Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with bookdesign

Finding older books

jfwlucy — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 17:02:32 -0800

Penguin Classics -- I HATE the new cover design. Do you know any good places where I might be able to find older versions (with the parchment colored background and the black rectangle on the front)? I know about abebooks and half.com and alibris -- my problem is I'm not always able to ascertain what the real book's cover looks like or if the image is just a placeholder. Any ideas welcome. Thanks.

Seeking great examples of book design in LaTeX

tomwheeler — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 20:24:56 -0800

I am teaching myself typesetting with LaTeX. I learn best by example and so I'm looking for some great examples to follow — especially if they're based on the Memoir class. Ideally, I'd love to find some (public domain) classic literature that stands out as a great study in syntax, style and design. What do you recommend?

How to design a book

crapmatic — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 18:15:45 -0800

Book design help! I would like to find a good website or blog that can help me learn more about designing the interior of a nonfiction book. I am working on my fifth or sixth self-published quasi-textbook nonfiction book, all of which have been doing well. I do absolutely everything on my own.

With this new project I am starting to struggle with the finer points of how to stylize the chapter heading, the section headings, and the subheadings. Bold or small caps? Indent or don't indent? How much of a gap between the paragraphs? Italicize a section heading? Whether to use sans serif fonts for headings in serif body text? Whether to use a numbering system (e.g. "2.5.3. Basket weaving" rather than "Basket weaving") for section headings? I want to excel this time around.

For the time being I'm going to try to look at the layouts of some other books and possibly order Elements of Typography or Elements of Graphic Design, though looking at Amazon reviews I'm not completely convinced these will help me since font choice issues and typeface history always seems to steal the show and I'm more interested in layout.

I think what I could use is:

* Personal likes and dislikes about book layout and use of type, comments about style you've seen in such books, things that you've absolutely hated, common "beginner" mistakes with page layout, and so forth.

* Webpages or blogs devoted to page architecture and book design (and which covers nonfiction and textbooks, not just artsy books) so I can keep my skills sharp.

Thanks!

Changing technologies in book design?

Caduceus — Sat, 31 May 2008 10:46:34 -0800

I'm looking for information about how new technologies have affected book design and typography. I'm particularly interested in the affects of computers and design software, but information about how things like Print on Demand and ebooks have changed the status quo of book design would also be helpful. I'd be happy to be pointed to books, web essays, blogs, whatever information I can track down and dig through.

Reinventing My Cortex

foxy_hedgehog — Wed, 02 May 2007 13:12:08 -0800

DesignFilter. Help me poke and prod my nondesigner's mind to consider new ways to present that hackneyed standby of the elementary school social studies textbook, the timeline. Too much information inside. Through through a combination of happenstance and sheer luck, I've been asked to be a part of a book project headed up by a Very Big Deal Novelist. It will feature contributions from a panoply of Very Big Deal dTitans of Culture and will be forged and burnished into something visually extraordinary by a Very Big Deal Designer. As a historian by training, my little corner of the project will be to compose a set of timelines related to various elements of the book. The timelines will run throughout its pages, making a journey through the text alongside the reader.

The project hangs upon a very tight link between form and content. So while the project is in the early stages, and the VBDDesigner is waiting for more material to work with before coming up with formal comps, I suggested that given this close relationship between text and visual presentation it might make sense to collaborate from the get-go, since design considerations will inform how I select and summarize events for the timelines.

We're conference calling sometime later this week. I am nervous. To put it mildly. Actually, to massively understate the case.

I don't have any illusions about my talents and limitations in this department, particularly given that I'm working with someone who is breathtakingly talented and accomplished. In other words, I know that the VBDD will have a) the ultimate say and b) far better ideas than I will. And I also know very little about how this whole process works, as far as steps and sequence and parameters etc. go. But I want to get a booster shot to think about different ways to present the information in the timelines and, more broadly, to have a sense of what world the VBDD inhabits and what sorts of places his mind can go.

While my bailiwick here is relatively small, it will assert a presence throughout the book and, in its own way, provide visual and intellectual structure for it. Another part of the background check that's looming rather large right now is that I am A Far Cry From Anything Resembling a Big Deal, and I also happen to be at a professional impasse which has me rooting around for what I might look like in Version 2.0. And so despite its modest scope, I'd very much like to try to take this opportunity to kick ass and present my ideas and myself as something and someone worth taking seriously (vis a vis this project and perhaps in the Department of Future Gainful Employment).

I'm all aflutter at the change to challenge myself to work with a new kind of conceptual framework, and to radically rethink how I'd normally go about piecing information together using a different set of considerations for how to tell a story and how to think about representing time. But as anyone who has languished in grad school knows, disciplinary training often has the unfortunate effect of refining one's analytical skills by placing constraints upon them. It strengthens certain muscles while atrophying others, and this can impair one's ability to think broadly and creatively- or, as a management self-help book for sale in an airport bookstore might put it, "outside of the box."

So while I like being an initiate into the cult of Clio, but I need some help making myself think in an alternate language. Historians know how to do certain things very well- such as find, filter, and make sense out of large bodies of complex information. I think this is part of what designers do, but by tackling different kinds of problems through different means. So I'd like to get started by doing some thinking about how considerations of design might inform and shape my collection and presentation of the information I'm going to track down.

I have already lit candles in front of my hastily assembled Edward Tufte shrine, but suspect that the design junkies in this crowd have some favorite bookmarks on their browser that might help me out. I'm thinking of the timeline equivalents of this but with data points as events rather than dead French soldiers or the gingerbread supply on the Salyut 6. I'm thinking of and hoping for images along the lines of Cabinet's history of timelines . Book titles- for models history-wise and design-wise- very much welcome, since I'm going to be spending a considerable amount of time in a nicely appointed university library with a decent design collection.

As always, my deepest thanks in advance for the collective wisdom.

Some questions about fonts specified in a colophon

Manhasset — Mon, 19 Feb 2007 20:32:34 -0800

I have a book that, in the colophon, says, "Text: 9.5 / 12.5 Rotis Serif". I know Rotis Serif is the font, but what do the two numbers mean? I tried setting that font to 9.5 size and 12.5 leading but it doesn't look anything like the layout in the book. Same for reversing those numbers. (more) The book also says "Display: Rotis Serif" which I assume refers to the titles of the stories in the book. But there's no numbers given for these. I tried 12.5 as the size of the titles and 9.5 as the body but, again, it doesn't look like the example in the book.

Lastly, the book specifies the font as "Rotis Serif" but all the Rotis Serif fonts I have have numerals after them (Rotis Serif 56; Rotis Serif 65; etc.). I assume these numbers are the weight or boldness of the font--how can I find out what was used in the book--is it possible there's a Rotis Serif that doesn't have a number after it? (I've searched and not found any.) Thanks!