Book Design: Beauty in the Details

Updated 5 days, 8 hours ago

Source: http://editorunleashed.com/

y Joel Friedlander

The first book my son ever got truly captivated by as an early reader was Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. We had read the earlier Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone together, with me doing most of the reading since he had just learned to read. By the time the second book came out, he was determined to read it himself.

It was a remarkable experience to watch him drop into the world of witchcraft and wizardry, to be completely absorbed by the world ...

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Showing 30 relevant reactions out of 58.

"Interior book design - the most self-effacing kind of design. When it works, it’s almost invisible." http://tinyurl.com/yfdq85g #bookdesign

3 months, 2 weeks ago by BookDesignGirl on Twitter

Thoughtful comments on "readability" http://bit.ly/Mex8x

4 months, 1 week ago by lyndons on Twitter

[...] Read more… [...]

4 months, 1 week ago by Book design: beauty in the details « Design in Mind on Wordpress

I am a publsher and I am looking for non-fiction submissions that will make a difference – see

http://fabooks.wordpress.com/ for my thoughts on this

4 months, 1 week ago by Trevor Brown on Wordpress

@Emily No, I hadn’t seen it before, just looked at Amazon. An amazing piece of work, I think the designer/illustrator Ben Gibson should get a lot of credit. I’ve done many books with illustrations, charts, graphs, diagrams, sidebars and (the real challenge for a designer) more than 1 text “stream,” but never anything this whimsical. Loved the copyright page also. Certainly this ... See all content

4 months, 1 week ago by Joel Friedlander on Wordpress

Great post! I’m curious whether you’ve looked at The Selected Works of T. S. Spivet. It is a novel about a child prodigy cartographer, and it contains many of his images and explanations as sidebars. Typographically, it must have been a huge challenge, but I thought it worked really well. Unlike footnotes or endnotes, I thought the sidebars didn’t break up the reading experience as ... See all content

4 months, 1 week ago by Emily Pullen on Wordpress

Happy to see so many people are still interested in book design. The paper kind at that! http://bit.ly/14Ebbz

4 months, 1 week ago by mariaschneider on Twitter

Joel,

Your comments are well-thought-out and well-informed — you certainly know whereof you speak! I’ve copyedited more than 50 book manuscripts in the past two years; I always emphasize to authors the critical importance of design, both for the exterior and interior of a book.

4 months, 1 week ago by Linda Jay Geldens on Wordpress

Never thought about the book design elements INSIDE the book. Thanks.

I noticed in this post you did not square the margins like they do in newspaper columns. I think this is easier to read. Any comments?

4 months, 1 week ago by Mary Ulrich on Wordpress

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4 months, 1 week ago by SF Signal on Wordpress

@Dave Those ebooks are pretty challenging. I find the state of the art at the moment sorely lacking. What I see on a Kindle or Sony Reader, although readable, is akin to airy white bread. Nothing wrong with it, but I don’t want to read that every day and I don’t think it’s much of a replacement for the unique character a book has intrinsically.

Maybe they’ll find a
... See all content

4 months, 1 week ago by Joel Friedlander on Wordpress

@Stephen, Alibris has one for $85, I don’t know the other servers for used/rare. If I see one I’ll let you know!

4 months, 1 week ago by Joel Friedlander on Wordpress

Book Design: Beauty in the Details: by Joel Friedlander. Read books that you enjoy The first bo.. http://bit.ly/4DzSBr #trendy #design

4 months, 1 week ago by trendydesign on Twitter

Joel, I meant to ask you something. I see you mention Tschichold’s The Form of the Book. I wish to God I could get my blog’s archive’s back. I wrote a number of times about Tschichold, changing my mind back and forth as I reread him and about him. But I’ve never read The Form of the Book. Can’t find a copy that’s not over $100 or more. Do you know of a place that ... See all content

4 months, 1 week ago by Stephen Tiano on Wordpress

Joel, too many people don’t care about book design anymore. I love it.

Right now I’m struggling with an ebook design. It’s going to have to have at least some of the elements people expect in ebooks (like it or not), but I’m really picky about readability. Dangerous Curve in LA composed the initial TeX layout, which I’m pretty happy with. I’ll be spending
... See all content

4 months, 1 week ago by Dave Doolin on Wordpress

Well done, Joel. I agree with pretty much all you said. I can’t stress enough how much I believe that interior page design is, in my considered opinion, supposed to be a silent art. That is, since the two most important people in the design of a book’s pages are the reader and the author. Nothing we do as book designers ought to call attention away from what the author is trying to bring ... See all content

4 months, 1 week ago by Stephen Tiano on Wordpress

Julie reminded me of several email newsletters that use different font colors, sizes, etc. It horrible. I know online reading isn’t the same as print — but the concept is the same. Use too much and you confuse the eyes.

4 months, 1 week ago by Meryl K Evans on Wordpress

Joel, once again you have given us something to chew on! Thanks for the background and I totally agree that reading suspends our reality and allows us to escape into the world of the imagination. It isn’t really known yet how digital reality works. We know books work for us, but we don’t really know whether or not digital substitutions are working in the same way or even in a useful way ... See all content

4 months, 1 week ago by Joanne Bolton on Wordpress

3 essential design elements in book design: typeface, line length and leading by @JFbookman @mariaschneider blog http://ow.ly/zF08

4 months, 1 week ago by merylkevans on Twitter

Speaking of readability, I TRIED to read a beauty book by a well-known makeup artist from a TLC makeover show (wink-wink). Couldn’t get through the book because the layout was horrendous, with GIANT FONTS and little fonts, some sans serif, some serif. My eyes were bugging out and I put the book down, never to reopen it again. Design is crucial.

4 months, 1 week ago by Julie Duck on Wordpress

@Sharon thanks for your kind words.

@Maria, big topic. Besides the design challenges of keeping the book readable I try to avoid making the page look like a brochure or advertisement. Keep the elements in balance, and prefer line art to grayscale (except for photos, of course). Line art really blends better with typography for most books, and simple pen-and-ink drawings often work best.

Avoid
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4 months, 1 week ago by Joel Friedlander on Wordpress

@RKCharron, I hadn’t read Hush, Hush… so I looked it up on Amazon’s preview pages. That’s awful. The typeface does distract you. Bad choice.

I remember when I was a kid, I didn’t like to read some of the books by how the font looked in size and style.

Publishers worked hard to produce high quality content — font should be the easiest thing to get
... See all content

4 months, 1 week ago by Meryl K Evans on Wordpress

Joel, Thanks for the great post! Any tips regarding using visuals—photos, illustrations, etc.—in a book’s interior?

4 months, 1 week ago by Maria on Wordpress

Great article, Joel. It’s obvious you know your stuff. You’ve been and continue to be a great teacher on this subject. Thanks.

4 months, 1 week ago by Sharon Goldinger on Wordpress

@RKCharron, yes, I’ve had exactly the same experience and wondered why the publisher would allow something so annoying, particularly on every page.

One of the biggest influences on book design is the sheer number of repetitions in books; hundreds of pages, thousands of lines, tens of thousands of words. Something that looks “cute” on one page quickly becomes a nuisance after
... See all content

4 months, 1 week ago by Joel Friedlander on Wordpress

Thank you for that wonderful article! I have seen so many articles on how to make a book exotic but almost none on how to make it readable! The info here is what I need to know and more of it please!

4 months, 1 week ago by Tom Millea on Wordpress

Social comments and analytics for this post…

This post was mentioned on Twitter by MissAdventuring: RT @mariaschneider: Book Design: [interior] Details Matter (guest post by @JFbookman) http://bit.ly/16jhD8…

4 months, 1 week ago by uberVU - social comments on Wordpress

"Interior book design must be the most self-effacing kind of design there is." http://trunc.it/330dg

4 months, 1 week ago by lbgilbert on Twitter

Book Design: Details Matter (guest post by @JFbookman) http://bit.ly/16jhD8

4 months, 1 week ago by mariaschneider on Twitter

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