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

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”?

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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Over the years I have developed pages of material based on various strategic planning systems: year end summaries, goal setting, etc. They have always been written as a business document in Word, printed out on 8.5×11-inch sheets of paper and put in a file folder or slipped into page protectors in a three-ring binder. I realized this year that I was becoming more and more averse to going anywhere near this material. Rather than providing guidance and inspiration, it was soul-deadening. It wasn’t so much the content of the material, but the way it was presented.

So I decided to create a book out of the material, adapting some of the ideas in Lisa Sonoma Beam’s The Creative Entrepreneur, but using the medium of print-on-demand books.

Here, to the best of my recollection, I recount my rambling journey to create this book. Perhaps it will serve as a cautionary tale; perhaps as reassurance about your own process. It’s messy work, this creativity thing; particularly where it intersects technology. [I use the term create here rather than design deliberately. When I develop a book design for others, the constraints are usually set and I have no control over the content or sequence of text and images. They are givens. With my own books, everything is subject to alteration. “This is not necessarily a good thing,” she says ruefully.]

setting constraints

I love constraints; they eliminate so much from the universe of infinite possibilities. They begin to give a wee bit of definition to the problem I am trying to solve.

• My 2011 Inspiration Book will be a 7×7 softcover from blurb. I like the square proportion and the small size will sit unobtrusively on my desk, subliminally reminding me of the path I am setting out on for the year. It’s also easy to toss in my bag and carry with me.
• Because I expect to be revising and reprinting this book many times in the coming year—it’s intended to be a living, working document, just like when it was in .doc format—cost is an issue. The 7×7 softcover is the least expensive option blurb has if I keep the page count to no more than 40 pages. [Actually, I get only 39 of those pages because blurb reserves the last page for its own logo, unless I pay an extra, per book fee. I usually do this for client books, but for this book I’ve chosen not to.]
• The images need to come from my personal collection or from flickr’s creative commons domain because I have allocated no budget to buy rights to new images.
• And while I don’t intend this book to become commercial, I want to leave myself the option of using the images in other ways that might be considered commercial, so my creative commons search is further restricted to images offered for commercial use.

laying out the dummy

Working in InDesign, I block out the fixed pages: 1 title page, 2 publication information page, 3 table of contents page. I like to use the final left hand page of a book for a strong image that encapsulates the sense of the entire book, but since that page is not available to me, I block out the spread on pages 38-39 for that purpose.

Then I place various chunks of text to see how they lay out on the remaining pages. I want to determine what text should be on a two-page spread and what should stand alone.

This led me to discover there are natural breaks that could serve as section dividers. Since I want these dividers to be two-page spreads, I needed to go back and adjust some of the text blocks.

gathering images & placing them in the layout

This is the work of what used to be called a photo editor. Since there isn’t a narrative in my written material, it is images [and color] that will drive the book. Rather than having literal meaning, they need to invoke a certain emotional or visceral response. The images themselves, their relationship to one another, and the sequence in which they are presented are crucial.

I spend two evenings searching for images from my own library, from flickr’s creative commons, and—just in case—creating an istockphoto lightbox. Then another two or three putting them together with the words to see how the sequence works. Sometimes I have great images, but their colors clashed. Or the image is perfect but its orientation or proportion won’t fit my page size the way I want. And sometimes an image that by itself I love just doesn’t seem to belong in this book.

At this point, everything is fluid. Because it’s all my text, and it’s more phrases and bullet points than narrative anyway, it can be separated and rearranged and recombined to suit the imagery. In some cases, I rewrite the material to make it work better.

adjusting and adapting the images

I finally wrestle the images and the text into a coherent conceptual and visual flow but now it’s color that is giving me grief. My solution is to first create a consistent underlying palette for the entire book – background color, text color, emphasis color. Then I desaturate all the images and tone them with one of the colors from the palette. Ahhh. It’s looking good.

back up and redo

Now I’m feeling rather satisfied, perhaps even letting a wee bit of pride show itself. But then two new thoughts occur to me:

1. while the images look great on my computer monitor, I didn’t pay attention to the resolution of the creative commons images; they may not be large enough to print well.
2. even more troubling, I realize that after I altered the color of the images, I may not have license to do so. Now I need to go back image by image and verify that the permissions include the right to “modify, adapt, or build upon.” This should have been articulated as one of my constraints from the beginning.

So, that’s where I am today. So, what have your experiences been creating and designing books? Books for clients, your own traditional books, even artists books. Do you have a process you follow every time, or do you find yourself wandering in the wilderness more than occasionally, circling and backtracking and having to tear down what you thought was permanent to start all over again? I’d love to hear from you.

Related posts you might like:

why making a book is hard—and fun!

Cover image by +fatman+ via flickr used under a Creative Commons License

Usually our baskets are full way before the hour is up, so we’ll grab a coffee or a piece of quiche and pile our books on the table.

I tend to be quite promiscuous in my book-grabbing and -piling and -reading but during our last outing, I came across this exquisite gem and had eyes for no other.

500 Handmade Books: Inspiring Interpretations of a Timeless Form is part of the 500 Series from Lark Books.

Within the art community, there is an ongoing discussion about what constitutes a book: what is that elemental “bookness” that without it, makes an object something other than a book.

Here is what Steve Miller, one of the jurors, said about their selection criteria:

“…in order to quality, a piece had to demonstrate what we call ‘bookness,’ meaning that it had to operate like a book, opening up and presenting a sequence or potential sequence of images, words, or ideas.”

The books featured selected are from the best bookmakers currently working, including the teacher who introduced me to artist books: Sas Colby. Some of these books push the boundaries of tradition, some are solidly grounded within it. All are brilliantly conceived and exquisitely crafted.

• What kind of design do you specialize in? If the answer is “Oh, I do everything – logos, websites, business cards, menus, newsletters!” you might be dealing with someone relatively inexperienced trying to build their portfolio. Book design is a specialized subset of graphic design. [And cover design is an even more specialized subset of that. See this fabulous blog curated by Fwis for some wonderful discussions of the thinking process that goes into cover design.]

• How did you learn graphic design? There’s no right answer here. Many book designers, myself included, learned our skills outside a traditional degree program. Others, far fewer than you would expect, have undergraduate or graduate degrees specifically in graphic design; even more, I’ve discovered, have formal educational backgrounds in fine art.

• Tell me about some of your recent book projects. You want to see if the designer has done something similar to the project you have in mind. You also want to listen for how they speak about the work and the client. Are they whiney or grumbling or do they frame the inevitable rough spots in terms of challenges and learning? Is this how you would like them to speak about you?

• How can I see examples of these projects? Often a designer will have samples on their website. As your intentions become more serious, you may want to ask to see actual books so you can assess the printing and binding as well as the design. [Yeah, that’s worth a post in itself as well.] Sometimes, with privately published books, there are confidentiality agreements. That’s where references come in.

• Can you put me in touch with some of your recent clients? References are always important, whether you are engaging a book designer, a hair stylist, or a surgeon. [The questions you might ask of these references will be covered in a future post.]

• What kinds of projects are you best at? Again, “Oh, I can do everything!” is not the answer you’re listening for. Some book designers pride themselves on being able to turn a book in a very short amount of time. Some love the opportunity to set typography as fine as a medieval tapestry. Others revel in books with very elaborately laid-out pages. I bring my A-game to projects with lots of photos, lots of different informational elements that need to be organized, and a complex process that begs for strong project management.

• Tell me how a project like this would go. There’s no right or wrong answer here, but you want to have confidence that the designer has an overall workflow in place. Book projects are rarely as straightforward as they seem at the outset; you’d like to hear that the designer has some idea where the pitfalls may be and has built in reviews and checkpoints to reassess the overall project plan and make adjustments when necessary.

• What is a realistic timeline for a project like this? Experienced professional designers will be able to answer this question, usually in terms that describe the variables that can affect schedule and budget: number of review cycles, client deadlines, etc.

Okay, now you can ask:

• How do you normally price work like this? There are a number of legitimate pricing models used by professional designers. [For a good background in this, see the Graphic Artists’ Guild Pricing and Ethical Guidelines.] Some designers bill by the hour and provide a tight estimate up front. Some have a fixed price for lower-budget projects that offer a limited number of options; for higher-budget work, they would present a proposal outlining the scope and anticipated costs. [See why invest in good design for a more in-depth explanation of these pricing models.] Still others use metrics based on final number of pages, word count, number of photos, etc. Often a project will involve some combination of these factors. Whatever model they use, you want to feel comfortable discussing costs with the designer and have a clear idea of what is included in the price and what changes will require renegotiation.

There are many more questions and areas of discussion you might go into [and I’m sure to be writing about them in future posts]. The key things you should be listening for at this point is a sense of competence, professionalism and flexibility. Particularly for personal histories and other privately published books, this will become a very intimate professional relationship so you want to have confidence in the book designer you are engaging.

Related posts you might like:

working with a designer-part one

why not design the book yourself?

reading a book like a designer

what is “book thinking”?

Because they haven’t worked in print production, however, the idea of working with a book designer—or even the idea that there was a lot to be done between completing a manuscript and handing it off to a printer—was new to some. And a frequent question I heard was how do I select a graphic designer?

On the APH Find a Personal Historian page [accessible by anyone], It is difficult to cull out the actual professional book designers from personal historians who list graphic design as part of the services they offer to clients [often by subcontracting with a book designer]. Here are a few suggestions:

• Ask on the APH Listserv [accessible to members only]. Say you are interested in exploring opportunities to work with a book designer on projects and ask those who do that work for others to get in touch with you offlist. Also, pay attention to who is participating in Listserv and forum discussions in the areas of design, typography, and print production.

• Ask others for their experiences with designers and who they recommend. Keep in mind that different designers have different areas of focus and skill sets so often a personal historian will develop a number of reliable resources they can draw on.

• Always look at the publication page of a book to see who is listed as the designer. Often different people will contribute different skills: the book’s interior design and page formatting, the cover design, family trees or other graphics.

• As you develop your list, look at the designers’ web site. Look at the samples and also look for what they say about how they work, how they view collaboration, and how they price. Get a sense of who they are and how you respond to them.

• Arrange a time to talk to them on the phone to find out more.

I am writing this post hurriedly, I admit, so I can get to the closing sessions and, although I am directing it to the members of APH I have met at this conference, I hope it is of value to others as well. Part Two will go into more detail about the questions you might ask and the things you might listen for during that phone conversation.

Related posts you might like:

working with a designer-part two

why not design the book yourself?

reading a book like a designer

what is “book thinking”?

And don’t just take my word for it. Check out Dan Curtis’s 4 Reasons Why You Need to Hire a Book Designer

Other reasoning includes: I’ve already got Word so I can combine pictures and text to layout the pages. How hard can it be, anyway? Or, the printer said they will  throw in the design for free.

There certainly are times when it makes sense to do the design work yourself. Perhaps you really have no budget for design. [Perhaps because you forgot to factor it in?] I think Word is really difficult to use for page layout so, if you are not going to invest in a professional level page layout program, then I suggest using a service such as blurb.com or Memory Press. They have professionally designed templates so you can’t go too far wrong. If you do use Word, keep it simple. You won’t have all the typographic and design controls, but that is no excuse for bad design. Find a book you like and figure out the specifications its designer set up.

Perhaps you are really drawn to the idea of doing your own design. You pay attention to how other books are designed. You read type sample books as if they were novels. And while you aren’t yet very proficient at it, you know in your heart there’s a book designer inside you just waiting to be released and that you will be in hog-heaven as you develop your skills. In this case, invest in Adobe InDesign or QuarkXPress and take the time to learn how to use them well. I find lynda.com an excellent resource for software tutorials. Adobe’s website is rich with tutorials and other learning resources. Recognize too, that learning a page layout program is only the technical side of the equation. But you already know that, don’t you?

But if you are a writer trying to build a profitable business, particularly as a professional historian, there are some good reasons to consider subcontracting the design work. First,  you should not lose money. Worst case, you simply pass along the designer’s fee to your client. And as a general practice you would mark-up that fee to account for the time you  spend coordinating with the subcontractor and for having the good judgment to choose them in the first place.

Developing an ongoing relationship with one or more designers will pay dividends over time as you learn how to work together efficiently, learn from previous projects how to better estimate time and costs and how to manage the workflow. And, when you are not bogged down trying to figure out how to get nicely justified columns of text, you can be filling up your marketing pipeline, starting your next project, or enjoying some well-deserved time off.

Related posts you might like:

reading a book like a designer

partnering for profit

what is “book thinking”?

And don’t just take my word for it. Check out Dan Curtis’s 4 Reasons Why You Need to Hire a Book Designer

I’m a firm believer in getting a good grounding in the fundamental elements of any craft or trade. Through the long history of  setting type—from cast metal through phototypesetting to digital fonts—principles have evolved that affect legibility and readability as well as the reader’s emotional and aesthetic response. The following three books provide a good foundation for understanding this 500+ year old craft.

A note on publication dates: When I look at books about technology or training books for specific programs, I always look for something published within the past year or two. However, when it comes to design and typography,  principles don’t change with the software versions. So I tend to look to the classics, written by people well established in their field.

Back in the days of Hemingway and Dorothy Parker, writers didn’t need to know anything about setting type: that was handled for them. Today there’s a generation of a certain age that grew up using typewriters but are now writing with computers and, in many cases, expected to be their own typesetters. In 1990 Robin Williams [the writer, not the actor, but almost as funny] wrote her wonderful little book: The PC is not a Typewriter. [Williams has also written a version for the Mac called, appropriately enough, The Mac is not a Typewriter so Mac people do not have to go through the trouble of translating function keys.]

By now, it seems, everyone has heard about one space after punctuation, not two, although some still resist or are uneasy about it. Williams explains why the rule you learned in high school typing circa 1967 is no longer relevant. She then moves on to distinguish the appropriate use of en and em dashes, how to find and use special characters and glyphs that might be buried in your font’s character set, and how to set paragraphs that would make Maxwell Perkins weep for joy at the beauty of it all.

Designing with Type by James Craig has been a required text in almost all college courses on typography since 1971. Most recently updated in 2006, eliminating rubber cement and thinner from the list of “essential tools for the designer” [I assume, since the copy on my bookshelf was revised in 1980], it is the equivalent of a semester or two at an excellent design school.

First published in 1993 and revised in 2002, Stop Stealing Sheep is a more entertaining and somewhat less intimidating book that covers much of the same ground as Craig’s book but less pedantically. It is also a wonderful exemplar of various type applications: pay particular attention to the indexes, credits, chapter titles and sidebars.

You might be interested in some of my other book recommendations on my resources for learning page.

That’s a question I hear frequently from writers who want to design their own books. And it’s not a bad question; it’s just usually raised at the wrong point in the process.

Before we can choose a font, we need to determine the kinds of information that will be in the book. In even the simplest books, there are usually chapter titles, perhaps chapter subtitles, body text, and captions. There are also page numbers, sometimes running heads and footers. Often there’s a table of contents, perhaps an index, a timeline and a family tree. These are all different kinds of information; they serve different purposes and often have a hierarcy of importance.

Identifying, naming, and classifying these different types of information is the  preliminary thinking step that will eventually lead to making design choices about the appropriate typeface, size and color to assign to each of these pieces of information.

This combination of conceptual and design work has had the term information design applied to it since the early 1970s. As an introduction, let me recommend:

The Visual Display of Quantitative Information: 2^nd edition by Edward R. Tufte

Edward R. Tufte‘s name is one of the first that comes to anyone’s mind when talking about information design. The Visual Display of Quantitative Information is his first and classic book and although his focus is more on taking raw statistical data and making it meaningful, this book is probably the best resource for shifting your head into thinking about information design. Any of his books, however, will provide excellent examples of thoughtful and well-executed information design in print.

The Practical Guide to Information Design by Ronnie Lipton brings it down to the working level. Her book is clearly divided into three sections: Audience, Words and Pictures, which pretty much covers the kinds of books we develop as personal historians.

Information Design by Robert Jacobson (Editor), forward by Richard Saul Wurman

If you are interested in a more theoretical or academic treatise on information design—and I know that some of you are likely to be—Information Design collects the thinking of both scholars and practitioners and covers the range of presentation venues: print, online, signage, multimedia, museums and other public spaces.