June 29th, 2008 08:06pm
tianodesign
So after seeing what I had to say about the first batch of questions, my faithful correspondent came back with more …
6.75 x 9.5, is this the proper size or am i off by a few ticks? … it might help to specify the full size of the book, versus it’s cropped size. …
The short answer is, “Sure, it could be.” But the truth is more complex. You can print a book with pages of any size, but different factors can and should come into play. From the publishing size—and remember that the publisher, even if you publish yourself—foots the bill. It its important to understand that a trim size—the size of the sheet a single page is printed on—that divides evenly into the whole piece of paper the printer prints on, leaving no waste—is the most economical way to go. So speaking to the printer about the size of the sheet used in printing is wise.
Then, too, consider the material,the subject matter of the book. A novel will be fine at some of the generally-used sizes: 6 x 9 or 7 x 9, for instance. Textbooks with equations—something I have done a lot of in my career—require more room, often with generous white space. A book of photo-essays would likely call for a wider still page size. A few widths that I like for photo-intense books are 8-1/2 x 10-7/8, 9 x 11, and 9-3/4 x 13-1/2.
I play with the text size of the page—that is, the proportion of the text area—once a page size has been decided on. For me, the easy exercise is to open Bringhurst’s The Elements of Typographic Style to Chapter 8, “Shaping the Page,” and play with some of the examples there. Different material will almost instantly look great in different text widths. By this time, too, typefaces should be chosen—again, based on the material. Type size can be decided on by looking at different sizes within the text width that will be used. For text, rule of thumb calls for leading, the space from the baseline of one line of type to the baseline of the line above or below, that is 20% more thanthe size of type of the text line. 10-point type, for instance, using this rule of them, would be set on 12-point leading. But the trend—and, indeed, I do not think you can go wrong following the trend—if for more generous leading. One series of books for which I did the page layout only, based on my client’s supplied template was 11/14, 11-point type on 14-point leading. It read very nicely.
What is the advantage of using stylesheets and how does it help move the design process? And the same for master pages? Should each master page be designed at the start? Since there will be quite a bit of variance between pages, this could be quite time consuming.
Once I have decided upon the typeface families I will use—usually one serif family for the various kinds of text and one sans family for all display items—and the size and proportion of the page, I go through the manuscript (now the whole manuscript), noting each kind of page for which I will need a master page: frontmatter page (Title, Copyright, and Dedication pages, for instance), chapter opener, body page, art-only page, etc. This is the most efficient way to work, I have found, getting everything ready to go before starting the page layout. Then I go through the manuscript again, page-by-page, from beginning to end, making sure my first list of items requiring stylesheets is complete. I spec each of them out and create all the stylesheets.
How do you go about designing the spine? Are there any tricks in InDesign to get it to show you the spine? Ditto for dust jackets with inside flaps.
The spine information, in my experience, comes from the printer, once the number of pages has been established. Dust jackets are based on the cover, once the spine width is established, plus the client’s width info for the flaps.
What about the text workflow? What do the manuscripts you get look like? Are they just simply word files with a folder of images to place? Are you using InCopy at all?
I get textfiles in Microsoft Word. The best projects involve coded textfiles, marked in Word to tell whichever page layout software I use—Quark or InDesign—which stylesheet to apply. The manuscripts are marked to show which stylesheets are to be applied. This is just a double-check when the textfiles are coded. When they are not, the manuscript provides the “map” for me to follow in applying the stylesheets myself.
Lastly, how does one go about learning the various options for paperstock, varnish etc… are there any online resources you know of, for this? obviously you can’t feel the stock online, but at least something that shows you various examples of each?
You can certainly explore all kinds of paper by obtaining samples from suppliers, perhaps from manufacturers. I would start by googling “paper samples.”
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June 25th, 2008 09:09pm
tianodesign
I got a “tweet” today from a new Twitter friend. He asked a few questions that seem to capture some of the essence of designing books. Or at least starting to design . There are some basic issues that seem to mark the beginning of all such projects.
[G]enerally, my questions fall into two categories: those regarding designing the book and those regarding printing (like picking paper stock, varnishes, binding, etc.).
I include the above opening because I want to point out that those two categories a very distinct. I, for instance, have not worked for a publisher, author-publisher, or book packager who did not already have those printing questions handled by the time they got as far as me.
I’m using a format 6.75 x 9.5 (vertical). …
Often enough the page size—for any number of reasons—is based on cost, as page sizes that use every bit of the large sheets commercial printers print on are the most economical.
[W]hat would proper margins be? I’m … using two books as guides. The first has margins of 3/4, 1/2, 1/2, 1/2 (inside, top, outside, bottom) and has 2 columns of text (with slightly less then 1/3 in between columns). The second has margins of 3/4, 1, 1-1/2, 2 and has one column of text. Of course the second book is classier, but for the sake of getting more text on the page (as it’s not a traditional “reading” book) I might want to do the two columns thing.
Well, first, there are all manner of proportioned pages that one can choose. If this is the first time the issue has reared its head, I recommend reading Chapter 8 of Robert Bringhurst’s The Elements of Typographc Style. There is simply something about the proportions he discusses that look more graceful or natural when you see a page set that way. As for the one-column book seeming more classy, This may actually be a matter of personal taste. I remember some years back, as a proofreader of science and mathematics journals, preferring to read two-column formats. They took me longer, but I found them somehow more pleasant to read. I suspect this was so because they employed more white space, something I have come to see as a prime ingredient of attractive pages.
Can you suggest a good typeface and size for two columns of text, and should the size change if some text is two columns and other parts are one column?
After the page size and shape, what typeface to use is, of course, the question. Although I could recommend a whole number of typefaces, I feel I need to push myself away from my instinctive leaning to Old Style faces (such as Bembo, Sabon, and Adobe Garamond) to more contemporary faces, at least some of the time. But, in fact, it is the material that should dictate, or at least suggest, what typefaces to use in any book. Sometimes a book about a period is a natural for a type from that period; or not—a contrast can be just as interesting. Then, too, something with large x-height and generous width would seem perfect for a children’s storybook. But these are distinctions best left to the individual’s eye and a type specimen book.
I assume you are using InDesign. How do you suggest I start with the text? Create stylesheets? Masters? I have all the text in a Word doc. I can copy and paste as I go along, but I figured you would have a tip or two on how to best manage the text part of the workflow.
Well, sometimes I use InDesign. I am just starting to have clients request InDesign a little more often. Right now, Quark still seems to be top dog in my corner of the market. But I hear that InDesign is conquering all. Then, too, there are open-source alternatives such as LaTeX and Scribus. Perhaps because I have used Quark for a much longer time, I am still a little more comfortable with it. I did not initially prefer how InDesign’s much-hyped type engine handled type. By CS2, however, I have started to come around and feel comfortable. I am a bit of a bear about word spacing—letter-spacing absolutely sickens me—so this was no small issue.
Whether I choose to work in Quark or InDesign on a particular book design, once I have decided my page proportions, I begin to set up master pages. Usually, but not always, I have chosen my types by this point. I really have no reason to wait on master pages after I settle on the page proportions. Then, just as naturally, I turn to the stylesheets I will need to set up. The only way I can think to do this in a thorough and organized way is to sit down with the manuscript—or at least a very representative portion of the manuscript—and go through it page-by-page and line-by-line, noting each element that will need a distinct stylesheet.
For InDesign’s masters, do you start with a few and then create new ones as you go along or do you create all the master pages you think you’ll need before you start?
When setting up master pages, I try to create each one that I need right at the start. Sometimes, as I proceed with the layout, it occurs to me that another master page is necessary. But that is not something I ever intend.
Much of this work is learned on a need-to-know basis; and nothing teaches like more and more book design projects.
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June 22nd, 2008 06:38pm
tianodesign
Anyway …
Last week, a kind reader commented that she “loved [my] maxim,”
Tho shalt not interfere with the reader’s experience of the book they are reading.
What a time to be reminded of what I professed. Ironic even, because I am beginning to rethink the whole notion of the design—and designer—as, preferably, nondescript furniture.
Thanks to an online friend, Liz Tufte—herself a book designer and production person—I was turned on to the work of David Carson. Now, at least in my mind, there’s some controversy about his work. A definite question exists whether his authors are truly served by Carson’s work or whether he works just for himself.
Here is the thing I have come to realize: We work for the client, no doubt; that includes the publisher or packager that hires us. But ultimately, don’t we work for our own satisfaction and delight. Maybe I am a slow study, but I have just reached the point where I recognize that getting paid just touches the surface of why I like making books so much.
Nothing compares to the feeling that makes you grin when you look at pages or a cover you’ve designed or, even, just put together from someone else’s design. You know when you nail it. But beyond that, as a designer, there is the feeling that comes from making something new: pages that can be read easily and yet that when you step back from the reading just burn your eyes with how fresh they look and the way you want to dart around to look at it all.
Do readers appreciate this? Honestly, I have no way of knowing. I think maybe we try to wow ourselves and each other. We strive to work in a way true to ourselves.
So the answer is “us.” We love us.
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June 14th, 2008 11:21am
tianodesign
Thanks to steady work, my website, and blogging about freelance design and book layout work, I am a microscopically famous book designer—I started out writing “marginally famous,” but that seemd to be going too far—I like to say. The work actually interferes with my blogging; I cannot even keep up with the blogs I try to read regularly. So my blogging is, by turns, sporadic and neglected.
Now there is “tweeting”: 140-character maximum proclamations on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/StephenTiano.
Tweeting is both easy and tough to do in a substantive way that, hopefully, reveals why I am worth investigating further as a contract book designer and page composition artist. On one hand, tweeting requires less an investment of time and work; and it allows for quickly expressing one- or two-line ideas off the top of my head. So it can serve as a brainstorming tool, too. On the other hand, concise, focused thinking must translate into concise, focused writing that means something interesting and, hopefully, useful to readers.
A few days after starting with Twitter, I coincidentally received a request from a client to make all the JPEGs they had sent TIFFs. This made sense and I had thought about it prior to their mentioning it. But the client is new, and I learned years ago that unsolicited suggestions sometimes meet with the sound of one hand clapping. I therefore did not raise the subject.
I am not a Photoshop maven, although I do use it for scanning and correcting art; occasionally, I will create something or doctor—somewhat more than mere “correcting”–a photograph. So when the client told me to change dozens of JPEGs to PDFs, I started scouting around for a utility to handle this task. Not much of a chore, it involves simply resaving the photo, but changing its file type to TIFF. The problem is how time-consuming a chore it is to do this for dozens and dozens of photos.
Well, someone on one of the online forums I frequent pointed me to the File menu in Photoshop CS2, to Scripts, and the Image Processor selection. To say I was elated would be an understatement. I was able to make the change a folder of photos at a time.
I shared by tweeting:
Hot damn! Photoshop CS2 has a batch feature for making JPEGs TIFFs.
And that hooked me on Twitter.
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June 1st, 2008 08:43pm
tianodesign
I woke up the other morning and I could feel the grin spread across my face, as my work from the night before came to mind. I’m on a couple of projects—one, the layout of a high school chemistry textbook and the other, the design and layout of a very short project on weight training for seniors as part of a life extension regimen.
The second book is to be self-published by the author. Unlike many self-publishers, this author has a clear idea of the result he wants, knows the value of my contribution to that result, and has been around long enough to understand that if you can’t afford to pay for something, you shouldn’t go shopping.
I very much like how this book looks, despite my doing a couple of out of character things with it. First, I’ve chosen to use Bodoni Book for my body text. The more radical departure, however—for me, at least—is to go with a ragged right text line. This is big unusual for me.
But the relaxed ragged right works. I say “relaxed” because a justified text line has always represented a certain orderliness to me; indeed, one of the things that drives me crazy in a book, and that screams what I label “amateur hour,” is justified lines with huge word spaces and even letterspacing. This book, with the playful title Die Young … as late as possible, is long on art and short on text. There are many photos serving to demonstrate the various exercises, and as many or more cartoons to illustrate the book’s attitude: smiles about working to stay active and healthy.
This is one of the better projects I’ve had the pleasure of being associated with.
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May 4th, 2008 05:09pm
tianodesign
I’d been working steadily, fiercely, to meet a deadline, the layout of a chemistry textbook—not my own design. And while it really is a relatively complex design, perhaps somewhat more than necessary, it’s also more than a bit good-looking. I think student-readers will have little problem being attracted to this one and—the best part—not know why.
This kind of book requires the designer to provide for many different display elements. Each must be distinguishable from the rest and help to maintain the reader’s interest. As with many textbooks, setting different kinds of short material within box rules is one prime way to accomplish this. But it can make for slow progress when making pages, as I always try to avoid boxes running more than a single page.
Reminds me of a time … When I first began to write at the age of four—I don’t mean put characters on paper, but, rather, composing my first short story. No lie! I would write a sentence or two, maybe a whole paragraph, and immediately go into rewrite mode, trying to get it perfect. That’s how the chemistry book goes. I barely get through a chapter when changes and corrections arrive for something earlier.
So I can relate to the process with this one.
But me, in trying to knock it out on time, I avoided social engagements, kept conversations at home short, and wolfed down meals. I neglected this blog, and the reading of other blogs that I follow. Generally, I’ve been maintaining “radio silence”. And, as I already said, the deadline slid past anyway. I’m still working hard on this book, though, as we keep trying to finish it up.
It bothered me some for a while. See, I pretty much always make my due dates. I believe in meeting every due date, the way most people believe in their way of life. Hell, reliability is part of the service I provide. So I felt lousy watching this one slip away. I mean, I was fast at work while it happened—not as if I sat on a barstool watching a ballgame and drinking boilermakers. But it bothered me nonetheless and continues to.
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April 15th, 2008 06:11am
tianodesign
What if we did only work designed to encourage the human race to be great? Could we make a difference? Could we start a domino effect resulting in a better world, where we stopped with the ages-old hatreds and greedy behavior and instead everyone worked to move forward together?
I am not so naive as to believe or expect that we can or should eradicate the human inclination to accumulate. But perhaps we can try, as individual designers—at least for a period—to take only work that promotes peace, understanding, an end to hunger and disease, and the avoidance of accumulating wealth to the severe detriment of others. Maybe such work can encourage individual humans to act peacefully, to understand others, and to refrain from buying that next thing they want if it is manufactured at slave wages.
I know that I have at least one bid out for a book redesign and layout project that I can withdraw.
Can we try this? What are you willing to do? What work would you turn down? What would work that encourages human greatness look like if you did it?
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April 7th, 2008 10:11pm
tianodesign
In no particular order …
1. Early on, it occurred to me that—at least starting out—fully half of a working freelance book designer’s time is spent finding the next job(s). Again, especially in the beginning, when you have less of a track record, clients will not flock to your door; your efforts will be spent in the main on convincing any publisher who listens that their next book and you fit together so perfectly it would be wrong not to contract with you for the work.
2. One way into designing books is laying them out. What’s particularly nice about production-only work is that it allows you to see the end result of what other designers have done with the material you work on up close. So close that you can actually make notes about things you can improve upon. It’s a very real way to continue your education if you keep your eyes open and refuse to let yourself perform the work mechanically. If lucky, like me, you may actually enjoy both ends of the work, design and production.
3. Not so much lately, but I used to joke that—as a page compositor and layout artist I was pretty much a mercenary. That is, I got in, made the pages, got out, and got paid. But to benefit most from production work and not simply settle for the check at the end, I find it essential to work with my eyes open, taking in the choices made by the book designer, even though you should never even think about straying from the design template you are given to work with.
4. And speaking of never even thinking about straying from the design template you are given to work with, DON’T! (Yes, I meant to shout.) Early on, I once innocently—eager to show what a valuable commodity I was to a particular client, a textbook publisher, so that they would want to work with me forever—changed a question mark to a period. Or maybe vice versa, in a Review Questions section. I was fired almost immediately. They gave me what was a generous and undeserved “kill fee” and a kind, but unforgiving talking to. I nearly cried, as it was a “breakthrough job” that paid more than I had ever received to that point.
5. While doing the layout of someone else’s design is all well and good, if I design the book and create the template, I must also do the layout. That is the only way I can come even close to knowing that the book I envisioned is the one that will be published.
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April 5th, 2008 05:45pm
tianodesign
Never underestimate the value of another professional’s input. And never make the mistake of thinking a “final” design cannot be improved upon.
In this case it was the client’s printer who suggested that a 5/8″ spine margin would serve better than the 1/2″ I was then thinking of. (I had actually played with a 3/8″ inside margin with my first sample, thinking about pushing the limit with such a short book, 128 pages.) But the 5/8″ produced repercussions. Using the classic 2:3:4:6 ratio of Tschichold no longer produced what I wanted in a text page. So I kicked around some different ideas, and I consulted Chapter 8, “Sharing the Page,” of Robert Bringhurst’s Elements of Typographic Style.
I found that the “tall pentagon” configuration that Mr. Bringhurst wrote about, with only microscopic adjustment, suited the book I am designing. The vertical placement of the running head and folio was pleasingly accommodated and the ragged right remained just casual enough to complement the many cartoons I would be placing. And the types I had selected—ITC Fenice, variously described as neoclassical and industrial modern, and the geometric sans ITC Kabel—continued to work well in the layout.
So I sent that sample off to my client, the author-publisher.
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April 1st, 2008 11:14pm
tianodesign
Last week, mired in the throes of my latest work drought, the first in about a year-and-a-half, I walked into the house to my wife answering the telephone. After a few words, she handed the call off to me.
An older gentleman who grew up in Brooklyn, it turns out, not so far from where I did the same, was on the line. Now living in Boston, he has written a book about making one’s life last and keeping it good to the last drop. He wants someone to create the design and make pages for his off-shore printer. He found my name online via Google, liked what he saw on my site and contacted me.
Negotiations went easily enough, in part because it is to be a short book; he estimates 128 pages. This author-publisher was prepared; organized, too. He emailed a textfile and some artwork with which to work up sample pages. I began to work on it the next night.
The textfile he sent was for the Introduction. I liked that, as I find that an Introduction and a Table of Contents, if one exists—without final page numbers, of course—provide the best way to get the “flavor” of a book when contemplating the start of a design. In this case, I also received a number of artfiles—single-panel cartoons, as a matter of fact—that typified the art to appear throughout this book. And one chapter will have some two dozen photos, as well.
The book would be 6 x 9, the gentleman told me. He figured 128 pages, based on a thirty-line page, each line averaging about ten words. The types and everything else would be my doing.
Because of the informality of the cartoon style, I new I wanted to try something I normally never think of for a book: ragged right text. And I also got it into my head to work another element differently: placing the running head and folio vertically, and centered, on the outside edge of the text page. My client had to warm to the ragged right idea, but trusted my instincts there; he was enthusiastic right off about the vertical placement of the running head and folio. Forth the text page, after a misstep or two, I want to use Tschichold’s classic 2:3:4:6 ratio. With a half-inch inner margin, the text width winds up running 27 picas.
The last thing I did was choose my types. All I need now is one last show to him and final approval of the sample, the photos for that one chapter, and to begin in earnest. This will be my “fun” project before jumping into a chemistry textbook layout that finally starts by Monday.
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