— Seth Godin

Of all the jobs I’ve done over the years, I thought telling people I was a book designer was pretty straightforward, like saying I was a cab driver or a hair stylist. Everybody would know what that was. Turns out that’s not the case.

Some people say: Oh, you design the book cover.

Sometimes, I respond. But often someone else does the cover and I design the interior layout.

That’s when I see a shimmer of confusion cross their face: what is there to design? I imagine they’re thinking.

We’re all used to opening up our word processing program and starting to type. Someone has already made decisions about the page dimensions, margins, typeface & size, leading, paragraph indents [or not], spaces before or after paragraphs [or not], page numbers, running heads and footers, and a myriad of other design elements. That word-processed document could be printed out and bound, but what you would have is a bound manuscript, not a designed book.

A book designer starts afresh with all those decisions, taking into consideration the book’s purpose, content, intended audience, the various text & graphic elements to be accommodated on the page, their relative importance and relationship to one another, as well as issues related to the final product: how many copies will be printed? by what process? how will it be bound? will it have a full color interior? black & white? some combination of the two? how will it be distributed? how will reorders be handled?

Book design is one of those jobs that, when done well, is pretty much invisible. But when it’s done poorly, it causes the reader irritation, and confusion which usually reflects back on the book’s author.

My APH colleague Linda Coffin of HistoryCrafters gives a compelling example:

“…the design and production of a book are vitally important to the impact that book will have on its readers. There are many compelling, important and well-written stories that go unread simply because they look amateurish or even downright bad. Most people are unaware of how a good design can be a vital communication tool, telling its own story about the narrative and the narrator.

Too often design is treated as just window-dressing (“this isn’t about a pretty design, it’s about the story!”). Of course the story is the whole purpose of creating the book. But it will be even more effective and more compelling if it’s well-designed and well-produced. The two things simply must go hand-in-hand if we want to do justice to the story.

A recent project is a case in point. My client’s family was unhappy with his narrative, telling him that he hadn’t put enough emotion into it and that it was boring to read. But now I’ve redesigned the layout and given them a sample of the first chapter. The narrative flows in a clearly readable form. The photos are sharp and crisp and sitting next to the text they illustrate. The chapter and topic divisions now make sense. The headers and footers are correct and help guide you through the story. Guess what? Suddenly his family is thrilled. ‘Wow, Dad, this is great stuff,’ said the same son who had complained that there was no emotion in it. Same client, same material, same story, but much better design and production. All the difference in the world.”

And now, as books take on another incarnation as e-books [something I think of as a simply a metaphor, no more a book than a television show is a stage production], even more issues—design and technical—arise. But that’s a post for another day.

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Image by See-ming Lee ??? SML / SML under a Creative Commons license

1. Use styles.

Styles have been a feature of Microsoft Word for as long as I can remember. Yet I rarely encounter anyone who uses them. Honestly, they will make your life so much easier! Styles are a set of formatting commands that apply to different types of text in a document—level 1 heading, level 2 heading, body text, bullet text, etc. You apply a style to paragraphs [or characters], then define the formatting elements of the style. [Or vice versa], If you later decide, for example, that your level 1 heading should be Helvetica rather than Garamond, you simply change the style definition and all the paragraphs tagged with that style are changed at once. Styles from Word integrate with styles in InDesign.

2. Use colors to validate styles.

Make things easy on yourself and use color to quickly highlight any problem areas. Once you have set up styles, while you are still in the “construction” phase, apply a color to the style. [It doesn’t need to stay there – this is just part of your quality control process.] Often heading levels have subtle distinctions and it’s not always easy to spot them when they are all in black type. I do this when I get a manuscript and there are multiple heading levels with subtle distinctions. [And because my client doesn’t use styles, they are often inconsistent themselves in how they format the headings.] By tagging Heading 1 blue, Heading 2 green, Heading 3 violet, it’s much easier for my client to look at the manuscript – or just a table of contents extract – and say, no, this one should be heading 2 and that one should be heading 3.

3. Set up a project folder template.

All my book design projects have the same types of elements: text files, image files, layout files, review files, and administrative files. So I have set up a template folder that I can quickly copy and rename for a particular project, ready for me to fill with the particular files associated with that project.

4. Develop a file naming scheme—and use it consistently.

I use a prefix with my client’s initials, project number, project name, and then a suffix with the version number. Version 0 is always the initial design version; the 0 indicates that this is not a file to be carried forward as it often does not have current versions of the text or images.

Regardless of what filenames my clients may have given the image files, I add a prefix so they present in the order in which they will be placed in the book. So my client’s original image [obtained from the U.S. Library of Congress] was named 1s01828u.tif. I added the prefix 006- to indicate it’s the 6th image to be placed in the book. [Because there will be over 100 images, I use leading zeros so they display in order.] As I work through the image enhancement process, I add the suffixes –E [enhanced] and –bw [converted to grayscale]. After enhancing and converting I save it in its ready-to-place .png format. So the new file name is 006-1s01828u-E-bw.png.

5. Use colors to navigate more quickly to the current file.

In the midst of a project it is easy to mistakenly open the wrong file. Use your operating system’s ability to apply color to files and folders so you have a path to follow to make sure you select the current version of the file.

6. Set up headers/footers and slugs.

After two or three rounds of revisions involving two or three or more reviewers, it’s almost inevitable that someone is going to open or print out the wrong file version. Use headers or footers in Word or a slug placed in the gutter in InDesign with text variables that update automatically to show the file name, page number, and latest save date. Emphasize the difference between versions by applying a different color to each new version.

7. Use checklists.

The books I work on usually involved a lot of photos and it’s easy to lose track of which photos are ready to place, which still need work, which are unusable, etc. But with a checklist, I can work through the photos systematically with a minimum of fuss because I can see where I left off and what is yet to be done.

There are many other types of checklists that I use on various projects and there most certainly are checklists I haven’t yet thought about yet.

One of my mantras is “think once, execute many times.” By spending a little time up front to develop systems, procedures, and forms, a lot of the confusion and frustration caused by administrative mix-ups is eliminated and we are free to concentrate on the more interesting and rewarding work we love as book designers.

I’d love to hear about your tips for managing a complex workload. Please leave a note in the comments section.

Examples used are from a recent project with Maureen Taylor, The Photo Detective, and her upcoming book Finding The
Civil War in Your Family Album.

— charles eames

In part 1 of this post, I used Twyla Tharp’s book The Creative Habit as a model for looking at a book through designer eyes, identifying and articulating the various graphic elements that combine to create the reader’s experience of the content.

Despite identifying eight different elements to consider, we never even began talking about type, even though “what font should I use?” is often the first question non-designers ask. So in this post we’ll look at some of the typographic elements used in the book.

The main variables involving type in a book are typeface, size [including leading], color, and case. [Weights and styles—bold, extra bold, semibold italic, etc—are a subset of typeface that can add finer divisions of content hierarchy but, if used promiscuously, will simply confuse the reader.]

Typophiles might have immediately identified the typefaces used in this book as Bodoini and Franklin Gothic. I like to work my way through identifont.com because it forces me to look at the tiniest element of a font’s design and thus imprints it more permanently on my brain.

In my previous post I pointed out the color choices the designer* made—black, red, and shades of gray. In addition there is also white, or paper, reversed out of a black or gray box.

And type can be set in various cases: normal, all caps, small caps, no caps.

So looking at pages 2-7, here are some of the main paragraph and character styles I see there:

• Chapter number: Bodoni 12, black, normal [upper & lower] case

• Chapter title: Bodoni 56 black and gray, all lower case

I would call the gray a character style, applied to a few words in the Chapter Title.

The position of both of these type elements changes from chapter to chapter. This is a book about creativity after all seen through the lens of a choreographer, who uses movement and position in space as expressive elements. Some chapter titles are set larger [chapter 10] and some smaller [chapter 5]. Had he made only one chapter a different type size, we might think that was a mistake; by doing more than one, it signals a deliberate design choice.

• Lead-in paragraph: Also Bodoni, gray, variable type size and leading, taking up at least 3/4 of the vertical distance but again not completely consistent or predictable. A red character style is applied to the first few words.

• Body text: Bodoni 12/18 black justified paragraphs with hyphenation. Another red 16/18 character style [e.g., p 7] used for emphasis.

• Running head Tharp: Bodoni 8 red normal case on right page only

• Running head chapter: Franklin 7 or 8 [different fonts will have different cap heights] black set all lowercase

If you keep reading, you will see that there are more paragraph and character styles used throughout the body text. I have a number of future posts planned around the topic of styles, but for now, consider it a conceptual exercise, giving every different use of type variables—typeface, color, size, case—a distinct name, defining its characteristics, and specifying its usage rules.

Want some homework? In part 1, we identified different page types, among them exercise pages and creative biography pages. In addition to the colored background used to signal these pages, there is a shift in typography as well. Look at the exercises beginning on page 29 and identify the paragraph and character styles used throughout this section. Do the same thing for the black box or creative autobiography pages beginning on 45 and continuing on 54.

Meanwhile, keep your eyes open—and read like a designer!

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*Julian Peploe designed both the book and the cover for The Creative Habit.

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Related posts you might like:

reading a book like a designer-part 1

the creative habit by twyla tharp

what is “book thinking”?

back cover copy from text in the book format by keith smith

Of course, we book designers read books like regular people. But, when we are in “design mode”, we look at a book in a different way. We’re not so much interested in specific content as we are in identifying how many different elements of content there are and how those elements relate to one another.

In a previous post on The Creative Habit by Twyla Tharp, I pointed out some of the elements that were used in an interesting way. Let’s expand a bit on that here, using her book as a point of reference.

page size and format

This is a decision the book designer makes early on. It then constrains other design options and often has a big impact on printing and binding costs. A common size for trade paperback books is 6×9 inches; Tharp’s is 7×9. I do not presume to speak to the underlying reasoning of the book designer*, but I am immediately drawn to books that are different, particularly books about art and creativity that trend toward more square, less rectangular. This is very often a subconscious reaction.

binding

This is a paperback book, often referred to as “perfect bound”. It lies relatively flat when opened, something paperbacks often do not do. This is due in part, no doubt, to the wider page size as well as to the particular binding method itself, sometimes referred to as “fan binding”.

color

This is a two-color printing job: black and red. Black is also used as a screen or tint [less than 100% ink coverage], giving the designer a range of gray values to work with. Notice that on some pages the ink “bleeds”. That means it extends all the way to the edge of the paper; you’ll notice it when you look at the paper edges with the book closed.

Using bleeds might increase production costs. The designer sets up for the bleed to extend beyond the trim edges—usually by 1/8“ all around—and that may require a larger sheet of paper or running the job on a larger printing press or digital output device.

[For a faux bleed treatment, take a look at pages from Wisdom. Sorry, no preview pages available, but it’s easy to spot in a bookstore: 12x12 with the fabulous Clint Eastwood on the cover.]

margins & columns

Relatively narrow and equal inside and out: 0.75”, same for the bottom and 0.50“ for the top. This yields a fairly long line length when set in one column, and that becomes one of the variables in the choice of type size and leading. [Are you beginning to see how everything is related?]

page types

How many different types of pages are there? Looking through Chapter One, this is how I would identify them:

• chapter opening spread – two pages starting on a verso [left] page
• chapter intro – one page starting on a verso
• chapter text
• chapter text with graphics
• pp 20-21, 26-27 – what do you think? are these distinct types of pages, or just another graphic? your call.
• exercise pages – one or more, can start on recto [right] or verso
• black box pages or ”creative biography“ pages – see page 45

What about the front matter? Title page, publication information page, etc? And the back matter? How many different types of pages would you identify here?

graphic elements

What graphic elements are used throughout the book? Photos? illustrations? What graphics came from outside sources? Where and how are they acknowledged? Are there instances where the type itself becomes a graphic element? What is this conveying to the reader?

page numbers, headers and footers

How are page numbers handled? Where are they placed? Are there pages without page numbers? Which ones? Why? Is information repeated as a header or footer? What information? On which pages?

cover

Deconstructing cover design is a subject for another series of posts [and probably calls for someone with far more expertise in that aspect of design than I have], but for now, just consider how the cover relates to the interior design in terms of the elements listed above. [Fun fact: in traditional publishing, cover design is often done separately from the interior design, with no interaction between the two designers. Tharp’s book had the same designer* for both.]

For extra credit, try to identify all the different elements that go into the design of the cover. [Hint: a lot of them are on the back—and don’t forget the spine.]

There are a number of resources on the web that can take you inside the mind of the cover designer. Here’s one to get you started—George Foster. I like his website for the before and after analysis he provides.

The more you can break these elements apart and articulate each one, the more tools you have at your disposal for developing an effective book design. And we haven’t even begun to talk about what font to use, have we?

If you want to work ahead into what I’ll be covering in the next post—type choices—identify the type faces used in Tharp’s book. Maybe you’re a crackerjack font identifier; I like to go to identifont.com and work through their questions. You’ll start to learn the nuances of type face design. [If you don’t have the book, there are preview pages on amazon.com]

Til next time–happy reading!

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*Julian Peploe designed both the book and the cover for The Creative Habit.

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Related posts you might like:

reading a book like a designer – part 2

the creative habit by twyla tharp

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