May 4th, 2008 05:09pm
tianodesign
I’d been working steadily, fiercely, to meet a deadline, the layout of a chemistry textbook—not my own design. And while it really is a relatively complex design, perhaps somewhat more than necessary, it’s also more than a bit good-looking. I think student-readers will have little problem being attracted to this one and—the best part—not know why.
This kind of book requires the designer to provide for many different display elements. Each must be distinguishable from the rest and help to maintain the reader’s interest. As with many textbooks, setting different kinds of short material within box rules is one prime way to accomplish this. But it can make for slow progress when making pages, as I always try to avoid boxes running more than a single page.
Reminds me of a time … When I first began to write at the age of four—I don’t mean put characters on paper, but, rather, composing my first short story. No lie! I would write a sentence or two, maybe a whole paragraph, and immediately go into rewrite mode, trying to get it perfect. That’s how the chemistry book goes. I barely get through a chapter when changes and corrections arrive for something earlier.
So I can relate to the process with this one.
But me, in trying to knock it out on time, I avoided social engagements, kept conversations at home short, and wolfed down meals. I neglected this blog, and the reading of other blogs that I follow. Generally, I’ve been maintaining “radio silence”. And, as I already said, the deadline slid past anyway. I’m still working hard on this book, though, as we keep trying to finish it up.
It bothered me some for a while. See, I pretty much always make my due dates. I believe in meeting every due date, the way most people believe in their way of life. Hell, reliability is part of the service I provide. So I felt lousy watching this one slip away. I mean, I was fast at work while it happened—not as if I sat on a barstool watching a ballgame and drinking boilermakers. But it bothered me nonetheless and continues to.
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April 15th, 2008 06:11am
tianodesign
What if we did only work designed to encourage the human race to be great? Could we make a difference? Could we start a domino effect resulting in a better world, where we stopped with the ages-old hatreds and greedy behavior and instead everyone worked to move forward together?
I am not so naive as to believe or expect that we can or should eradicate the human inclination to accumulate. But perhaps we can try, as individual designers—at least for a period—to take only work that promotes peace, understanding, an end to hunger and disease, and the avoidance of accumulating wealth to the severe detriment of others. Maybe such work can encourage individual humans to act peacefully, to understand others, and to refrain from buying that next thing they want if it is manufactured at slave wages.
I know that I have at least one bid out for a book redesign and layout project that I can withdraw.
Can we try this? What are you willing to do? What work would you turn down? What would work that encourages human greatness look like if you did it?
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April 7th, 2008 10:11pm
tianodesign
In no particular order …
1. Early on, it occurred to me that—at least starting out—fully half of a working freelance book designer’s time is spent finding the next job(s). Again, especially in the beginning, when you have less of a track record, clients will not flock to your door; your efforts will be spent in the main on convincing any publisher who listens that their next book and you fit together so perfectly it would be wrong not to contract with you for the work.
2. One way into designing books is laying them out. What’s particularly nice about production-only work is that it allows you to see the end result of what other designers have done with the material you work on up close. So close that you can actually make notes about things you can improve upon. It’s a very real way to continue your education if you keep your eyes open and refuse to let yourself perform the work mechanically. If lucky, like me, you may actually enjoy both ends of the work, design and production.
3. Not so much lately, but I used to joke that—as a page compositor and layout artist I was pretty much a mercenary. That is, I got in, made the pages, got out, and got paid. But to benefit most from production work and not simply settle for the check at the end, I find it essential to work with my eyes open, taking in the choices made by the book designer, even though you should never even think about straying from the design template you are given to work with.
4. And speaking of never even thinking about straying from the design template you are given to work with, DON’T! (Yes, I meant to shout.) Early on, I once innocently—eager to show what a valuable commodity I was to a particular client, a textbook publisher, so that they would want to work with me forever—changed a question mark to a period. Or maybe vice versa, in a Review Questions section. I was fired almost immediately. They gave me what was a generous and undeserved “kill fee” and a kind, but unforgiving talking to. I nearly cried, as it was a “breakthrough job” that paid more than I had ever received to that point.
5. While doing the layout of someone else’s design is all well and good, if I design the book and create the template, I must also do the layout. That is the only way I can come even close to knowing that the book I envisioned is the one that will be published.
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April 5th, 2008 05:45pm
tianodesign
Never underestimate the value of another professional’s input. And never make the mistake of thinking a “final” design cannot be improved upon.
In this case it was the client’s printer who suggested that a 5/8″ spine margin would serve better than the 1/2″ I was then thinking of. (I had actually played with a 3/8″ inside margin with my first sample, thinking about pushing the limit with such a short book, 128 pages.) But the 5/8″ produced repercussions. Using the classic 2:3:4:6 ratio of Tschichold no longer produced what I wanted in a text page. So I kicked around some different ideas, and I consulted Chapter 8, “Sharing the Page,” of Robert Bringhurst’s Elements of Typographic Style.
I found that the “tall pentagon” configuration that Mr. Bringhurst wrote about, with only microscopic adjustment, suited the book I am designing. The vertical placement of the running head and folio was pleasingly accommodated and the ragged right remained just casual enough to complement the many cartoons I would be placing. And the types I had selected—ITC Fenice, variously described as neoclassical and industrial modern, and the geometric sans ITC Kabel—continued to work well in the layout.
So I sent that sample off to my client, the author-publisher.
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April 1st, 2008 11:14pm
tianodesign
Last week, mired in the throes of my latest work drought, the first in about a year-and-a-half, I walked into the house to my wife answering the telephone. After a few words, she handed the call off to me.
An older gentleman who grew up in Brooklyn, it turns out, not so far from where I did the same, was on the line. Now living in Boston, he has written a book about making one’s life last and keeping it good to the last drop. He wants someone to create the design and make pages for his off-shore printer. He found my name online via Google, liked what he saw on my site and contacted me.
Negotiations went easily enough, in part because it is to be a short book; he estimates 128 pages. This author-publisher was prepared; organized, too. He emailed a textfile and some artwork with which to work up sample pages. I began to work on it the next night.
The textfile he sent was for the Introduction. I liked that, as I find that an Introduction and a Table of Contents, if one exists—without final page numbers, of course—provide the best way to get the “flavor” of a book when contemplating the start of a design. In this case, I also received a number of artfiles—single-panel cartoons, as a matter of fact—that typified the art to appear throughout this book. And one chapter will have some two dozen photos, as well.
The book would be 6 x 9, the gentleman told me. He figured 128 pages, based on a thirty-line page, each line averaging about ten words. The types and everything else would be my doing.
Because of the informality of the cartoon style, I new I wanted to try something I normally never think of for a book: ragged right text. And I also got it into my head to work another element differently: placing the running head and folio vertically, and centered, on the outside edge of the text page. My client had to warm to the ragged right idea, but trusted my instincts there; he was enthusiastic right off about the vertical placement of the running head and folio. Forth the text page, after a misstep or two, I want to use Tschichold’s classic 2:3:4:6 ratio. With a half-inch inner margin, the text width winds up running 27 picas.
The last thing I did was choose my types. All I need now is one last show to him and final approval of the sample, the photos for that one chapter, and to begin in earnest. This will be my “fun” project before jumping into a chemistry textbook layout that finally starts by Monday.
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March 28th, 2008 07:18am
tianodesign
It amazes me how quickly things change. Just ten days or two weeks ago I told anyone who would listen that I was in the busiest year-and-a-half of my freelance life. Moreover, it appeared that this busy time would stretch to a full two years.
Man plans, God laughs.
And that was how I started this entry, unhappy because … well, let me continue.
A couple of projects that should have kept my streak alive have yet to launch. Another expected book disappeared because the author-publisher decided to try working with someone local. And no matter how many times, across fifteen years, that similar ups and downs have occurred, I once again felt as if I might never work again. I actually felt depressed. So I began to concentrate on the first of my twice-yearly emailings to prospective clients, soliciting book design and page composition work. Already delayed because I worked straight through the holidays, it was on opportunity to catch up.
A week into the email project, I have been contacted by a handful of publishers about possible projects. Only about halfway through this year’s batch of publishers, I already have a better retur—in terms of publishers responding—than ever before in the nine or ten years I have been going the email route. I don’t know if it is because I have drastically shortened the email, or because I have eliminated my attachment of samples and a resumé for a link to samples and a line about my willingness to send them my resumé if they will get back to me requesting it. Or perhaps my experience has grown to a point where a number of publishers now feel I have crossed some threshold that causes them to desire my services.
Whatever the reason, losing out on work does not sting as long as it used to.
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March 20th, 2008 07:13pm
tianodesign
I guess it’s true that language is not the only living thing. So are type and book design. Else steady issues of new types would not be the norm. And Jan Tschichold, who so vexed me with his book, The New Typography, would not redeem himself so well with Asymmetric Typography.
Now, any change of heart that Tschichold underwent did not occur with the first publication of Typographische Gestaltung, as it was originally titled in 1935. It was in Ruari McLean’s 1967 translation to English that Tschichold wrote, in a footnote commenting on his original thoughts about “centered typography” in a chapter on “Decorative typography,”
… there were the author’s opinions in 1935. Today I do not entirely agree with the statements in this chapter …
Quite an admission from someone who did not allow questions at his speaking engagements!
To continue looking at Tschichold, I wonder whether he would rethink his ratio of margins, 2:3:4:6 (inside:top:outside:bottom), on the book page? What prompts this is Dick Margulis’ and today’s paperbacks on his fine blog, words / myth / ampers & virgule. It was a week or so back that Dick discussed how the traditional inside margin width, probably arrived at via hardcover books, simply are not enough to allow comfortable reading of today’s crop of thick paperbacks.
And that brings me back to Mr. Tschichold’s ratio. The typical inside margin is about half an inch. Bumping that out another 50% would give us margins like so:
- inside margin, 3/4″
- top margin, 1-1/8″
- outside margin, 1-1/2″
- bottom margin, 2-1/4″
That seems like an excessive amount of white space, especially if the page is not a generous size.
Time to experiment again with different text box proportions on different size pages. But I do like this—for me—new Jan Tschichold.
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March 17th, 2008 06:45am
tianodesign
This has nothing to do with freelancing or my book design and page layout work. Simply put, I’m trying to commit the memory somewhere before I forget it altogether.
When I was in high school in Brooklyn, I—along with three buddies—would cut school on St. Patty’s Day. Actually, I remember that we did this our first three years, as freshmen, sophomores, and juniors. We may have dispensed with it as high school seniors. We would leave home about the same time as for school, sometime between 7:00 and 7:30 AM, take the combination of bus and subway almost to school in Brighton Beach, but head to the West 8th Street stop—the Brooklyn Aquarium stop in Coney Island—on what became an el (for “elevated” line).
Actually, two of us would get off the stop before at Van Siclen Ave., if I remember the spelling correctly. We would pick up some ice, maybe lighter fluid, chicken parts, ground beef, hamburger, frankfurters, soda, frankfurter buns, and condiments. Somehow, the day or night before we would have managed to get hold of a case of beer and a bottle of Scotch—we were too young to buy these items ourselves. I remember that we did this shopping in a Waldbaum’s a store that had no location in my neighborhood. A few years later I would find one everywhere I looked once my family moved out on Long Island.
While two of us shopped—I was always one of the shoppers—the other two would proceed the one more stop on the el, get off, and find a spot on the sand. They would lay down blankets, as if it were any summer day at the beach. Then they would dig a hole in the sand and rip down a few slats from the wind fence that I guess the city put up to keep the sand from blowing too far around. The slats would get broken up, put in the hole, and set afire.
By the time the two of us shoppers returned, the fire was going and we’d start to barbecue chicken, burgers, and hot dogs. We would also crack open our first beers, warm, and I would pour some Scotch over ice. I cannot picture whether any of the other guys joined me in drinking Scotch. I have a clear memory of sitting on some rocks that extended into the water, staring into the sea, with my plastic cup of Scotch in hand—there’s no other way to say it—getting drunk.
We didn’t do anything more vandalous than taking down the bit of fence. Our breaches of the law were limited to underage drinking and cutting school. We spent the day drinking, eating, and conversing like philosopher-kings. Back then I thought I would be a great novelist. By my senior year I was, in fact, knee-deep in the writing of my first—bad—novel. Personal computers did not exist. I had not heard the word “freelance.” Book design was a thought that had twenty years yet to occur to me.
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March 12th, 2008 09:31pm
tianodesign
This morning was the first one in months I woke up and had no active projects in-house. Anyone who has been reading this blog for any length of time knows how that makes me feel: jumpy, like I’ll never eat again. Well, not quite. But it breaks the consistency of my days to not have a book or two to work on.
So it was with some surprise that I looked around to see what a wild place my corner of the world had turned into these months and months of working pretty much straight through making books.
For one thing, there’s a Presidential election coming up in … six, seven, not quite eight months from now. And can you imagine it, Hillary Clinton, the wife of former two-term President Bill Clinton is vying for the nomination? Well, why not, early on in the country’s history we had John Adams and his son John Quincy Adams as the first father-son duo to serve terms in the Presidency. Of course, George W. Bush is just finishing up as the son in the second such father-son duo. So why not a stab at a husband-wife reign, even if interrupted by an eight-year hiatus?
I don’t mean to ignore the other team’s nominee. Although I could never imagine voting for him, as it would be a continuation of a breaking-then-buying kind of bent the country is stuck in right now, I somehow like that John McCain will get the highest accolade in his profession: his party’s nomination for the Presidency. I think he deserves such respect, even though that is no reason to elect him President.
Finally, I notice there’s a much younger man, African-American, who seems to be exciting the hell out of people. Whether they support him or not. This is a good thing, if only because it encourages more people to sit up and take notice, to get involved, and to vote. The one knock I hear is that Barack Obama is not so experienced. Hell, look where all the experience of those calling the shots the last eight years has gotten us. Makes my head hurt. This is why it’s best when I’m busy making books.
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March 7th, 2008 07:57am
tianodesign
My aim never wavers: I strive for full employment. Well, maybe not employment per se, but full self-employment. Making books.
So I accept a lot of production-only work. I tell myself that my design knowledge grows and my book designs benefit from having set so many others’ designs. This seems a fair trade-off to me, as—glad to work for pay—my reading time suffers whenever I am busy.
Lately, however, I carve out time from my schedule as I can, treating my reading of books on book design as a steadily scheduled continuing education program of my own fabrication. And the book that currently impresses me the most, that I now recommend right up there with Robert Bringhurst’s The Elements of Typographic Style and Jost Hochuli and Robin Kinross’s Designing books: practice and theory, is On Book Design by Richard Hendel.
Bringhurst delights with his writing, not merely the information he provides. In Designing books, Hochuli and Kinross speak further to the different tasks and issues a book designer must take account of with each project. But Hendel gives glimpses into the process of designing books—his and eight other accomplished book designers. Process is arguably the most useful direction from which to approach the subject of book design
In some ways, too, Hendel reads the most easily of all these books. Written in a less academic and theoretical manner, the tone rings more workaday. On Book Design appeals to the how-to mindset. I admit, too, that I take comfort from the words of Hendel and his gang of eight. They confirm a few of my own inclinations, sometimes expressed in this blog, as well as my basic sense of the book designer’s charge.
Hendel makes or brings forth a number of points. The necessity of the book designer growing familiar with the manuscript—its subject and intended audience—is perhaps first among these points in importance. All in all, I think On Book Design makes a fine textbook.
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