cover design layouts

Today I'm focussing on the really technical, IT-based book design aspects. I'm practising my use of Adobe InDesign and Photoshop and I've really been enjoying it. Here are some technical things I've learnt this week:

Standard Book Sizes: 

Picture Book - 240mm x 200mm

Paperback Fiction Book - 198mm x 129mm 

Hardback fiction - 216mm x 198

Terms

Some terminology commonly referred to during this aspect of production are:

• Bleed - a 5mm allowance along the outside of the cover, where no detail is printed. This protects against the cover being cut short. 
• Gutter - the mid-section of the cover, where the spine sits after printing.
• Turnaround - An allowance that allows extra space on a cover jacket for the flap to fold over easily.
• Board Allocation- on a hardback book, the card is sometimes 3mm thick. Designers allow for this during the design process, so the cover fits over the whole book.
• Slug area- on Indesign or Photoshop, the area between the bleed and 5mm above, where the fold lines are placed to indicate where production should cut the card. 

Here is an example of a picture book cover, laid out on InDesign and the cover created in Photoshop: 

And here is my attempt at a hardback cover jacket, I also designed a basic cover design on Photoshop but ran out of time to place the cover onto the file:

I will be sure to update you on my progress!

Picks of the Month: designers and career goals

I'm stumbling onto some really great resources this week through recommendations and research, here are some interesting book-design-related finds of note from this week that I've taken inspiration from:


Ted Talk with Chip Kidd

 

Chip Kidd is a successful book designer and this TED talk was a really interesting look at book marketing, and also a pretty entertaining piece of media. Chip talks about the relationship between design and marketing in a fresh and accessible way, and his story is inspiring for a sapling publisher like myself. 'Not treating your audience like a moron' is something I'll definitely take on board through to my future cover designs, and I think it's pretty transferable to all visual industries. 

 

 

Interview with Suzanne Dean - art director at Random House

 

The ways in which publishers decide to re-animate their backlist really interests me. Art Director Suzanne Dean talks in detail in this interview about her re-designs for titles like Psycho and The Man with the Golden Gun. I particularly like the fact that the designs have a running aesthetic, and Suzanne states in the interview that it was important that the 'visuals cohere'. I think this adds a sense of ownership to the backlist on the publishers' behalf, and enhances marketability by building such a visually contemporary collection. 

The lesson today pushed me to utilise InDesign like never before, and I was able -through careful coaching by the brilliant Becky Chilcott - to design both picture and hardback book covers at the end of the lesson. 

imagery and me

Becky began by offering a few designers and illustrators of note to research and admire:

Peter Mendelsund - Italo Calvino
This interview discusses Peter Mendelsund's design process, and it's a really interesting insight. Some of his designs are below:






















Alice Todd- The Art of Being Normal
Is a really interesting and graphic book cover. The use of colour is inspired, and I particularly like how the design continues through the book. The image really fittingly describes what the novel is about, and the cover in its entirety is very marketable and visually drawing. The endpapers are also notable for their simplicity and effectiveness.

Lisa Jones
Lisa Jones' illustration is really quite different to the content that I've previously researched, but the apparent simplicity of her design can go on to have a really impactful visual appeal. Her work is cute, colourful and graphic and fits the child-based target market really effectively with an added modern illustrative aesthetic for booksellers and parents.

The lesson covered a lot of terminology about the use of images in cover and book design, I've noted some important terms below:

Picture Rights

Rights Managed- buying exclusive rights to an image for an agreed time period

Royalty Free- anyone can download and use for free

Micro Stock- amateur photos, creative commons on websites like Flickr, Wikimedia.

Colour Printing

CYMK- Cyan, Yellow, Magenta and Black are the four colours that all standard colour printing is done with. Adjusting these levels can provide most colours that you would require, but not all very bright and neon colours.

RGB- Red, Green and Blue are the three colours that make up all digital images. Altering these on photoshop can give all of the different colours.

Pantones- Pantones are specialised colours that cannot be created effectively using CYMK printing. These colours can be ordered and overlaid on a book cover. Use of these colours usually adds cost.

Image Quality

72 dpi- (dots per inch) is usually fine for files that will only be viewed through a digital medium and not printed.

300 dpi- is a print quality design setting.

Some places that book designers tend to research illustrators are listed below:

• Pintrest
• Deviant Art
• Twitter
• Dictionaries
• Illustrator Directories 

To end the lesson, I tried to enhance my Photoshop skills by trying to manipulate a using an illustration of children with varying degrees of effectiveness:

 I've been working on my final project to put all of these new skills into practice.

typography and me

Typography is so interesting! I'm really enjoying every and anything design-based. Becky's lesson today covered everything from the conception and appropriateness of a font to the more technical terminology. Some important books on the subject that I'll have to note down here are:

We looked at finishes that can be overlaid onto book covers to make the book stand out. Finishes like this require a much higher budget, and can be reserved for star authors or very promising titles. Extras include but are not limited to:

• Matte 
• Super matte
• UV overlay
• Holographic overlay
• Foil overlay 
• Embossing 
• Adding stickers
• Cloth binding

I also noted down some important technical terms from the lesson:

Kerning- the letter spacing horizontally, this can be used for making sure the text fits nicely on the page or altering the font to make it more spaced-out or close-together.

Leading- is the space between the lines. Reducing the space between the lines can be useful if there is a lot of text to reduce page number, but increasing the space between the lines can increase readability. Larger spaces are generally more helpful for children.

Serif font- a font that has the little lines on the bottom.

Sans-serif font - a font that doesn't have the lines on the bottom.

Superscript- the little 'st' in 1st.

Baseline- the invisible line on which the text sits.

Widow- A widow is a short line/word that sits at the bottom of a paragraph. This makes the text look messy and leaves a larger blank white space below the paragraphs that hinders readability. Adjusting the kerning or leading can prevent this

Orphan- As above, but an orphan describes a single word or few words at the top of a page, above a paragraph.

Ligature- is the joining of two letters together during font design.

A little note about punctuation for budding typesetters: 

• Hyphen '-' for joining words like 'mother-in-law' 
• En dash '–' for joining dates/time, to indicate the passing of time '18th–21st of March' 10–2pm'
• Em dash '—' to indicate a pause, 'everyone stopped talking—'
• Quotation marks - '' (obv for quotations) (around 'sloped' on the diagram below)
• Speech marks - (obv for speech) (around 'blocky' on the diagram below)

book design intro

Today - following the hugely accomplished Becky Chilcott's lecture in book design - I'm brainstorming some ways in which book covers are produced. I chose Arthur Miller's A View from the Bridge: I'm currently reading it because it's on the GCSE syllabus (and I'm a tutor so it's my job). I also chose it because the covers are very, very similar. See below:

I did A level art, I hope you can tell from this moodboard.

I noticed that the current range of covers are pretty formulaic, and usually based around a bridge and some graphic text. Because Arthur Miller has become such a well-known name in theatre, I was surprised that his name wasn't featured more prominently on the range of covers I focussed on.

I created a moodboard from a range of the different covers, and also from marketing posters for the theatre shows. It is also clear that the design concept for the majority of existing covers has revolved around a male-focussed character base. It is also possibly marketed toward a more traditional, older literary fiction audience because of the sepia / black and white tones and the simplistic photographic style. If the book was to engage a younger (GCSE) audience, it could increase sales and modernise the image of the title. Adapting the cover to make it have a more inclusive and gender-neutral appeal would also be of importance, in order to include as many new readers as possible.

Becky talked us through a number of important book cover features:

- Price
- Barcode
- Publishing Branding
- Cover Image (illustration, photography?)
- ISBN (international standard book number)
- Illustrator credit
- Strapline
- Author Name
- Book title (obv)

which is an awful lot of stuff to fit onto that small piece of card.

My concept for the design of A View from the Bridge after reading the play centralises on Catherine, the protagonist's niece. Not as a stark contrast to the existing formulae of book covers for this author and genre, but because Catherine's transition into womanhood is arguably the situation that brings the tragic hero's hamartia about. Catherine is also a catalyst for most of the violence and more serious themes in the play (fist fighting, deportation). While she unwittingly moves the story on, her depiction is notably uncomplicated, and she plays into a lot of stereotypes. I believe this makes her ideal for modern literary critique, and it is one of the central reasons why the book is on the GCSE syllabus.

I found this illustration on yorknotes.com that fittingly describes the cast of the play, and I would like to use an illustrative style similar to this in my cover. It is a move away from the traditional photographic style - popular with play texts. It is also a way of depicting the characters physically in a way that the play can, but written script cannot itself provide to the reader. I also like the subtle inferrences of time period. I feel that the historical context of the play is of great significance to the reading and interpretation of the text, and should be referenced on the cover (through type, dress or tones).

thank you yorknotes.com!

In future 'judging a book by its cover' posts, I'll be analysing different covers from a range of genres, offering suggestions as to how the cover could be improved, what technical features the cover displays, how effective the art style is and how marketable the cover is.

copyediting- why, what and how

Leanne Slavin is a copyeditor at MUP, and came in for three sessions to discuss the copy editing role, what it entails and how you can go into it. She also gave us some great insight into the changing publishing landscape for editors in particular.

Copyediting is defined by the following roles:

• Checking basic spelling mistakes
• Checking grammar and continuity
• Checking for sentence formatting and re-editing appropriately
• Checking for coherence
• Checking references and style
• Checking that the text meets the house style guidelines (more in the 'commissioning editing' posts earlier in the blog)
• Checking reader understanding and general readability (these academics can be a bit wafflly)
• Checking facts and dates - although the author is primarily given this responsibility.

However, the editing process is not as simple as first assumed.  This is because a very tenuous relationship exists between editor and author, and this must be maintained carefully at all times. For this reason, the 'track changes' feature on Microsoft Word is a lifesaver. This gives the author the opportunity to see what has been changed, and also offers the editor the chance to 'flag up' any peculiar wording or incorrect facts before omitting it completely. This will be very useful on the copyediting test.

We also heard about the development of certain BRIC countries – Brazil, Russia, India and China. With the rise of educational budgets in developing countries, UK publishers can create a larger print run to reduce costs, and then export a majority of these books to schools abroad.

UPDATE: The copyediting test went really well, and I received a good grade. Although I like to edit work, I do not think I could choose this path as a career as I am a very fast reader, and I am not certain that I would be able to slow down spot small errors to the level expected.

the future of academic publishing

Academic publishing is a sector that relies more heavily than most on political and institutional changes.

Library Funding 

Libraries are particularly important to the academic publisher, and cuts to funding can be extremely harmful to business. Recently, this Guardian article noted that UK library budgets had been cut by 60%, and £1.5 million. This threat to the industry can be worked around by exporting to the developing and BRIC countries with a high concentration of english-speaking people. These governments in some instances are increasing their public education budgets by a $100billion and are likely to buy academic textbooks from the UK. 

REF

The Research Excellence Framework (REF) is a government-run system that works to allocate the £1.6 billion funding to Higher Education institutions. The validity of this framework is debatable, in short because the universities that house the best academics might not necessarily be the institutions with the best teaching standards. If the academics are putting such time into their research, it follows that lecture planning and student support could be insufficiently prioritised. 

Academics in the framework must complete one substantial piece of research each six years to receive payment and maintain their position. This is most often presented in the form of a monograph, and must be published by a reputable academic publisher. Work must be submitted 14 months before publication. 

The ethical issues with the framework concern the inclusiveness of young researchers who need to teach to improve their position, and female academics who could require necessary time off for maternity- time which is still categorised as 'research time'. For these reasons, it could be argued that the framework favours older men. 

If these logical and ethical pitfalls in the framework become more widely discussed in the near future and the REF is dismantled, this could pose a large threat to academic publishers, who rely on monograph publication to sustain their businesses. However, it is difficult to see how these issues can be overcome without analysing an alternative system. 

Open Access

The term 'double dipping' is defined by a publisher seeking an unwarrantable increase in revenues by levying article processing charges (APCs) for publication in a journal, while not providing a decrease in subscription costs.To overcome this, ideas about Open Access have been discussed in business thinktanks, who believe that this practice is immoral. 

Open Access would mean that every journal would be made available to the public, through the gratis or green model, or with an extra charge for additional rights under the libre or gold model. This would open up a much greater power dynamic between the author and publisher, with the author attaining more say in the publication of their work.

 This could provide a large threat to the academic publisher, as a lot of the revenue and holdings could be taken away. However, a move toward less journal publication could be a way to overcome this problem, and a rise in print and monograph editions could follow.