The end's not near, it's here.

Yes, the end is here. Thanks to Band of Horses for the title. And I think I've saved the best to last, well what I think is super pretty. 

This is for You by Rob Ryan was published in 2007, and when it first came out I pleaded with my sister, working at vicbooks at the time, to buy it for me. Being the loving sister, she did. And it is beautiful. Here's a picture of the dust jacket and book itself. The book explores themes of love and loneliness, and the prominent colours on the covers help to emphasis this. The thing that first caught my eye with this book with the bright red pinned against a very white background. As well as this, the cut-out nature of the book intrigued me. As did the endorsement by Sophie Dahl; the same cut-out lettering has been used for the endorsement, and she's pretty awesome - writing and modelling and stuff. The continuation of the red to the back cover is also a nice way to continue a theme. 
Before you ask, no I did not take this picture upside-down. When you take the dust jacket off, this is how the book looks - upside-down. I don't know if mine's an awkward dud or if this is how it's supposed to be - I've never seen another copy. But anyway, the red theme has continued through from the dust jacket, which makes me happy - red is the colour of love, people, and that's what this book is all about. If I saw this book on the shelf, without it's jacket, I'd still pick it up. The simplicity of the cover alone is enough to intrigue me, plus the bell on the front is pretty cute.

To the inside! Well almost the inside, to the end papers and dust jacket flaps! I'm a very sentimental person, and a bit of a hopeless romantic, so the first thing I saw when opening the book was the left-hand flap here. I love it. The typeface is the same as the cover - a handmade sans-serif that's actually pretty easy to read when you take the time. This isn't a book to rush through, the pages can be confusing, as you'll see soon. The endpapers are beautiful too, it's the first time I've seen ones that incorporate the actual title of the book into the pattern. 

As an illustrated book, there are no page numbers, which is nice. Each page does stick to a frame, as you'll see in later pictures. Ryan sticks to the margins, probably so no picture is wrecked if the cutting goes wrong. The green of this page stands out wonderfully, like the red, against the white stock. The green also tied in nicely to the leaves in this spread, as the man walks and thinks. The text is in the same all caps as the cover and flaps, enforcing his walking and thinking and making it super easy to read. So simple, and so lovely. 

This is probably the hardest spread in the book to read. The pages mirror each other, as a son and mother talk. The colours compliment each other, while reflecting the gender of each character. The typeface is still the cutout style and a sans-serif, however it's in lowercase and much harder to read. This comes back to this being a book you read because you want to know what it has to say. It may make you work hard, but it's worth it.

Here's another full page spread. You can even see the stitches for the binding - still good quality. This has the easy-to-read all caps sans-serif, and really is just a beautiful page. You can see in this spread, and the previous one, the way Ryan does keep inside the invisible margins. By being consistent, it helps the reader to become familiar (to a basic level) with how each page will be laid out. I also like they way 'that' is stretched out over the two pages, there's no effort on his cutting to cram it or unbalance the heart.

I just wanted to throw this spread in because it shows the theme of loneliness that's explored with love through the book. The first time I looked at it, I read 'I am not alone' but missed the 'And I wrote and wrote'. Ryan's ability to create a stunning piece of visual art that acts as great narrative too. This is one of the pages that you can actually see that the images are Ryan's cutout pieces of paper - bottom right-hand corner. Not sure if it's intentional, but it adds to this spread, since he tells the reader nothing's gonna happen until you start, and he started cutting and clearly never stopped. He has a store even!

Last spread I promise! It's the last pages of the book, so it kinda has to be anyway... I love that he's kept the fun cut-out for the dedication, while switching to a more traditional sans-serif for the imprint. It makes it super easier to read, and this is important information for some people. As with most illustrated books, the imprint appears at the back of the book. It doesn't disrupt the flow of the book, and since most people reading this book won't actually need to know this information, it makes the most sense.
I see new things in This is for You every time I look at it, which is exactly what a good book should offer - continuous learning.


Man, this post has the best design ever! So proud of myself, it's only taken a few posts to get the hang of blogspot... But anyway, that's it from me about book design, my scrapbook is due in today. Unless something looks super awesome, then maybe I'll share it with you.


Until next time,
K.

Last pages geek-out.

As I mentioned in the last post, I quite enjoy the last pages in non-fiction books - that is the bibliography, index, glossary, etc. I am awesome. When I finished my degree, I got rid of most of my textbooks, but luckily my boyfriend's still got a couple. (already featured on the blog.)

Glossary.

So here we have examples of the back pages from Communication and New Media. Starting here with the glossary. The heading GLOSSARY and the heading of each term uses a simple sans-serif typeface, that looks like it's been bolded. The text book is in a serif, which is the easiest for a reader to follow. The margins on the page are large, which draws the readers attention to the information in the text block. Very basic, easy to follow.

Bibliography.

As these are the same book, the page layouts are all the same. Using APA style, the bibliography is easy to follow for those people that actually need to look at it. The same serif and sans-serif are used for the body text and headings. 

Index.

To the index! Again, same typefaces as above. Each letter isn't marked, but there is a full line space between the end of one and start of the next, making it super easy for the reader to follow. Where there are more headings under a larger heading, for example 'advertising', a five-character indent is used to show the difference between the two. This is also used when the main entry is longer than one column width. The use of column helps guide the reader's eyes down the page, and creates a page that doesn't look cramped. The information given is important, and it needs to be legible.


And to psychology!

Here's the glossary from Psychology 7/e. The margins are nice and large, creating a nice spacious page. The title is a good distance from the top of the page, helping the reader to know where to start. The word in the glossary is in bold, with the definition starting a small indent in to the right. Again, this is helping the reader to easily find words, and read the definitions. The page number in the bottom right has corner is B1, which helps to distinguish between the main body text, and the bibliography sections. The following two pictures are a part of this B page section as well.

Being a fancy textbook, and rather large too, this book has a name index. The title starts at the same place as the glossary, keeping things consistent. The names are listed alphabetically by last name, followed by the every page number that that name appears on. There's a small line at the top, in the same size typeface as the rest of the page, which explains the finer points.

Here's the subject index of the book. It's very similar to the index in the media book above. If a main heading has subheadings underneath, they are indented by around five characters to help the reader distinguish the difference. Like the name index, the page has the small text at the top to help the reader understand what each number and their certain formatting means. 


Almost done!
K.

The Babysitters Club, part two.

Here in New Zealand we have an obsession, and that's with cookbooks. I don't know why, but we do.  While babysitting I took note of a couple, including one by my favourite, Jamie Oliver. You may think Nigella is my favourite, given my post about her, but I love Jamie, he's just wonderful.

Michael Joseph, 2000

Following the success of his first book, The Return of the Naked Chef was published to accompany the BBC series The Naked Chef. Look at that grin on the front! That's what sells these books, Oliver's insane passion for his work and that he's the son every mother wants. The spaced, uncrowded cover design makes it a pleasure to look at. Oliver's yellow top and grin catch the eye easily, and the giant JAMIE OLIVER will make you look at this because, let's face it, he's great.

Title page, dedication

Imprint, contents, introduction

I think my favourite thing about this book is that no page is wasted. No doubt this book would have been expensive to produce, but since the sales would've been fantastic, no cost is too high for Jamie. A nice, simple, and spaced sans-serif is used consistently throughout the book. As a beautifully illustrated book, it makes sense to use the spread to show the picture of Jamie cooking in all his glory for the title page - it brings it home that it's all about him and his cooking just by turning to the first few pages. It's well acknowledged by Jamie that he has Jules, his wife, in his life - he never hides the fact, which I'm sure wasn't the BBC's idea. The dedication to her is simple and lovely, I let out a little 'aww' when I first saw it. The red of the typeface is repeated throughout the book, and as the first instance, I like to think it shows his love nicely. The imprint is simple and traditional - using a serif, and not trying to be something it's not. The contents uses the same colour from the dedication, as does the introduction coupled with a lovely picture of the man himself again. The introduction is very 'Jamie', and as the text goes right to the ends of the page I can imagine there were some issues with the cutting of the book at the printer. I love the simpleness of the contents page - very basic, spacious, and super easy to read. The designer didn't feel the need to fill the whole page with useless information, which is much appreciated since I find cooking books can be daunting.

Section markers

Here are two examples of section markers, which are listed on the contents page. Each of the section markers are a double-page spread in black and white. The marker on the left, fish and shellfish, shows Joe, Jamie's regular person at the market. The homeliness of this picture brings the book back to Jamie and lets the reader in to his life. The typeface is the same sans-serif, with Joe's name in the same red as before, and the section title changes colour from black to white depending on the most appropriate one. This is a great choice, changing it if need be, as I've already said in a previous post, it can be a disaster for the reader to stick to one colour. 

Instead of looking at the obvious recipe for the last picture, I though I'd look at the actual last pages of the book, or at least the index right now. The margins around the text block are traditional in sizes, giving the reader plenty of room to hold the book open when need be. The bottom right-hand side has a nice running header and page number, and due to the margin it's easy to locate this. The list of recipes are easily formatted with the main ingredients in the same red, and recipe titles in black. The page numbers in roman are the recipes themselves, while the bold ones indicate illustrations; a v on the left-hand side offer vegetarian recipes. I really like the last pages of books - I love non-fiction as a genre, and would like to learn more about bibliographies and indexes. Yes, I am that cool.
Almost done for the scrapbook, look forward to it!
K.

Amazon, you ol' dog you.

I've said it once, I'll say it again - I don't particularly care for ebooks. Due to my lack of one, and lack of being organised in the slightest, all of the following pictures have been borrowed from the internet and the caption will send you to the original link. 

I'm going to look at the Kindle, I've got pictures from the touchscreen, keypad, and the other one that's not either of those two. I'm not looking at the Fire, as I just want to focus on the ink display. Kindle, as we know, was created by Amazon, who is taking over the world. I don't want to get in to it, mainly because I'm super tired but also because that's not what I'm here to talk about. Instead, design. Let's start with a cover. Naturally.

Left - http://bit.ly/O3euGx; right - http://bit.ly/R8Y56P

Here we have One Summer, published in 2011 by Grand Central Publishing. However, on the left, the 6" E Ink display Kindle, retailing for $109.00 on amazon.com right now. On the right, a book, or at least the cover of a real book, most likely hardback. The colours in the cover are fantastic, the subtle tones of summer make you want to pick up this book and find out what this one summer was all about. The author's name is first, due to the fact he's established and written enough novels to have his name known. The typeface is a classic serif, making him look even more important. The typeface for the title feels nice and flowy, giving the impression this book's going to be full of fun and drama. But to the Kindle. My main issue with the Kindle is there's no ink technology to make the screen colour yet. Maybe you look in to every ebook you purchase, but with this one, I wouldn't buy it based on the cover on a Kindle. Does that makes sense? Anyway, I've been told Kindle's don't automatically go to the cover on an ebook, you have to choose to. I buy books because I love the physical object with a pretty cover you can hold - ebooks just don't appeal. 
To the body text!

The Paris Wife prologue. http://bit.ly/O3euGx

Here's a sample page on the same Kindle as above. The original printed page looks the same as this - same typeface, same capital T, and roughly the same space between PROLOGUE and the beginning of the body copy. The typeface is a nice serif, easy to read and attractive looking. The margins around the text is also great, a nice amount of space so the page doesn't look or feel cramped while reading alone. I assume this is probably the preset size typeface, since it's easy to change the size on a Kindle, as you can see. 

http://amzn.to/MT9doe

Apologies, this isn't from the same book.
You can even sneakily choose a sans-serif typeface - blasphemy! This is one cool feature I'll give the Kindle. I know when I get tired or my eyes are just feeling lazy for no reason, I'd love to be able to make the typeface of my book bigger. The other great thing about this feature is that it opens it up to a whole other market of readers, older people. I mean no offence when saying this, but it's true! I've heard people buying ereaders for parents and grandparents so they don't lose reading. I'm aware that libraries often stock large print books, I'm just not sure how much of a market there still is for this. 
One more picture, and it's pretty awesome. 

http://bit.ly/dNFLaW

At least I think it's awesome. I'm not a huge fan of manga or graphic novels, but I've dabbled. You can purchase graphic novels and manga for Kindle, but this one I've found was using a programme called Mangle. I think it's come out great considering it's not made for the reader. The images have come out really well, although I'm sure it would look better in colour. They're really clear and easy to read, which is probably due to the converter too. The only issue is the pages don't totally cover the whole screen, so they overlap a bit like on the right hand side. Because you can adjust the typeface size and manga is in panels, it wouldn't be too difficult to create a setting that's perfect for this genre. This is the Kindle keyboard with 3G and wifi, which is currently $189.00 on Amazon. They're managing to do pretty well for themselves, are Amazon.


A few more to come,
K.

Hail to the headings.

When a book has headings, they need a hierarchy. Without one, wonderful students like myself may get awfully confused about what's important and what's not. I've got examples of heading hierarchies from three books, a mass-market alternative healthcare cookbook (if that makes sense...), a media studies textbook from first year, and a first year psychology textbook donated to the cause by my lovely boyfriend. I'll look at the spine, typography including margins and typeface, and headings in each book. I'll do the covers in a later post, most probably.

Three good lookin' spines.

Here are the three books I'll be checking out. Each spine of the book fits it's purpose in terms of audience well. A Year with James Wong is for the mass-market, and a bright and eye-catching spine is perfect for an everyday person. 

Communication and New Media was a textbook a few years back at Victoria, and the simplistic yet attractive spine serves it's purpose: to look nice enough on your shelf without being super fancy since it's a book only students and specialists would buy. The same goes for Psychology, this is one edition out of date for PSYC101/2 at Victoria. The cover image is repeated at the top, and the three colour band wraps around.

Chapter heading (CH). Click for larger image.

Section heading (SH) and A heading

A, B and C headings

B and C headings

Here's an example of a chapter heading (CH), section heading (SH), and A, B, and C headings from A Year with James Wong. 

The use of green and orange are a recurring theme repeated from the cover and spine. Each CH, SH, A and C use a sans-serif typeface while B headings are the only ones to use a very slight serif, odd. Although B headings are more important than C. CH numbers are green, titles are grey, SH are also green, as are B, while A and C are orange. 

Examples from these pictures of these headings: 

CH - 2 THE BASICS: GROWING AND MAKING
SH - GROWING

A - GROWING YOUR OWN PHARMACY

A - GROWING: IDENTIFY YOUR GARDEN TYPE

B - Your garden's microclimate

C - Type 1 – City-centre gardens and the far south-west

B - Soil science

C - A It's sandy soil

C - B It's clay soil

C - C It's loamy soil

B - To dig or not to dig?

Does that makes sense? I think it does. Basically that's what you do when editing a manuscript, figure out which headings are more important than the next and label then in, more or less, the way I just did.

Creating a hierarchy of headings in a book is an easy and logical way of guiding readers through the book. They are especially helpful to a book with a contents page and index. No one wants to be flicking through pages trying to find one heading that doesn't stand out because the hierarchy makes no sense. Each of these three books have a contents, index, and glossary, which we'll be looking at another day.

Here're a few pictures from the other two books and an explanation of the hierarchy of them.

Communication and New Media

CH - 7 TELEGRAPHY, THE TALKING WIRELESS, AND TELEVISION

A - OBJECTIVES

A - KEYWORDS

B - Telegraphy

C - Inequality of access

C - 'One culture fits all'

B - Implications and strategies for Australian election campaigns

Every heading uses an sans-serif typeface while the body text is in a serif. This is a very common feature of books, keeping the headings and text in the same font family, but changing basic features to make it different enough to distinguish. 

CH - BIOLOGICAL BASES OF BEHAVIOR
SH - THE ORGANISM AS A MACHINE
A - MIND AS MECHANISM
A - DESCARTES AND THE REFLEX CONCEPT
SH - HOW THE NERVOUS SYSTEM IS STUDIED
B - [all captions in margins]


Speaking of margins, Psychology has some fantastic left and right margins. This is for the use of pictures and diagrams to illustrate the text. 
This book also uses both sans- and serif typefaces, again to help the reader follow the text. The colours of the A headings alternate throughout the book between orange and blue as you move through each section.

More to come,
K.

I don't like...

Mondays, do you ask? No, well, not always. Spiders? Yes. So much yes. Ew. But what I really don't like is the book design I'm going to talk about now. Yes, I'm talking about flippin' flipback books. 

Four titles out of 18. Thanks to vicbooks Pipitea for the books. Apologies for all the photos,
they're not great.

Originally designed in the Netherlands, the flipback book opens vertically with the pages turning from bottom to top. According the flipback website '...you get a full length novel in little more than the size of a smartphone.' They're actually 12cm by 8cm, and around 1.5cm - they've managed to keep them all around the same width despite the differing lengths of the original texts. On average, they weigh less than 145 grams and are printed on a very light and thin, almost Bible-paper paper. You'll see some shots further down of the insides.

So above are the spines of four of the titles I've picked out - Misery, Pride and Prejudice, Cloud Atlas and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. I've got close ups of Misery and Cloud Atlas further down this post. From first glance, these books look nice. The titles stand out well in a basic san-serif, and a different colour for title and author. The colour of the title actually ties in to the cover image, which you'll see in the next picture.

Covers, looking all pretty. The publisher on the cover alternates between Hodder, Sceptre
and John Murray. I assume this is depending on which imprint currently holds rights?

So here are the covers of the four. They're all covers I've seen before, with the exception of P&P. And I don't really like it at all - there are many, many covers of Austen's novel and it seems odd to pick one so plain compared to the others. I mean, flowers are fine but they're not on the same level as the typewriter for Misery. Or at least that's what I think. The other three are great though, the cover and spines link together nicely and below you'll see Cloud Atlas open fully.

Look how nice and pink it is!

I'm not 100% sure, but I think this cover is an adapted version of the original - someone correct me if I'm wrong! I love it though. The colours stand out, contrasting the pink and blue works so well.The title has an awesome pattern running through it. I'm also really enjoying how short the blurb is, however I'm not enjoying it as a whole. We had a session on blurb writing, and this one screams 'no' to me now. Back in the day I wouldn't have minded, but now I can't allow the author's name to be used to describe the book - a book shouldn't need it's author's name to describe it! Also, as you might be able to see, it's $27.99. Not exactly cheap when the paperback of this book is only $28.99. I guess the convenience the size?

I just realised I didn't get a picture of this, but thanks to the internet I can explain what I'm talking about! Check out the picture below.

Check out the cover and spine... Ooo!

Ooo indeed! As you can (hopefully) see, the spine and front cover aren't attached. The text block is stuck on to the back cover, but not to the spine or front cover. This is so the book holds itself open more easily than you having to push down on the pages of a hardback to make it stay open by itself. This is quite a cool design; my only issue with it is  the wear and tear of it all. When these first came in to the shop, I picked it up and flicked it open and the thing nearly fell out of my hand. If you were to accidently pick it up by the front cover alone, you run the risk that the back starts to rip off. Maybe I'm just rough with my books... I just don't think this will survive in your bag like a usual book would. 

Now for some internal shots, I'm just going to put a few from Misery below. 

Praise the glory!

In case you didn't know.

Start of a chapter.

Example of typewriter text in the novel.

Buy all the flipbacks!

So there you have it, an entire flipback in five images. One thing I have to say straight of the bat, and I hope you noticed it to - the typeface. It's all sans-serif. Urgh. Now, earlier I said I liked it for the cover title, and that still stands. And if you've read my other posts, you'll know that I like sans-serif for kid's books. But not for an entire novel. And especially not for a tiny little format like this. I'm getting worked up just writing this! We discussed in class the main reason a serif font is used over sans-serif for narrative, and that's because there are more points of difference between characters. When you're writing something, your 'a's and 'd's can get mixed up, because generally the only thing showing the difference between this is the vertical line on a 'd'. But with serif, the a comes out like this one does, and you can easily tell that it's an a and not a d. Now the most frustrating thing is that the font I'm using right now, trebuchet, isn't a serif, but Times New Roman is. See the difference? I hope so. Anywho, I hate the flipback for using this. Especially with the typewriter text (second to last image). Doesn't that look shocking? Every 'n' looks like it's italicised, even though I don't think it's supposed to be. Gah. Just dislike on so many levels. Also, the typewriter sections are ragged right, while the rest is justified. Make up your mind people!
Another thing to note is the margin sizes. As a woman, I have hilariously manly thumbs, as a good friend told me when we were 13. Holding the book open on the side with one hand actually isn't that easy, and it definitely gets in my way when reading. I'm fairly certain that the left side is slightly larger, have a look in the 'about the author' picture above. But I'm right-handed anyway, so that's not helpful. 


That's my rant about flipbacks. I really just don't like them, I think the design is just a little crazy and although people went nuts for them when they first came out, the novelty has definitely worn off.


More to come,
K.

I bought a new book.

As the title would suggest, I did indeed get a new book the other day. It's Claude Lauzmann's memoir The Patagonian Hare. I'm very excited to read this, he's had quite an interesting life. Lauzmann, for most, is known as the director of the nine and a half hour documentary Shoah (Hebrew term for Holocaust). Very full on subject, and very long documentary. What many people don't know is he was also great friends with Jean-Paul Sartre, a lover of Simone de Beauvoir, and a member of the French Resistance at 16. I heard about the book from this article with him by The Guardian. Any who, this is about the design of this book, which I think is beautiful and traditional. 

I'm not sure if anyone's read my previous posts, but I've mentioned before that I love auto/biographies/memoirs. There's just something about a person letting you in to their life that gets me.

Clothed, Farrar, Straus and Giroux NY, 2012,
designed by Jennifer Carrow.
Click on the images for a better view.

The yellow spine with black writing would definitely strike the eye if this was stuck on a bookshelf - which would be a tragedy (I special ordered it, I'm not sure how many book stores will have it in stock). The picture comes from Lanzmann's own collection, and uses his writing for his name and the title. He's even drawn FSG's logo by hand on the spine. So we have yellow, black and white, and a dark grey on the back, where white text tells us of the praise for The Patagonian Hare, which is high and why I wanted it. The layout is simple and not crowded, making it easy on the eye. Also having the title in the yellow circle is an easy way for the designer to get around having text on an image, and draws the eye to find out what this book is.

Naked.

The naked version of the book is so simple, I find it just as striking as the dust jacket. On a light grey, we again have Lanzmann's handwriting telling us the name, and nothing else. I enjoy the layout of this also, keeping the text running down the spine changes is up nicely from the dust jacket, and means we lazy readers don't need to move our head or book to read it. Win, win.

Text block. Taken with my phone, the black marks on the left aren't on the book.

So I might be biased because I can't wait to get stuck into this book, but I really think it's beautifully designed in every way. The chapters have no titles, and are indicated by very simple headings as seen to the left.  I'm a fan of spacing on a page (white space is not evil people!), and the layout of this is great. The text block sits closer to the centre of the book and slightly higher on the page, giving it a more traditional feel with wider margins. I think the text is simple and easy to read, the running headers give the title and author's name, and each chapter starts with a two line drop cap. The typeface in a nice and easy to read serif, nothing too fancy. The simplicity is beautiful.

Image, just one. Lonely, you might say.

Now to pictures. This whole book only has one picture inside, which is shown here. This surprised me, but I'll survive. The image is black and white, sits in the same place the text block does, and is explained in the text on the facing page. The text finishes about halfway down the page and says "This is it:", guiding you to the picture. The thing I enjoy the most about this is there's no attempt to keep the text running on that page, or to cram the image on to it to save room. The image is important, clearly, and the author and designer wanted to make it stand out. The story does carry on from that point, and probably could have had the text run on; the choice not to is a great one in my opinion.


I'm excited for this book, and have no doubt you'll read all about the content when I've finished it.


More scrapbooking to come soon.


K