Comments on: Book Design: Beauty in the Details

By: Joel Friedlander

Joel Friedlander — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 21:10:33 +0000

@Erin, thank you for your thoughtful comment. Book design is a strange sort of design work because most of it is so unseen. Nice when someone recognizes that!

By: Erin

Erin — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 21:07:23 +0000

What a beautifully written post. I think you nailed it here: “Interior book design must be the most self-effacing kind of design there is. When it works, it’s almost invisible.”
So true!

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By: Trevor Brown

Trevor Brown — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 08:57:41 +0000

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

By: Joel Friedlander

Joel Friedlander — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 22:17:43 +0000

@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.

By: Emily Pullen

Emily Pullen — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 19:41:33 +0000

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?

By: Linda Jay Geldens

Linda Jay Geldens — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 18:00:53 +0000

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.

By: Mary Ulrich

Mary Ulrich — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 14:06:41 +0000

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?