Plana, publishing illustration and comics with floss
Carvalho, Ana
Plana started as an academic project by Luís Camanho for a small independent publisher on illustration and comics. Free software was embraced almost from the very beginning. It was an answer to economic constraints but also reflection of our empathy with the libre graphics world. As a consequence, we got interested in copyright and embraced the sharing culture, informing and encouraging our authors to distribute their work for free. With five books published since 2008 we would like to share our experiences so far.
 Hello, I'm here today to present Plana. Plana is a small publisher dedicated to publishing illustration and comics and it's based in Porto in Portugal. It started as a personal project, a school project by Luis and I met him during classes and decided to join him. And we never set up to define goals for what we wanted to do because it was very clear. We wanted to publish a lot as much as we could and publish beautiful books, having them in English as well as in Portuguese so we could send them abroad and we didn't have a budget so we would have fewer copies of each book and we wanted to have lowest possible price, price that would pay for the production of the book and also for the author's work. I'm from graphic design, Luis has a video formation and we knew that if we wanted to set up a project like this we would have to have software for editing image and laying out the book and also we would have to have typefaces. So we would need to spend some money, money that we didn't have if we wanted to go forth with our ideas. And even though we wanted the low price and we wanted to publish a lot, we decided to go for proprietary software. And the first two books were edited with Photoshop which I now think is a very lazy thing to do but by the time was what we felt comfortable with, was what we had learned in school, what our colleagues were using, what all the other professionals were having for their work and also what the printers were demanding. So that's how it went. And for the first time in 2008 I went to the LGM and started to get in touch with the Libra Graphics community. And already on the first book we had our logo and for that I used Inkscape and that was our first contact with the Libra Graphics and Floss software. So the third book was really the moment when we decided to step back and accept that we didn't have budget yet to buy the software or anything else and we still wanted to keep on publishing. So I will show you the website. The third book is a book that I did with Ricardo and it's about, it has a collection of short stories that talk about our experience while living in Rotterdam. Okay, I did a bookmark because of the keyboard and it was not working anyway. And for this book we used it as a testing area and we did it all with free software. We did a blog where we would talk about the book, how we did it, all the little parts, how we did the illustrations, how we rendered the text and we wanted really to share the experience and also give people the possibility of doing exactly the same. So we did all text by hand and we used Inkscape great feature of tracing bitmap to get it in a vectorial format. This is the cover, for this we used the spiral curves which are great. And for the book we decided to publish it with a Creative Commons license. So we in the website have available all files in editable format and you can get it, you can do it at home and you can also buy it. So I will show you a few more pictures. So this is our first book, second book. And this is our collection of stories which already had been published by the author. And we had just more work having it laid out as a proper comic book and translated into English so that it could be sent abroad. And here you have a plan of our book cover when it came out from the printers. And it was perfect. We used Scribus and Inkscape and everything worked out really good. And now that we think about it, we really didn't need to go for proprietary tools because we didn't need anything in particular. We needed really simple tools just for editing the images and doing the layout for the pages. We don't even have much text. This is our fourth book. And for the fourth book, not only we used free software as we talk to the authors and we convinced them to release all the book with a free art license. And the free art license shares the same principles as the GPL but applied to artistic work. So you can also go and get the original files, the original drawings, which we scanned and treated for the book. And you can use them for your own work. And you only have to release it under the same license, of course. And because of this, we started to get in contact with artists, comic book artists and illustrators working in Porto. And we were invited by this local gallery to do their catalog for an illustration exhibition called Dandy, featuring the work of several artists. We received the works very late. So we didn't have any time at all to plan something for the licenses. But once again, we used Scriba's Gimp and Inkscape and everything was fine. We're planning out our sixth book. I was really impressed by yesterday's presentation of Laid Out. And I definitely want to try it because we don't deal very much with text. It's mainly image. So yeah, go and visit our website, get our books. And if you have any doubts or suggestions, you can write us. And have the books with me if you want to see them. You can have a look. So I guess that's it. Thank you.
 Hello, I'm here today to present Plana.  Plana is a small publisher dedicated to publishing illustration and comics and it's based in  Porto in Portugal.  It started as a personal project, a school project by Luis and I met him during classes  and decided to join him.  And we never set up to define goals for what we wanted to do because it was very clear.  We wanted to publish a lot as much as we could and publish beautiful books, having them in  English as well as in Portuguese so we could send them abroad and we didn't have a budget  so we would have fewer copies of each book and we wanted to have lowest possible price,  price that would pay for the production of the book and also for the author's work.  I'm from graphic design, Luis has a video formation and we knew that if we wanted to  set up a project like this we would have to have software for editing image and laying  out the book and also we would have to have typefaces.  So we would need to spend some money, money that we didn't have if we wanted to go forth  with our ideas.  And even though we wanted the low price and we wanted to publish a lot, we decided to  go for proprietary software.  And the first two books were edited with Photoshop which I now think is a very lazy  thing to do but by the time was what we felt comfortable with, was what we had learned in  school, what our colleagues were using, what all the other professionals were having for  their work and also what the printers were demanding.  So that's how it went.  And for the first time in 2008 I went to the LGM and started to get in touch with the  Libra Graphics community.  And already on the first book we had our logo and for that I used Inkscape and that was  our first contact with the Libra Graphics and Floss software.  So the third book was really the moment when we decided to step back and accept that we  didn't have budget yet to buy the software or anything else and we still wanted to keep  on publishing.  So I will show you the website.  The third book is a book that I did with Ricardo and it's about, it has a collection of short  stories that talk about our experience while living in Rotterdam.  Okay, I did a bookmark because of the keyboard and it was not working anyway.  And for this book we used it as a testing area and we did it all with free software.  We did a blog where we would talk about the book, how we did it, all the little parts,  how we did the illustrations, how we rendered the text and we wanted really to share the  experience and also give people the possibility of doing exactly the same.  So we did all text by hand and we used Inkscape great feature of tracing bitmap to get it  in a vectorial format.  This is the cover, for this we used the spiral curves which are great.  And for the book we decided to publish it with a Creative Commons license.  So we in the website have available all files in editable format and you can get it, you  can do it at home and you can also buy it.  So I will show you a few more pictures.  So this is our first book, second book.  And this is our collection of stories which already had been published by the author.  And we had just more work having it laid out as a proper comic book and translated into  English so that it could be sent abroad.  And here you have a plan of our book cover when it came out from the printers.  And it was perfect.  We used Scribus and Inkscape and everything worked out really good.  And now that we think about it, we really didn't need to go for proprietary tools because we  didn't need anything in particular.  We needed really simple tools just for editing the images and doing the layout for the pages.  We don't even have much text.  This is our fourth book.  And for the fourth book, not only we used free software as we talk to the authors and  we convinced them to release all the book with a free art license.  And the free art license shares the same principles as the GPL but applied to artistic  work.  So you can also go and get the original files, the original drawings, which we scanned and  treated for the book.  And you can use them for your own work.  And you only have to release it under the same license, of course.  And because of this, we started to get in contact with artists, comic book artists and  illustrators working in Porto.  And we were invited by this local gallery to do their catalog for an illustration exhibition  called Dandy, featuring the work of several artists.  We received the works very late.  So we didn't have any time at all to plan something for the licenses.  But once again, we used Scriba's Gimp and Inkscape and everything was fine.  We're planning out our sixth book.  I was really impressed by yesterday's presentation of Laid Out.  And I definitely want to try it because we don't deal very much with text.  It's mainly image.  So yeah, go and visit our website, get our books.  And if you have any doubts or suggestions, you can write us.  And have the books with me if you want to see them.  You can have a look.  So I guess that's it.  Thank you.
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Hello, I'm here today to present Plana. Plana is a small publisher dedicated to publishing illustration and comics and it's based in Porto in Portugal. It started as a personal project, a school project by Luis and I met him during classes and decided to join him. And we never set up to define goals for what we wanted to do because it was very clear. We wanted to publish a lot as much as we could and publish beautiful books, having them in English as well as in Portuguese so we could send them abroad and we didn't have a budget so we would have fewer copies of each book and we wanted to have lowest possible price, price that would pay for the production of the book and also for the author's work. I'm from graphic design, Luis has a video formation and we knew that if we wanted to set up a project like this we would have to have software for editing image and laying out the book and also we would have to have typefaces. So we would need to spend some money, money that we didn't have if we wanted to go forth with our ideas. And even though we wanted the low price and we wanted to publish a lot, we decided to go for proprietary software. And the first two books were edited with Photoshop which I now think is a very lazy thing to do but by the time was what we felt comfortable with, was what we had learned in school, what our colleagues were using, what all the other professionals were having for their work and also what the printers were demanding. So that's how it went. And for the first time in 2008 I went to the LGM and started to get in touch with the Libra Graphics community. And already on the first book we had our logo and for that I used Inkscape and that was our first contact with the Libra Graphics and Floss software. So the third book was really the moment when we decided to step back and accept that we didn't have budget yet to buy the software or anything else and we still wanted to keep on publishing. So I will show you the website. The third book is a book that I did with Ricardo and it's about, it has a collection of short stories that talk about our experience while living in Rotterdam. Okay, I did a bookmark because of the keyboard and it was not working anyway. And for this book we used it as a testing area and we did it all with free software. We did a blog where we would talk about the book, how we did it, all the little parts, how we did the illustrations, how we rendered the text and we wanted really to share the experience and also give people the possibility of doing exactly the same. So we did all text by hand and we used Inkscape great feature of tracing bitmap to get it in a vectorial format. This is the cover, for this we used the spiral curves which are great. And for the book we decided to publish it with a Creative Commons license. So we in the website have available all files in editable format and you can get it, you can do it at home and you can also buy it. So I will show you a few more pictures. So this is our first book, second book. And this is our collection of stories which already had been published by the author. And we had just more work having it laid out as a proper comic book and translated into English so that it could be sent abroad. And here you have a plan of our book cover when it came out from the printers. And it was perfect. We used Scribus and Inkscape and everything worked out really good. And now that we think about it, we really didn't need to go for proprietary tools because we didn't need anything in particular. We needed really simple tools just for editing the images and doing the layout for the pages. We don't even have much text. This is our fourth book. And for the fourth book, not only we used free software as we talk to the authors and we convinced them to release all the book with a free art license. And the free art license shares the same principles as the GPL but applied to artistic work. So you can also go and get the original files, the original drawings, which we scanned and treated for the book. And you can use them for your own work. And you only have to release it under the same license, of course. And because of this, we started to get in contact with artists, comic book artists and illustrators working in Porto. And we were invited by this local gallery to do their catalog for an illustration exhibition called Dandy, featuring the work of several artists. We received the works very late. So we didn't have any time at all to plan something for the licenses. But once again, we used Scriba's Gimp and Inkscape and everything was fine. We're planning out our sixth book. I was really impressed by yesterday's presentation of Laid Out. And I definitely want to try it because we don't deal very much with text. It's mainly image. So yeah, go and visit our website, get our books. And if you have any doubts or suggestions, you can write us. And have the books with me if you want to see them. You can have a look. So I guess that's it. Thank you.
a small publisher dedicated to publishing illustration and comics and it's based in Porto in Portugal. It started as a personal project, a production of the book and also for the author's a project like this we would have to have for proprietary software. And the first two books very lazy thing to do but by the time was what we contact with the Libra Graphics and Floss our book cover when it came out from the local gallery to do their catalog for an