This past week I’ve been answering some InDesign questions for our editors. I’m talking about a program used to design and layout ads and books and all sorts of print materials. See, before starting at Beaufort, I worked as a print production artist for advertisers; InDesign was my bread and butter.
It reminds me just how important book design is. Everyone talks about the great cover—the kind that makes a person want to pick up a book. But good interiors makes them not want to put it down. This post is about that: the under-appreciated art of interior design. It’s harder than it looks; because there are so few elements it becomes increasingly difficult to successfully design a quality book interior!
Let’s roll up our sleeves! Is your work a piece of fiction? You’ll want a pretty clean layout and a larger font that’s easy on the eyes. The spacing between lines is going to be wide: simple readability is your goal here. But be careful; too large and too spaced out runs the risk of appearing as a short essay being padded out in pages by a college freshman. Non-fiction? Your font is going to be smaller, tighter, and you can get away with more page elements (footnotes, bullet points). The inverse here is true: too tight and your text appears too dense to be penetrated. And there is such a thing as over-designing, the symptom of an artist’s self-indulgence. Keep those cute elements to a minimum, the design is there to assist the reader!
I need to cut myself off. Oh, I could go on, but it’s difficult to speak in absolutes or squeeze years of lessons learned into a paragraph. It is still an art, and art does deal with subjective decisions.
But it all boils down to this: The best design is invisible. You don’t notice that something’s been “designed” because it rests ergonomically upon your eyes. So next time you read a book and you don’t find yourself marveling at how great the design is, (and conversely, how awful the design is) then what you’ve got in your hands is some great design. Shake that designer’s hand.
And hey, comment below with some of your favorite book designs! Thanks!
-Michael
Tags: Design, fonts