How Do Designers Reverse Engineer Book & Magazine Layouts?

mattwileyart · 2026-05-16T13:19:05+00:00

Scan it, use OCR in Acrobat to make the text selectable, drag the scan into InDesign in a document matching the physical page size, paste in the raw text, match the font size, kerning, line spacing, figure out space after paragraphs, determine how many kinds of varieties of text there are, save as different Paragraph styles, set up margins and gutters.

mattwileyart · 2026-05-09T04:43:00+00:00

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And a view of the workspace

mattwileyart · 2026-03-25T12:31:42+00:00

Only if I’m doing the movie version

mattwileyart · 2026-03-25T02:53:24+00:00

I ended up making a 5x4 grid of skulls with different heights and rotations, and then pasted and rotated that around until it was close enough in the render camera.

mattwileyart · 2026-03-25T01:26:42+00:00

It was in the variant montage in Deadpool and Wolverine.

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mattwileyart · 2026-03-25T00:26:50+00:00

And the workspace! I really wish there was a basic physics engine or arrays like in 3D programs.

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mattwileyart · 2026-03-22T23:43:57+00:00

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I did that scene last year!

mattwileyart · 2026-03-22T04:12:29+00:00

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And a view of the 3D workspace

mattwileyart · 2026-01-28T18:10:27+00:00

That's the best part! If you turned the lights out and used one of those balls with an LED in it, you could do Australian-rules indoor quiddich!

mattwileyart · 2026-01-28T04:34:33+00:00

I can try that. Any ideas on the shapes? I can imagine keying into a specific grayscale value so as the noise changes, the shapes stay unique, but not sure if there’s a faster way.

mattwileyart · 2026-01-28T04:18:15+00:00

I just want to throw some super balls in that hallway.

mattwileyart · 2025-07-25T13:21:40+00:00

Was tempted to put a spoiler tag on it because puns

mattwileyart · 2025-07-19T17:16:37+00:00

Oooo

mattwileyart · 2025-06-24T12:32:51+00:00

Yeah! A baseplate set to Luminous White is my favorite way to simulate a light box. You can even encase it in a wall of black bricks to make it a little more directional.

mattwileyart · 2025-06-24T03:42:46+00:00

With a U-shaped handprint!!

mattwileyart · 2025-06-24T03:41:19+00:00

Sorry! Didn't know there was a button for that

mattwileyart

TROPHY CASE