, Center Book: 7.5”x10” (or 7.4”x10” if there is a line in the page footer, spans two pages). If you would like to do a two-page spread, please contact the GFA art coordinator via email to discuss.
Border: .5” border on all sides
Gutter: .3” gutter (to shift page left and right, allowing more space for the binding)
Footer: centered page number (or single pixel line with centered page number below)
Word Document Layout Settings: To ensure you have the correct page size, use the 2019 GFA Page Layout Template. If, however, something looks off and you need to check your layout settings in Word at some point, you can review the following. You can access your Margin, Paper, and Layout settings by going to Page Layout > Margins > Custom Margins. You can access your Header and Footer settings by double clicking in that area. The template starts you off with 11pt Times New Roman for the font. This is a very readable serif font but free to switch this as per the Font Guidelines above.
- Margins Settings: Top, Bottom, Inside (may also be listed as “Left”), Outside (may also be listed as “Right”): 0.5”; Gutter: 0.3”; Gutter position: Left; Orientation: Portrait; Multiple pages: Mirror margins; Apply to: Whole document
- Paper Settings: Paper size: Custom Size; Width: 5.5”; Height: 8.5”; First page, Other pages: Default tray (Auto Select); Apply to: Whole document
- Layout Settings: Section start: New page; Different odd and even, Different first page: unchecked; From edge Header, From edge Footer: 0.5”; Vertical alignment: Top; Apply to: Whole document
- Header Settings: there should be no content in the header area
- Footer Settings: Page Number > Bottom of Page > Plain Number 1; Font: Times New Roman; Font size: 9; Align text: Center

Artist and cartographer acknowledgements

See Writers and editors > Artist and cartographer acknowledgements above. The same guidelines apply.