Journal
Notes from inside the press: how a book gets written, edited, designed and published.
32 items, page 2 of 2
Design
Designing chapter openers
The first page of each chapter is where a book shows its design most clearly. What goes on it, and how the parts work together.
Design
Ebook design is not print design reflowed
An ebook is not a PDF of the paperback. Much of what a print designer controls passes to the reader, and the design has to allow for that.
Design
True small caps and fake ones
Small caps are one of the quiet signs of careful typesetting. Scaled-down capitals are one of the loud signs of the opposite.
Design
One colour doing all the work
A cover built around a single colour can be louder than one that uses all of them, provided the colour is chosen for the right reasons.
Design
Why most book interiors are set in a serif
The research on serifs and legibility is less decisive than people think. The reasons book designers still reach for them are more practical.
Design
Designing a spine for a shelf
In a bookshop, most books are shelved spine out. That narrow strip is often the only part of the design a browser ever sees.
Design
Quotation marks and apostrophes, straight and curly
Straight quotes are a typewriter habit. In a printed book, the right marks, and the right way round, matter more than they seem to.
Design
Back matter: notes, acknowledgements and the author’s note
What comes after the last chapter has its own conventions. How to order the back matter, and how to make notes easy to use.
Design
Laying out the back cover
The back cover has more to do than the front and less room to do it in. Here is how its parts fit together.
Design
Leading: the space between the lines
Leading takes its name from strips of metal, but its job has never changed: to let the eye find the next line without effort.
Design
The ellipsis
Three dots look simple. Their spacing, their relationship with other punctuation and their habit of breaking across lines are not.
Design
Line length, and the measure readers never notice
Readers rarely notice the length of a line, but they feel it. Why typographers settle on somewhere between 45 and 75 characters.