by 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 created by J.K. Rowling, waiting every day for the chance to dive back into that world again. This is a magical moment for any parent, even more so for someone who inhabits the world of books.
But suppose he had been introduced to Rowling’s work through a computer screen, or in one of those “designed in Microsoft Word” ebooks? Would he have sunk so easily into the vast world he came to know and love?
Readability Matters
Interior book design must be the most self-effacing kind of design there is. When it works, it’s almost invisible.
A good book design enhances the flow of the author’s ideas to the reader, while doing nothing to impede that flow. Then reading becomes an effortless movement in which the words themselves disappear and the mind is fully engaged with the subject matter at hand.
The Rowling books work because they promote readability with many of the elements I’ll explain below, and because they are ideally suited to their intended audience. From the open feel of the page typography to the charming Mary GrandPré illustrations at the head of each chapter, they keep the young reader moving through the story to find out what happens next.
It all adds up to books that are terrifically readable. And readability is the key to getting the author’s message across.
The 3 Essential Design Elements
The form of the book hasn’t changed much in the last 500 years. Tall columns of evenly spaced type, margins squared up all the way around, anything that’s not text subservient to the text itself. Ample margins to allow for eyes to rest and hands to hold the page.
But even within that context, decisions have to be made that have a critical effect on the readability of the finished book. Of course the most basic decisions have to do with the main text block on each page.
Here are three areas that determine that text block, and therefore how well the book communicates the author’s ideas:
1. Typeface selection. Selection of a base typeface has the biggest effect on readability. Book designers tend to stick to the same group of typefaces. We each have our favorites, but almost all of these typefaces have one thing in common: they are classic book design typefaces.
Using a classic typeface like Bembo, Bodoni, Caslon, Garamond, Janson, Granjon, Sabin, will immediately help your book be readable. These typefaces get used over and over for a reason. They are workmanlike roman faces that produce a harmonious and rhythmic line with just enough variation to keep the eye interested.
Typefaces designed for the computer screen rarely translate well to the page. On screen typefaces like Verdana perform well; in a book they tire the eyes and fatigue the reader.
2. Line length. Another important choice is how long your line is in relation to the size of the type you’re using. This is critical because lines that are too short break the text so often that the natural phrasing of sentences is disrupted, and readability suffers. Well laid-out text will have about 10 to 15 words per line, depending on the type of book.
Very long lines, on the other hand, cause “doubling” where you lose track of which line you were on when you have to travel a long way from the right margin back to the left to start the next line. And in extreme cases, text on long lines can become unreadable. Think of reading your favorite book laid out as a web page on a modern, flat-screen monitor. It’s easy to have as many as 35 to 40 words on a line on these monitors.
It’s interesting that the digital gadgets we have for reading books, like the Kindle and the Sony Reader, are the first vertical screens I’ve seen since the rotating monitors of years ago. Finally, the “landscape” screens we’ve been forced to read on are being flipped on their sides, an acknowledgment of just how deep-seated reading is as a habit, and just how conventional our expectations are of what a “page” is supposed to look like.
3. Leading. As in many trades with a long history, the terms we use today tell us something about the history of the craft. During the 400 years when type for books was set by hand, one letter at a time, the way to space the lines and to provide more structural stability to the thousands of little pieces of metal, was to interleave the lines with thin pieces of lead.
But the leading—the space between the lines—is critical in readability. Too little space and the lines blend in with each other, confusing the eye. Too much space and they lose their connection with each other and interrupt the continuity of reading. Getting this element of page design right gives readability a boost, as the lines, and thoughts, flow easily down the page.
More Design Details
The following elements of page design also affect readability:
• Running heads and folios
• Margins and how the type column lays on the page
• Typography of subheads and pull quotes
• Sidebars and extra-textural elements
All influence how enjoyable the book is to read. But getting these three elements right at the beginning forms the base for excellent book designs. Typeface and line length produce the basic text block around which the rest of the page is built. When this is done well, both authors and readers benefit.
Resources on Book Design and Typography
Here are a few classic books on book design and typography. All are available from Amazon.com (affiliate links)
The Form of the Book: Essays on the Morality of Good Design (Classic Typography Series)
The Elements of Typographic Style
Jan Tschichold: A Life in Typography
The Complete Manual of Typography
Another free resource is the excellent enewsletter from myfonts.com with new type designs, interviews with type designers and examples of creative uses of typography.
Joel Friedlander is the proprietor of Marin Bookworks, a publishing services company in San Rafael, California that has launched many self-publishers. Joel is an award-winning book designer, a self-published author, and blogs about publishing and book design at TheBookDesigner.com.
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Hi :)
Thank you for the informative post.
I have to agree. The only criticism I had of Hush, Hush by Becca Fitzpatrick was for the publisher, who put Hush, Hush on the bottom of every right page. Reading it kept jarring me out of the story. It was annoying & useless. It was like the ad at the bottom of the TV show saying “You are watching…” in case you didn’t know what show you are watching. I know what book I am reading, and TV show I am watching. I hope they excise this redundant annoying text in subsequent printings.
Thanks again,
RKCharron
thank you joel. you not only make great typography comments but you put it into present day context. one of the most interesting conversations i had at a conference (the first TOC, O’Reilly publishing conference) was with a man from Microsoft who was working on a project with the New York Times about how to make the web more readable and to make the online (on screen?) experience more satisfying.
unsung heroes, book designers — when they do their jobs well, few notice.
ph
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!
Interesting article – I never really thought about all the things go into making a book so readable, and this is a great job of showing behind the curtain about what can be done to enhance the reader’s enjoyment.
@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 fifty or a hundred pages.
Great article, Joel. It’s obvious you know your stuff. You’ve been and continue to be a great teacher on this subject. Thanks.
Joel, Thanks for the great post! Any tips regarding using visuals—photos, illustrations, etc.—in a book’s interior?
@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 right. I’ve seen some less traditional fonts that worked well — so there’s nothing wrong with trying something a little different as long as the readability is still there.
@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 the temptation to put screens (or bendays for you old folk) into your books, unless they are workbooks or computer manuals, because they seriously disrupt the overall “color” of the typography, which ought to be preeminent.
If photographs or art reproductions are important to the book, do yourself a favor and consult or hire a professional. Most people do not realize that what they are looking at on their screen bears little relation to what will happen on a printing press. Photographs and artwork have to be prepared for the specific printer and paper that will be used in reproduction, and without this crucial step you will probably be disappointed with the result.
Actually, this is such a big topic it deserves its own article. Maybe next time.
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.
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. Thought provoking as usual! Keep up the good word.
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.
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 to the reader, thru us designers.
This is such a hard thing to do really well when you add into the mix a desire for interesting-looking, even attractive, pages. Cover design is where the designer can let go a little bit, have some fun, and leave one’s thumbprint. As long as one observes the fundamental point that the cover is first charged with the task of getting the prospective reader to pick up the book and that it also makes a kind of promise as to what the reader will find inside–both in terms of the subject and the writing, as well as the styling of the pages.
Strangely, perhaps, the relationship between book cover and interior mimics, for me, the relationship between drama and comedy. Drama, like book covers, get the attention. But interiors and comedy, taken less seriously and for granted, are the more difficult trick to pull off.
I also find it alarming that self-publishing authors often don’t understand the importance of professional book design. Now, I’ve worked with a few really savvy self-publishers who get that and who understand that paying a professional book designer is an investment in their baby. But I correspond all the time with authors who want to nickel-and-dime on design and then still expect to buck the trend of selling, on average, something less than 100 copies of a self-published book.
I always find it interesting to read or hear what other book designers regard as the essential design elements for a book. Although when I first began to read and re-read Bringhurst’s The Elements of Typographic Style and Hochuli and Kinross’s Designing books, I was somewhat skeptical about the “formulae” in each for shaping out the text area. But my continual referring to those two books (as well as Hendel’s On Book Design for the process of designing books), has led me to an appreciation of some of the classically-based “recipes” for coming up with the proportions of the text area on a printed page. And this–including the size of the page–is the first essential I decide on when beginning to design a book’s interior. After that it is typeface, type size, and leading, the line length handled in my first essential element.
I wonder how receptive self-publishers at-large are to learning about this?
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 quite some time tweaking it from there.
Looking forward to reading more. (And I might wander in anonymously from across the Richmond Bridge one day)
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 sells them reasonably, even used?
@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!
@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 way to port PDFs over to ereaders. That would be interesting.
(Make a right at San Quentin)
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?
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.
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 much. The little dotted lines also helped — told me when to take my eyes over to the side. What is your professional opinion? Have you ever worked on a project like that?
@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 is a book designed page by page, and although I’m sure it was a challenge as you say, it must also have been delightful to do something so different from the ordinary book. Probably one of the closest in my experience was a whole series of books I designed years ago for Lyons Press that were compilations of the columns in the NYTimes Science Section (The Science Times Book of Fish etc.) but they were not as idiosyncratic as this book. Thanks for bringing it to my attention!
Also loved your “corpus/libris” shots, good fun!
@Linda Jay, thanks for your kind comment.
@Mary, on screen typography is radically different than print typography, and just one of the reasons most people don’t “justify” their copy is because the same content has to adjust to many operating systems, browsers, and programs that are used to display type on screen. On paper, once you get it right it’s finished and the printed version will never change.
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