Typographic analysis book design

TYPO GRAPHIC ANALYSIS. Ola AlALI 2018

This publication contains 23 typographical analysis essays written by RMIT university masters students majoring in communication in design in 2018.

Book designed by Ola AlAli Instructor: Ziga Testen Printer: Blurb printing press Š2018 by RMIT UNIVERSITY, All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any manner without permission.

Introduction

This book is a collection of typographical analysis from RMIT masters students in communication design during spring 2018.

Each essay discusses three different books typographical treatment and concludes by a paragraph about the least designed book in the students’ point of view.

I have chosen the title “ typographic analysis” as it is a clear description of the book context. The lines in the book cover design are taken from the baseline length that I have used through out the book and indicates the margins as well. I think it is simple yet it is fairly relevant to the inner typographical decision taken in the design of the inner pages. The colors are the Pantone colors which are also pallet used in the elements of the pages.

Speaking of the design decision that I taken, I chose the size 15x23cm portrait as it is handy and small, the book is divided into sections, each section includes one analysis essay, which made it easy for the reader to navigate through it. The sections are labeled with numbers and author name, which are considered as the key visual elements of navigation, and one of the main design elements.

The index or able of content is categorized by the Author names and the pages numbers. The design is also based on the grid system set for this book.

Throughout the book, the hierarchy of the elements leads the reader smoothly, the essay’s author is the most obvious, then comes the subtitle which is the three books analysis and then the body text and lastly the folio, which has the smallest size at the top of the page.

The folios are designed to define the structure of the page which I have designed all my elements upon.

The body text is 9pt to fit perfectly with the format of the book, I chose Baskerville as it is one of the fonts that help the reader read the body text easily. On the other hand, the titles are in Avenir light to design this nice contrast between the body text and titles In my opinion, I am a big fan of Avenir light as it has beautifully designed letters with well designed negative space.

The pantone colors that are used in this book, are modern and light. They work nicely together along with the body text black color.

Further, in some of the essays, the authors have included photographs. I have utilizes this in making nicely designed small captions with the light orange pantone color. The design of the captions which are in Basekerville light contemplates well with the quotations color that I have extracted from few of the essays, adds nice typographical elements, and creates a break between the body text.

The print is hardcover with 120 gsm paper that might look and work well with the format and content of the book.

Lastly, this book have taken simple and modern typographical approach with fairly plenty of negative space to give it as modern look as possible. The margins are 1.4cm to give the reader space to hold the book and create emphasis on the body text.

Table of contents EDITION 1 / SPRING 2018

06

Rubinden Kumar

38

Yuchen He

10

Baselljulia Late

42

Xue Jia

14

Daniel Yakup

44

Zhengxuan Jina

18

Chenmengdie

48

Nick Jumara

22

Chenqianni

52

Maner Shi

28

Shalmali Dasgupta

58

Khuyen Phung

34

Josef Horak

62

Ola AlAli

66

Limeng Liang

96

70

Yan Liu

100 Di Zhang

74

Cameron Stevens

80

Pam Suarez

82

Chunxiao wang

88

Hua Wang

92

Wenailiu

Yinyue

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6

01 Rubinden Kumar

Rubinden Kumar

I am not usually an avid reader especially when comes to books. I remembered the day when my parents always pushed me on reading and I did not picked up until I became a full-time designer.

I was surrounded with many great books and being a big sucker when books are well-designed with bold cover design, good use of flat colours and the attention grabbing type setting. The question that did not occurs me is why are those books or publication are designed in such and hence, this is the main focus of the essay. The essays talk about 3 publications that brings an interesting layout designs that has its own grids which fits well the its own genre of books.

Book 01

As a designer that easily impressed with well-designed items which in this case, a book that I had in my collection from the publication, Laurence King Publishing. This publication is no stranger when comes to publishing self-help books for designer. When a freshly graduate who is looking for direction in the design industry and the same time that what want to builds its passion in design, How to be a graphic designer without losing your soul is the perfect book to have in their library. Adrian Shaughnessy wrote the book with the intention to share his design experience and he lays out the contents cleverly as the book are designed to guide in step by step. To simply put it, it is Dummy for Graphic Designer with well thoughtful graphics and right selection of san-serif font. I personally like when a self-help book for designer has an interview with another designer and Shaughessy managed to put his interview with top designers in the designer world. The interview which focuses on the creative process of designing for a client, evaluating new hires and employed designers and designers who about to start their own studio or becoming a freelancer.

Now comes the fun part of this book, the construction of the subtle yet interesting asymmetrical layout. Every design books are well designed with the glance that led a copy in my collection. A custom dimension of 187 mm weight and 229 mm height makes the look of the book in the middle of rectangle and square. The perfect bound book printed on a soft cover provides a nice feels as holding it on hand but not bag-friendly. At the downside, it tends to worn off if the book is not taken care well. The China paper, Yulong Pure is a perfect use for this book as it gives the weight of the book feel light and the colour reproduction of the publication looks polished.

The feel of this uncoated paper gives a nice flow of turning pages which add the satisfaction of reading. The layout of the book is what caught my attention. Designed a simple margin of 6 mm top and 34 mm bottom with the inner of 35 mm and 7.5 mm outer. Although our thumbs covers the text, the layout does create two layout setting.

The first layout setting where there just a column of body text flow well and readability with the right line spacing of 2mm. What makes

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the books interesting when the layout change as the author cite his references. I believe Shaughessy gave the freedom in creative space to the designer to experiment layout and they did it with a thought using the same margin setting and designed 2 different layout. As Sagmeister quoted in the book.

Book 02

I used to be a design student is targeted to most professional and student in the creative industry as the authors interviews 50 well known designers contrasting their life as a design student and practicing as a professional designer. The book was published in 2013, three years after How to be a graphic designer without losing your soul published by Laurence King Publishing. This books do covers on how a designer changes throughout time from their lifestyle as being a design student, discussion on their final project that they presented during the time and the current project they are working as a professional. This is one of the books that I managed to read in my collection as the each of the interview has its humourous experience.

Basically the book is written to “give” us a tour of their personal life.

“A good book will find good reader” The book is measured at 245 mm x 174 mm which made as a custom size book. At a glance of the book might picture similar to How to become a graphic designer without losing your soul, the design of the book is heavily inspired especially on the cover where the title of the book and the content of the pages. It might comes from the same publishing company, hence the thought of making a cover series might consider in the process of designing it. The paper stocks that use in the book are the same where it is printed on Yulong Pure, an uncoated environment friendly paper that give a nice feel when turning the pages. Despite this book is longer, it gives a comfortable feeling to be hold and it does not take space in your bag with the thickness of it. The book feels light that made this book easy to be carry around. Readability and legibility of this books hits at its sweet spot when the body text are done well in line spacing although I find the font size is slightly smaller. Normally, most of publications prefer to use modern serif typeface as I believe that it gives an easy glance through within the content and using the right typeface will also justify the quality of the publication. In this book, the designer finalise it on using Akzidenz Grotesk Medium as the main typeface.

The layout of the books speaks its volume of the book as its uses 2 types of grids which are, 4 column grid and 6 column grid. I personally love the grid of the book when it is well set up and this book did it. Using the same margin measurement of 9 mm on top and bottom and 12.5 mm on inner and outer, it provide the flexibility of the layout to 3 different gutter of each column. For example, the 4 column grid has 2 gutter sizes which are 9mm following by a 5 mm gutter and the 6 column grid has a 3 mm. These gutter are set in such to allowed the text flowing nicely and proper flow of reading the content of the book.

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Every experienced designer would love to share their design experience to the future designers. So do Vince Frost. After I attended one of his lecture in RMIT during the recent Melbourne Design Week 2018, I decided to purchased his book and Design your life: Applying design principles to your life came in my collection.

This 234 pages book covers on his personal struggles and how did he overcome from it. This books also covers as a guide book that what he learning throughout his experiences being a graphic designer and running studio which located in Sydney. He also included couple of interviews from various creative industries as he gathers their point of view of what is design your life meant to them. Having this book in my hand, I can tell that the goal of the book is published as a selfhelp to indecisive professional designers and manual to the design students who freshly graduate from universities.

Book 03

As for the overall of the book, the size of the book is too big for my taste as it is measured 20 mm weight and 257 mm height.

The book is perfect bound on a hardcover which has its pros for long-lasting. But for a book that served as a self-help, being bound on a hard cover is not a suitable as most reader who reads any self-help books would prefer to carry it out at ease. I believe a hardcover are designed for collective encyclopaedia or collective of design artwork.

The book is published by the Penguin Group in 2014 and it is printed on uncoated paper which I assume. Being a self-help book for designer and Frost being a graphic designer for his book, he decided to treat the publication as a canvas of experimenting different typography hierarchy and making the typeset as big and bold. Using two different san-serif typefaces, Circular and MFred, somehow creates an interesting composition and give a playful vibes that breaks the typical layout design of self-help book. Which is a good thought but I personally find it messy especially on the readability of the body text. I find it can irritates the reader’s eyes when reading it through.

As for the margin set up, the book did a good job of creating a good outer margin for the thumb to rest without blocking the body text.

The measurement of the margin of a page is measured at 10 mm for both top and bottom, 24.5 mm inner and 11 mm outer which create few layout grid. The bookmark built in the book is a very nice thought to avoid folding the pages as a mark. Simple and effective.

A great publication has to consider that typography plays an important roles. From choosing the typeface, getting the right weight and analysing if the typeface works with the grids and the alignment of the body text with images especially on how the typography flows on the layout. The layout of these review books that make me to write this essay. In the essay, Typography is a grid by Anthony Froshaug, he stated that in order for content to be translated into typographic terms, the content has to fullfil its purposes within the grid. To reflect the statement, the two books published by Laurence King Publishing have demonstrated and justify the contents well in the grids designed by the designers. As both of the books are designed by different designers, they retained of using the excellent

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Akzidenz Grotesk typeface as it is very legible when the size of the text is small and readability at the same time. It gives comfort to the reader’s eye as they reads the content of the book. Despite the layout of the both books are different as one being designed asymmetrical and the other is symmetrical, the typography hierarchy and the grids seem to tally perfectly within the publishing.

On the other hand, I personally Frost’s book are more illustrative than being fixed by a grid. But I feel it is done with a reason of assuming that Frost want his book be a not typical self-help book. With that, he has to create a different types of grid in order for the content to be meaningful and impactful. Bold, punchy and effective typefaces that present in the book needs to tally with the layout and choosing Circular and MFred are the right selection.

Those typefaces have its distinct characteristics of being geometric and playful that works well with the grid set on the layout.

To summarise it, making a publication with full text can be challenging. Some of the publications that store at the bookstore might appeal to you and some might not, but the thought and the time spend on the tiny details makes an impact to a books. Especially when the typography and the grids in the layout needs to work together. Without those two important elements are not applied in the publication, it can an unappreciated piece to the reader. Also choosing the right typefaces is equally important where not all grid set on the layout will work well with the certain typefaces.

References Shaughnessy A, 2010, “How to be a graphic designer without losing your soul”, Laurence King Publishing, original published in 2010.

Philippin F, Kiosoglou B, 2013, “I used to be a design student”, Laurence King Publishing, original published in 2013.

Frost V, 2014, “Design your life: Applying design principles to your life”, Penguin Group Australia, original published in 2014.

Froshaug, A. (1967), ‘Tpography is a grid’, Anthony Froshaug: Typography & texts / Documents of a life. London, Hyphen.

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02 Baselljulia Late

Baselljulia late

It’s a well-known fact that square pegs do not fit into round holes. It’s under common understanding that sledgehammers are not required to crack walnuts. And it goes without saying that you do not bring a gun to a knife fight. In these situations, along with many others that would occur in our day-to-day lives, some tools are simply not suited to some jobs. It is not to say that said tools do not work, are faulty or are rendered useless. It is just that some tools should exclusively be used for very particular jobs. A typography designer’s job is simple; find the right tools for the right job. There are the obvious dos and don’ts, like not setting an entire novel in Papyrus (how would you like to read a 100 page book set in Papyrus?) and then there are the finicky, little details that separate an ‘easy read’ from a strenuous task that isn’t enjoyable. Typographers are essentially artists. They create harmonious, well balanced clusters of letters that are trying to convey a message, whilst using the right tools for the right job.

Book 01

Typographers at the beginning of any project must, of course, read the body of text that they are setting out to design.

Robert Bringhurst’s first ‘tactic’ from his book The Elements of Typographic Style is in fact, to read the text. He states specifically “the typographer’s one essential task is to interpret and communicate the text… [And] it’s logical structure ”. This was crucial for the design of Goodbye, Things by Fumio Sasaki. Sasaki had this essay published in 2015; however the earliest book edition of the essay I could find was published by W. W. Norton Company in 2017. Since then there have been at least 30 editions of the essay, in multiple languages and formats . The edition that I am analysing is a Penguin House paperback, 256 pages long and published in April of 2017.

The text itself is symmetrically designed and uses the font Bembo STD, a modern serif, for the body text and Quasimoda, a geometric sans serif for the subheadings/headings.

The reason that Sasaki’s essay is such a great case study for Bringhurst’s number one tactic is because of the tone of the essay itself. Sasaki has written the essay in a casual, conversational style and has essentially created an easy to follow step-by-step guide to attaining a minimalist lifestyle. This relaxed style of writing, in combination with the subject matter of minimalism had to be reflected within the type design. The designer has chosen to use Bembo STD as the body text font. Bembo was designed by Stanley Morison for the Monotype Corporation in 1929 and is known for “its well-proportioned letterforms, functional serifs, and lack of peculiarities ”. The book itself is structured in a very humble and ‘user-friendly’ manner. It features numbered lists using old-style numerals and instructional and functional subheadings, which serve

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to break up large areas of text. The overall reading experience of this text has been greatly enhanced by the attention to detail. As Bringhurst said, “the typographer is to the text as the theatrical director is to script, or the musician to the score” .

In many instances, a type designer is not only provided with text, but with supporting material such as imagery, footnotes and/or tables and diagrams. This can present a challenge.

Book 02

The second text I have sourced is titled Beg, Steal & Borrow

by Robert Shore. Published by Laurence King Publishing in October 2017 , the 192-page paperback uses Periódico for the main body text and P22 Johnston Underground for the cover title. Periódico is a humanist serif designed by Eduardo Manso in 2011, after being commissioned by The Spanish Daily Newspaper . This font was designed with legibility in mind, catering to newspaper literacy standards (which are surprisingly low, in Australia the reading level of newspapers is age 12). The title font on the other hand, may have been chosen with sentimentality in mind. P22 Johnston Underground is a geometric sans serif that was used in the London Underground system in 1916 , where Shore was born. Regardless of the fonts, the text was supplied to the designer with over 70 images. These images all needed captions, titles, dates and artist’s names. And most importantly, the images needed to be seamlessly integrated with the rest of the body text.

The designer chose to embed the imagery throughout the text instead of separate to, creating a dynamic layout that is often asymmetrical. This creates a pleasant yet exciting flow whilst reading, as the pictures are placed directly amongst their relative discussions. However, the designer has purposefully chosen not to place the captions, artist’s names and dates directly next to their corresponding imagery. At first mention, this might allude to a confusing and jagged reading experience, but it has resulted in quite the opposite. The images slip seamlessly into the body of text, while the captions are disguised as footnotes. On pages with imagery, the designer has removed the page numbers, deeming them unnecessary and has replaced them with image captions. This creates a coherent layout, which allows the reader to have a consistent place to search for references whilst not disturbing the course of reading.

These ‘footnotes’ are not lost amongst the dynamic design; with a substantial 5mm bottom margin, they hold their place. Beg, Steal & Borrow is a very informative text that has been effectively designed in such a way to “link the text with other existing elements” whilst “inducing a state of energetic repose, which is the ideal condition for reading” .

Remember when I asked if you would enjoy reading a book

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set in Papyrus? Well, sometimes, just sometimes, these elaborate (at times illegible) display fonts have valuable uses, and when used tastefully can further support the book’s message.

Book 03

The final text for my analysis is B is for Bauhaus by Deyan Sudjic. This paperback book featuring a symmetrical layout is in its sixth edition and has been translated into six different languages .

The paperback edition was published Penguin Random House in March 2013. The layout of the text is relatively simple, featuring Baskerville 10 as the main body text font. Baskerville 10 is ¬¬a transitional serif designed in 1754 and heavily influenced by typefounder and printer John Baskerville . “Baskerville… is most known for its crisp edges, high contrast and generous proportions.” At this point, B is for Bauhaus sounds quite straightforward and unassuming in its type design. But upon closer inspection, I noticed a typographic feature that was very impressive.

While there are multiple ‘tactics’ from Bringhurst’s text that apply to this very special typographic feature that I am building up to (such as “discover the out logic of the typography in the inner logic of the text” or “give full typographical attention even to incidental details” ) the most fitting tactic would be “choose a typeface or a group of faces that will honour and elucidate the character of the text” . Let me explain. The title of this text (B is for Bauhaus) is just one of the examples of the alphabetically ordered topics that Sudjic explores. The tagline of the text is in fact, “An A-Z of the Modern World” . There is also: D is for Design, F is for Function, Q is for QWERTY and Y is for YouTube, to name a few. The very special typographic element that features within this text is that each chapter page and the following corresponding chapter page headers, is a unique font that correlates to the chapter’s topic. For example, the Bauhaus chapter’s heading font is Bauhaus 93. The Y is for YouTube chapter font is Roboto, the same as the logo itself. And so on, so forth. This small incidental detail adds a depth and a layer of interest for the reader. Partly, to keep the reader intrigued as to guessing ‘what’s next?’ and partly to identify each individual font and attach some level of familiarity with the font and that specific topic. So, while the entire body texts are not set in display font, this attention to detail is small but packs a mighty punch.

Typography for publication design is such an integral part to the success of a book, but it often goes unnoticed by the consumer. It is a key factor in the communication of the messages provided by the author and by the publisher and is a valuable tool to this process of message conveyance. As Bringhurst said, “typography is an art that can be deliberately misused” but when used correctly, when the right tools for the right jobs have been implemented, typography can help with leaving the reader with

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nothing but a pleasant reading experience.

References Amazon.com. (n.d.). Beg, Steal & Borrow: Artists against Originality (An Elephant Book). [online] Available at: https://www.amazon.com/BegSteal-Borrow-Originality-Elephant/dp/1780679467 [Accessed 6 Aug. 2018].

Bringhurst, R. (2008). The elements of typographic style. Vancouver, Hartley & Marks Publishers.

Goodreads.com. (2018). Editions of Goodbye, Things: The New Japanese Minimalism by Fumio Sasaki. [online] Available at: https://www. goodreads.com/work/editions/51579296 [Accessed 6 Aug. 2018].

Goodreads.com. (n.d.). B is for Bauhaus. [online] Available at: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17470788-b-is-for-bauhaus [Accessed 6 Aug. 2018].

Myfonts.com. (2000). P22 Johnston Underground. [online] Available at: https://www.myfonts.com/fonts/p22/underground/ [Accessed 6 Aug. 2018].

Myfonts.com. (2007). Bembo. [online] Available at: https://www. myfonts.com/fonts/adobe/bembo/ [Accessed 6 Aug. 2018].

Myfonts.com. (2011). Periรณdico. [online] Available at: https://www. myfonts.com/fonts/emtype/periodico/ [Accessed 6 Aug. 2018].

Sudjic, D. (2014). B is for Bauhaus, Y is for YouTube. 1st ed. United Kingdom: Penguin Books.

Yau, C. (2010). Know your type: Baskerville. [online] Idsgn.org.

Available at: http://idsgn.org/posts/know-your-type-baskerville/ [Accessed 6 Aug. 2018].

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03 Daniel Yakup

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In Beatrice Warde’s “The Crystal Goblet”, she uses wine and goblets as metaphorical devices to describe the push and pull between subtlety and brilliance that the art of typography holds.

All that goes into what makes the wine and goblet – in its colour, its material, its physical state – all serve to have a specific purpose, and none of it are accidental at all. What stood out to me was her account on the first person to choose the wine goblet to be made out of glass asking the question: “What must it do?” rather than “How should it look?”. It is an important question to be always kept in mind by designers of all discipline. All design decisions come from an informed choice, with a specific objective in mind. However, there is a certain degree of finesse and refinement that the discipline of typography holds, both as a practitioner and as a reader of the matter. This essay will employ three contemporary examples of publications in order to dissect the aforementioned subtlety of the subject. The three examples highly vary: publication period, genre, intent, format and audience. We will be able to see the elements that persist through these three publications that allows them to be typographically functional, as well as elements that set them apart and the reason for these differences to exist in each one of those publications.

Book 01

The first example is Garrison Keillor’s “WLT: A Radio Romance”. The book is a fictional comedy novel. The story is set in 1926, with the main characters Ray and Roy Soderbjerg attempting to run a radio station to rescue their failing restaurant business.

The book is a softcover book, and is fairly lengthy, containing 416 pages. This includes any blank buffer pages as well as table of contents, credits and acknowledgments. The book is symmetrical, its dimensions being 11 cm wide, 17.8 cm tall, and 2.9 cm in thickness – this makes the book still as wieldy as fictional novels typically are.

There is only one edition of the novel published by Viking Penguin, and printed in Great Britain by Clays Limited in 1992.

The body text in the novel uses the humanist serif typeface, Garamond. For the chapter titles, as well as the table of contents, the publisher used a custom unidentifiable serif typeface, set in small caps. Lastly, the humanist serif typeface Palatino was used for the title in the cover page of the book.

The point size of the body text is small yet still proportional to the size of the page. The layout is symmetrical and balanced, with 18 mm set for top, bottom and outer margins, and 12 mm set for the inner margin. This configuration allows a minimum of seven long words or fourteen short words in a single line. Typically, there are 35 lines in a single page. The main body text is justified, with hyphenation. Certain parts of the body text are aligned left, and further indented towards the right. These are meant for parts of the

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stories with flashbacks, dialogues, and words to songs in the story. The typeface uses the roman type for most of the body text, and the italic type for characters’ thoughts and special nouns. Specific treatments are given for certain words and even paragraphs in the book. For example, a single word may be italicised or printed in uppercase for purpose of emphasis – which happens fairly often throughout the book. For each new chapter, a three-line drop cap is used for the first alphabet of the first paragraph. Other elements are typically centred, such as the chapter number and title at the start of a new one. The page number is placed centre at the bottom of the page, while there is a single centred line that runs across the page that acts as a border on the top of the pages with the main body text. There is also a shorter double line centred and dispersed throughout the text that acts as an indication of separation for some parts.

Overall, I feel the novel is readable and legible on a typographic level. In Robert Bringhurst’s “The Elements of Typographic Style”, he mentioned that there is a possibility that a long body of text, such as ones found in novels, may suffer from the monotony of lines after lines of text. However, I did not feel that monotony as the typesetting in the book was effective in creating a form of pace and rhythm Bringhurst stated within his writing. This pace and rhythm were achieved through the varying usage or roman and italic typefaces, and even words or paragraphs set in uppercase for added effect. As the story revolves around a radio station, sections where the text includes songs and radio interviews were clearly distinguished from the main text to assist in readability. While I personally would enjoy a more generous space between lines and alphabets in the text, I would presume that it would cause the book to run even further than 400 pages with a larger and looser typesetting – and incur a higher cost for the publisher in the book’s production.

Book 02

The second example is Tom Nichols’ “The Death of Expertise: The Campaign Against Established Knowledge and Why It Matters”. The book has a more formal and academic style of writing than the previous title. The book aims to form a discourse on the challenges of being in an era of information on top of exercising healthy and productive dialogues with the ability of obtaining information at one’s fingertips. The book is relatively thinner than “A Radio Romance”, having 252 pages even with the preface, references and glossary index included. It is a hardcover book, with a book jacket included. This makes the books quite hefty, even though it is fairly average in its dimensions: 14.5 cm in width, 21.7 cm in height, and 2.4 cm in thickness. This book was published by the Oxford University Press. It is printed by Sheridan Book Inc. in the United States last year, in 2017.

The main body text also uses the humanist serif typeface, Garamond. The chapter titles, sub-headers, and recurring chapter markers is set in ITC Franklin Gothic, in varying styles. The same typeface is also used for the main title in the book cover on the jacket.

The point size of the body text is nearly identical to the size used in “A Radio Romance”. However, the gap between alphabets

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and lines are more spaced out in this book. The top and bottom are equally set at 23 mm, and inner and outer margins set at 20 mm. Each line has around nine to thirteen words. Normally, there are 32 lines in a single page. The main body text is justified, with hyphenation. Direct quotes and references from other authors are indented on both the left and right side of the text. The roman type of Garamond is used throughout most of the text, with very minor exceptions. Special nouns such as movie titles and news outlets’ names are italicised, as well as certain words for emphasis – but only in the aforementioned quotes or references. The page number is centred at the bottom. On the top of the page, the title of the book is set in centre, in uppercase for the left page, and the chapter markers for the right page. For sub-headers, it is set to align left with the body text in uppercase. In the beginning of every chapter, the centred chapter number and title is followed by an overarching quote related to the chapter. This overarching quote is set at a slightly smaller point size than the body text. It follows the indent of the previously mentioned quotes, but the only span five lines long. The source of the quote is set to align right to the accompanying quote. The reference section of the book is set again at a smaller point size than the body text and arranged according to the chapter the reference was used and listed in numbers. The index section also follows the smaller point size but set out in a two-column layout.

The book is certainly legible. However, it does not share the same dynamic pace and rhythm demonstrated in “A Radio Romance”. Understandably, this is due to the genre of the book and its content – with the content of the book written in a more academic style, catering to readers looking for a more “stable” reading experience. It does attempt to texturise the text’s typography with varying indents for quotes, and a grotesque sans serif as its chapter titles and sub-headers. At the end of the day, I do feel typography for this genre of books will prioritise function over form.

Book 03

The third example is “Infographics: The Power of Visual Storytelling”, by the founders of the creative agency Column Five: Jason Lankow, Josh Ritchie, and Ross Crooks. The book is more akin to a designer’s manual, with its subject focusing on infographics and its modern applications in today’s media and design landscape.

The book contains 264 pages, including additional pages such as table of contents and the glossary index. A unique characteristic of this book when compared to the two previous books is it is square in shape, measuring 23 cm on width and height, while being 1.6 cm in thickness. The book was published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. in Hoboken, New Jersey in 2012.

Garamond makes its appearance again for the main body text, supported by the grotesque sans serif typeface Helvetica Neue in various styles for chapter titles and markers. The captions of the illustrations used in the book is set in old style serif Minion.

The point size of the main text of the book is slightly smaller than the previous two books. It shares the same generosity of spaces between alphabets and lines in the text. The text is laid

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out in a two-column layout. While the top and outer margins are generally consistent throughout the book at 14 mm, the inner and bottom margins vastly vary, depending on the content of the page.

This causes the number of lines of text in page to also be varying from sections to sections. However, the number of words per line is similar, ranging around 9-11 words. The body text is set to align left, with hyphenation. Sub-header is set to align left as well, with a line between sub-header and text as a divider. The page numbers are set to align to the outer margin, while chapter markers are set to align to the inner margin. Both of these elements follow a single border line, set to the top of the page. Heavy usage of illustrations and supporting images can be found in this book. The captions of the images have various layouts used, some in single line or multiple lines, in both either top or bottom of the images.

The book has a certain dynamic quality to it, typographically. I believe it is due to the need for the typography to bounce off the colour and scale that the supporting images bring.

This reinforces Bringhurst’s idea of relationships between elements when existing on a single page. While the typography of the book is a visual element in itself, this book is a better example in demonstrating Warde’s idea of “transparency” being translated into print as well as the subtle nature of typography. It certainly shows - the effective presence of the book’s typography does not “shout” to demand the reader’s attention. The readability would still be as engaging despite the competing presence of more appealing graphics and images surrounding the body text.

In analysing these three books, the usage of Garamond throughout the three books demonstrates the “durability” of typography mentioned by Bringhurst. Despite the books being published in 1992, 2012, and 2017, typographic durability will always be superior than the need for typography to be flashy in nature. This durability is also shown when the typeface is used through three books of different genre, written with three different intentions in mind. While the text content does indeed dictate the typographic decisions, an effective typography is able to exist through multiple medium and even more varying restrictions. With typography being described as a form of “slow, performing art”, it is also important to identify the supporting cast that lends to the effectiveness of the hero typeface. By honouring the letters, content and text as if it possesses dignity and agency of its own, it is then up to the typographer to decide and design a crystal clear goblet for their finest, most exquisite wine.

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04 Chenmengdie

Chenmengdie

In the eye of general public, the terms “typography” and “font” are pretty much same, typography is all about choosing the font that looks the prettiest. It’s a misunderstanding. From a designer point of view there is a fundamental difference between the two.

Typography plays an important role in publication design.

What is typography? In simple words, typography is the art and technique of arranging type to make written language legible, readable, and appealing when displayed (Rosen, 1976). That includes important components of typography which can affect the publication design. Such as typeface, point size, weight, line length, letter-spacing and layout between others.

Due to the fact that typography is so closely merged with publication design, some people may have the misconception that its purpose is to make it beautiful. However, the main purpose of typography is not attractiveness. It is also about readability that typography aims at.

This does not mean that it should not look attractive, but this is not the main factor.

The choice of font is crucial. The main purpose of font selection or typeface is to convey the purpose of the graphic and content. The choice of font size and type can make people have different feelings, from seriousness, importance to fun and light in different contexts.

Moreover, alignment helps keep the look of a piece unified.

A flush left or flush right alignment gives the piece a stronger edge line for the viewer’s eye to follow.

In the following sections, three books will be used as cases to discuss the impact of typography on publication design.

Book 01

Case 1: The Architecture of the Italian Renaissance (Peter Murray, 1969) This is a classic guide book of Italian Renaissance architecture consists of introduction, multiple chapters, bibliography and index. It is a standard A5 reprinted paperback book with 252 pages. This book uses the common binding method of paperback books, which is a form of binding most often used in the types of books reading on the train or at home. The pages are folded into sections and glued with a heavier printed wrap-around cover into the spine using a strong adhesive.

The margins of this book are top: 20 mm, bottom: 26 mm, inside: 17 mm, outside: 26 mm and the pages are symmetrical. For a book of this size, a smaller inside margin is not common, maybe because outside margin has index No. of the illustrations for readers to quickly view the information of at the end of the book. This makes the visual center of gravity still in the middle of the page.

The book also uses offset paper, which is widely and

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commonly used by publishing companies as text or book paper. This type of paper is much thinner than other types, which makes the book easy to carry.

The body of this book uses quite a lot of black and white photos and hand-drawn manuscripts, combined with text. The main text uses approximately 10point regular weight of cardo font with 1.5 line spacing, a free modern font designed by David Perry and published by Google Web Fonts. According to the google fonts, Cardo is a large Unicode font specifically designed for classicists, Biblical scholars, medievalists, and linguists to meet their needs, which is very suitable to use consider the theme of this book. As for me, the typesetting described above is very reasonable in this book.

Book 2

Case 2: Czech Action Art: Happenings, Actions, Events, Land Art, Body Art and Performance Art Behind the Iron Curtain (Pavlína Morganová, 2014) This paperback book is about Czech Action Art published in 2014. It has 287 pages and close to A5 size with symmetrical design.

Coated paper is used to clearly show a large number of documentary photos in the book. Compared to the almost same size of the first book, the book is much heavier. The margins of this book are top: 20 mm, bottom: 15 mm, inside: 25 mm, outside: 13 mm. The treatment of notes is designed below and separated from the body text by a horizontal line. The chapter title and page number are both designed in the top margin area of the book.

This book uses Dharma Gothic E Blod font for the cover and chapter title and 10 point, 1.8 line spacing Neutra Text font designed by Richard Neutra from for the body text. They are both sans-serif typefaces. Richard Neutra is better known as an architect for his residential buildings, the Neutraface family typeface inherits the style of the architect, by specifying the lettering that was open and unobtrusive linear geometry to Neutraface without sacrificing an unmistakably warm and human feel. This typeface is widely used in the subtitles of packaging or book covers, including Australia yogurt brand CHOBANI. It is a modern font with beautiful lines and geometric.

However, as for the choice of title font may not be very wise, bold fonts and narrower glyphs increase the difficulty of recognition.

Especially in this small-sized book as a long title, Bold fonts make the title over-the-top, making the text feel top-heavy and grabbing unnecessary attraction.

Emphasized text and subtitles use the bold version to distinguish the body text, and the 1.8 line spacing makes the text comfortable, clear and organized. The proportion of the photos in the layout makes the page not overfilled, thus making the reading environment of the book more relax and easier to understand.

Book 03

Case 3: Golda and Meyer Marks: Cobra Collection (Katja Weitering, Willemijn Stokvis, Karen Kurczynski, Brenda Zwart, Renée Steenbergen, 2017)

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This book is about cobra collection from NSU Art Museum Fort Lauderdale collection, a collection of European avant-garde movement active from 1948 to 1951, primarily known for a painterly style of coloristic disfiguration. Their style was characterized by abstract and improvizational brushstrokes and the use of primary colours (Spampinato, 2016).

This 2017-published paperback book was printed on thicker coated paper in order to present these colorful paintings. Even though this book is only 207 pages, the thickness is still almost the same as the other two books. This book use symmetrical design, the size is slightly narrower than B5. The margins of this book are top: 10 mm, bottom: 15 mm, inside: 50 mm, outside: 10 mm. The unusual wider inside margin is designed to place treatment notes.

Weather it is necessary for this design is really worth thinking about.

Because the treatment notes only occupy a small proportion, most pages have a subtle sense of imbalance, Although the use of 2.5 times the line spacing avoids visual overcrowding, it also makes the book longer than the normal books, and may cause unnecessary trouble to those who want to collect it.

The page numbers are not designed to be placed in the corner or centered in the usual way, but are left aligned with the body text and placed below the page.

Both the body text and the title use a sans-serif font called Neue Frutiger and distinguished by different weight. The Frutiger font was first used on signage system by new Roissy Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris in early 1970s, due to the clear and legible lettering, this font is widely used in other signage systems, and in printed materials. This font is characterized by larger x-height, as well as a more pronounced ascender height and descender depth for lower case letters in relation to capitals. It created a balanced image and included considerably narrower letter spacing. Frutiger meets the demand for a space-saving, modern humanist sans.

Nearly one-half of the notes to the chapters on the book page use a two-column layout and smaller point than body text. This design is suitable for arranging in the case of large amount text.

In conclusion, why is Typography important? Typography is the art of displaying content. It is not only about making the words easy to read but also conveys a “feeling� to make people want to keep reading. The choice of typeface and how to make it work with the layout, color scheme, design theme and so on will make the difference between a good and bad design.

The consistent use of typefaces, kerning, leading, bullets and formatting is critical allow the reader to focus on the content and not the formatting. The form of printing need to adapt the conditions of modern life, which people no longer red line by line, but glace quickly over the whole (Tschichold, 1995). The choice of sans-serif and the way that more paperback appears in modern publications is also the embodiment of this morden Fast-paced lifestyle.

Therefore, how to attract readers to keep reading without affecting reading is particularly important. Good typography often goes unnoticed. Like Warde said: ’Type well used is invisible as

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type, just as the perfect talking voice is the unnoticed vehicle for the transmission of words, ideas (Warde, 1955).

Reference Rosen B. 1976, ‘Type and Typography: Designer’s Type Book’, Van Nostrand Reinhold Co. Spampinato F. 2016, “CoBrA (1948–1951)”, The Routledge Encyclopedia of Modernism: Taylor and Francis. Date Accessed 5 Aug. 2018 https://www.rem.routledge.com/articles/cobra-1948-1951. doi:10.4324/9781135000356-REM786-1 Tschichold J. 1995, ‘the principles of new typography’, The new typography: a handbook for modern designers, University of California Press, pp,115-128.

Warde B. 1955, ‘The Crystal Goblet, or: printing should be invisible’, in The Crystal Goblet: Sixteen Essays on Typography, The Sylvan Press, London, pp,11-17.

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05 Chenqianni

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According to Tschichold, the function of old typography is not play any significant role because it aimed “beauty”, he also states that the essence of contemporary typography is clarity. This essay aims to analyse critically about contemporary typeface by comparing and contrasting three books based on the literature of typography history and theory.

Book 01

The Violence of Participation edited by London-based architect and writer Markus Miessen, it produced to expound on Miessen’s work from the Lyon Biennial in 2007. This dense paperback accumulates multitudinous opinions in order to exploring what it means to live in Europe today. This book designed by Zak Kyes & Zak Group, the design assistant is Lina Maria Grumm Sunbury Workshops in London. It published by Sternberg Press in 2007 at New York. Stempel Schneidler is used as the main typeface for body text as well as title page, designed by F. H. Ernst Schneidler in 1936 for the Bauer foundry. Stempel Schneidler based on early European typefaces used by Venetian printers during the Renaissance, it recognised as a transitional serif typeface which have sharper serifs and more vertical axis than humanist letters.

Nevertheless, designer use Italian Typewriter – a serif typeface which designed by Flanker – on the book cover as well as copyright page.

The structure of the book is complex, the body text composes by the conversations between Miessen and interviewee, it printed on coated pages, interestingly, each conversation is wrapped in a smaller size uncoated paper with question (or topic), interviewee’s name, time, place, etc. (Fig. 1) Besides, there are majority images of art works printed on uncoated paper behind the body text. This book is a softcover and perfect bound. For my perspective, the main audience might be designer and European.

Gill (1988) states that the outer margin should be at least double the inner margin in order to not appear to be pushing the text outwards off the page. However, in my opinion, it depends on the binding method. The inside margin of this book is 15mm which is slightly wider than the outside margin (14mm), but it has not lost legibility. When I read the book, the outer margin visually looks wider than the inner’s. The size of the content typeface is about 1012 point, according to Gill (1988), the use of font size is determined by the size of book.

Bringhurst (2008) believes that multiple columns may be required if the text is long or the space is short, or if the elements are many. Since the body texts are conversations, designer applied two columns to enhance the aesthetics of the layout and the legibility of the content. This book contains multiple elements and contents,

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thus designer divided it into three parts. The images and texts are all in blue in part A, part B is the conversation part by using black text, part C includes the images of participants’ art works. According to Tschichold (2001), in the New Typography colour is used functionally, he also mentions that pure red, yellow and blue, unmixed with black will generally be preferred. The use of colour helped me quickly understand the book’s structure. The layout of the book is symmetrical, designer also use uppercase A, B & C plus page number to help readers clarify each part.

“A book held in hand demands type of about 10 or 12 point on account of the length of the human arm and the normal power of human eyesight, assuming a normally legible type (1998, p.106).”

Book 02

Fig. 1 The Violence of Participation

2. Ted Noten : CH₂=C(CH₃)C(=O)OCH₃ enclosures and other TN’s Ted Noten, the author of the book, also known as a designer of jewelry. This publication attracts fans of cotemporary jewelry as well as followers of modern art. It published by 010 Publishers in 2006 at Rotterdam, Holland. Except English version, it has been translated in Dutch. Joost Grootens is a graphic designer who designed this book and Gert Staal is the editor. Arial is the typeface that used for body text, cover, as well as title page, it designed in 1982 by Monotype Imaging designers Robin Nicholas and Patricia Saunders for use in an early IBM laser printer. Both body text and images printed on coated paper, however, the “section” text printed on a smaller size of uncoated paper and sewn in binding (Fig. 2).

Interestingly, the text on coated paper always appears on the left side.

This book is a softcover and perfect bond, all sections are collated and glued to its wrap-around cover.

Bringhurst (2008) states that no matter what their relation to

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the text, photos, sometimes have to be grouped apart from it because they require a separate paper or different inks. Since this book contains majority of photos and few text, the choose of paper meet the demand of photo’s print. In my opinion, the most intelligent thing about this book is “section” text, it does not affect the integral layout and legibility, but also enhance the liveliness of reading. Both body and section text are using the same sans-serif typography with the same size (10-12 point). Tschichold (2001) believes that the jobbing sans-serifs are the most suitable typeface for use today due to their functionalism and quiet line. In this book, sans-serif typeface cooperate with contemporary jewelry design images brings me a sense of harmony and grace. There are about 12-14 characters in each line, “a variation that entails a lengthening of the line more than 12 or 13 words is a variation in a direction less commendable than one that entails a shortening of the line (1988, p.110).” The placement of photos is freely which looks good, however, some images blocked the page number which brings me some bad effects on my reading experience.

Book 03

Fig. 2 Ted Noten: CH₂=C(CH₃)C(=O) OCH₃ enclosures and other TN’s

The curator David Elliott brings together a personal selection of recently obtained international works in the new publication accompanying the latest Hayward Touring exhibition which supported by the Art fund. This book published by Hayward Publishing in 2014 at UK. The entire book uses only one typeface called Classic Grotesque which designed by Rod McDonald in 1946. This sans-serif typeface regards as a traditional font with a modern face. The Classic Grotesque Medium, Bold and Regular used respectively for cover, titles and body text. Both texts and images are printed on the uncoated paper, however, it has no influence on readability due to the paper’s material and thickness. The book is a soft cover and perfect bound with glue, it is worth to mention that the cover is not wraps around the book, but shares the same binding

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method with the content. The audience of this book would be designers as well as fans of contemporary art.

According to Gill (1988), the general rule of book margin should be: a narrow inner margin, an outer margin at least double the inner, a slightly wider top margin, plus a bottom slightly wider than the others. The outer margin (40mm) of this book is exactly double of the inner margin (20mm), the bottom margin is 43mm and the top is 14mm. It means that this book follows the general rules to a great extent. There are three colours of the font: black, red and white.

Tschichold (2001) argues that the liveliness of red consistent with our nature, we prefer it than the other colours. The strong contrast between black and white can be increased greatly by the addition of red. For my perspective, the red typeface plays a great performance to lead the reader, it indeed caught my attention while I read it. (Fig. 3) Muggeridge (2010) states that make obviously typographic variations: move from regular to bold instead of medium. Classic Grotesque Bold typeface is used for titles of each text, Although the font size of title and body text are much similar, it can be clearly distinguished from each other. This book has no page number, but it has 5 small rectangles with different colours in order to guide readers to the different part, which means if I do not use the bookmark, it is hard to find the previous page to continue reading. Although this design is interesting, it caused me troubles more or less.

Fig. 3 Art from Elsewhere

The three books are all related to art. They have the similarities but they are also quite different in some ways. Both The Violence of Participation (book 1) and Art from Elsewhere (book3) use colour typeface to clarify structure, however Ted Noten’s book (book2) aims to show his design of jewellery, the black font is enough for it. Book 2 and book 3 leave a wide outside margin which is helpful for people to read. Gill (1988) states that the book is held in the hand, thus the margin must be enough for thumbs. The three books almost

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the same thickness, while book 2 is the heaviest one due to its size and choose of paper. Both book 2 and book 3 use sans-serf typefaces which meet the demand of contemporary art aesthetic according to Tschichold (2001).

Through analysing and comparing the three books, I found out that the clarity and legibility are highly demand for contemporary typeface, moreover, the wise use of typeface can bring livingness to the page. The layout can be varied in order to show the character of the book, however, over-design should be avoided.

Reference Bringhurst, R 2008, The elements of typographic style. Vancouver, Hartley & Marks Publishers.

Gill, E 1988, An essay on typography. Penguin, London.

Muggeridge, F 2010, ‘Typography special section: Typography with words.’ Eye: the International Review of Graphic Design, no. 19, pp.24–37.

Tschichold J 2001, ‘The Principles of the New Typography’, Texts on type: critical writings on typography, Allworth Press, New York.

Image list Fig. 1 Miessen, M 2007, The Violence of Participation, Sternberg Press, New York, USA. Fig. 2 Noten,T 2006, Ted Noten : CH₂=C(CH₃)C(=O)OCH₃ enclosures and other TN’s, 010 Publishers, Rotterdam, Holland.

Fig. 3 Elliott, D 2014, Art from Elsewhere, Hayward Publishing, UK.

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06 Shalmali Dasgupta

Shalmali Dasgupta

Typography is an expression for the practical translation of the author’s thought. ‘Well-chosen words deserve well-chosen letters’ as professed by Bringhurst in The elements of typographic style.

The task I have chosen is to observe and analyse the implications of typography and designing of books in different eras and genres. After reading the works of great typographers and graphic designers, I am making an attempt to understand the use of typography and its effects alongside the design and publishing of a few books. The first phase of write-up of every book contains the description followed by analysis of the books in consideration.

Book 01

The Annotated Alice- Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland & through the Looking Glass.

Author: Lewis Carol.

With an Introduction and note: Martin Gardner.

Publisher: Bramhall House.

Translations: French, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, German and Hebrew.

Designer: Sydney Butchkes The size of the book is 7 ¾ inches width and 10 ¾ inches height. The spine is 1 ¼ inch. The book is hard bound and the paper used is 120 gsm. The top margin is 1 3/8 inch and bottom margin is 1 5/8 inch. The inner margin is 5/8 inch. Here, the outward margin is shown to vary with layout as it changes from one column to two columns to accommodate the annotations. The outer margin for one column layout is 2 3/8 inches whereas the outward margin for two columns is 1 ¼ inch. The layout is asymmetrical.

The dust jacket has been lost over the years in the library.

The names and the numbers of chapter are in large size aligned to the outward corners of the right page and stick to the outer margin of two columns. The running heads display the name of the book on left page and title of the chapter on right page are of the same weight as that of the body text but are smaller in size. They are aligned to the top centre of the page. The page numbers are on the bottom centre in a larger font size. The chapter name is in left alignment in a font much larger than the body text so as to be easily distinguishable from the rest of the text. The illustrations have been placed in reference with the text wherever applicable.

Type: The type used in the body text is Baskerville; a transitional serif font. It is around 14 points in size for the main story (which is bigger than the Running heads) and 10 & 11 points for the Annotations. The fonts have been italicized wherever required. The numerical used as indent for the annotation are extremely heavy and strike out immediately in the page. The font size in the annotation

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varies from 11 point to 8 point size. This font was designed by John Baskerville in 1750s.

Analysis: The book is meant for a serious reading and is fairly large in size. Therefore, would be read only at the desk. The work is has annotations explaining in depth the poems of Carol, Mathematical concepts and Victorian culture along with a play of words and two main tales. The other aspect of the size of the book is that it had to incorporate the annotations as well as illustrations by the side of the main text. The centre aligned page numbers to avoid the overlapping of thumbs on the corners and are as per the book design in the 1900s. According to my analysis the font size of the story is much larger than the annotations as the designer wants to maintain a hierarchy while reading the text and compel the reader to go through the main story before he starts to read the annotations. The size and the italicization of the fonts in the annotations vary following the same system of hierarchy denoting different segments of the author’s works. The clever use of fonts (keeping the same fonts throughout the book only using different sizes and different weight) so as to maintain the seriousness of the book and to avoid confusion caused by use of multiple fonts. This also stops the reader’s attention from being diverted and keeps him engaged in the expressions of the author. The design of the book is quite unique with reference to the trend of that era.

Book 02

The Lord of the Rings.

Genre: Fantasy Novel.

Publisher: George Allen and Unwin LTD Year: 1969 Book Cover: Hard Bound The size of the book is 5 ½ inches width and 8 ¾ inches height while the Spine is 1¼ inch. Indian Paper had been used for the printing of the book. The inner margin of the pages is ½ inch whereas the outer margin is ¾ inch. The top margin is ¾ inch and bottom margin is the largest at 1¼ inch. The layout is asymmetrical.

The book cover is black and displays a symbol drawn by the author in Gold, Silver and green colour. There is no text on the book cover.

The book also contains Maps which are printed on a thicker paper to avoid wearing during use. The map is of 20.5 inches width and 13 ¾ inches height. The inner margin for the map is 4 7/8 inch and outer margin is ¾ inch. Top margin is ¾ inch as well and bottom margin is 1 inch. The inner margin has been made larger so that the reader can see the map easily and it stands out from the rest of the pages of the book. After all, this book is a special edition.

The running head on the left pages denotes the title of the part of the trilogy it portrays and on the right pages tells the chapter.

They are written in all caps to make them stand out from the rest of the text.

The page numbers are on the TOP of the pages as the paper is thin and the pages are meant to be flipped from the top to avoid

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damage to the paper unlike the flipping of regular pages from the bottom. The numbers are aligned to the outward margin of the left and the right pages respectively.

Type: On the first page, the title of the trilogy is printed in Perpetua font (Transitional Serif) in red colour. It was designed by Eric Gill in Year: 1925 & 1932. It is a These fonts were of the biggest size in the book. The name of the author is written in the second largest size.

The front page also has some symbols which basically stand for the narrated script in different creatures to create an ambience.

The title of each chapter is of the same size of the body text font but in all Caps. The name of the chapter on the other hand is in a comparatively larger size and in all caps as well. The body text uses a version of Garamond. The parts in which poems are narrated are written in Italic style. The text is around 1/8 inch.

Analysis: This book is the first edition. It was meant as a collectible Item for the elite class interested in reading fantasy novels and therefore no cost was spared in the printing of this book. It is medium in size and special care has been taken while selection of the paper as it was a Selected Edition. Indian Paper which is very thin, tough, opaque white paper has been used as it can bulk 1000 pages in 1 inch and is very light in weight. It was essential to fit all the three parts in one book and to keep the book light so that it can be easily held in hand. Also, the era in which the book was published it was practised that Indian paper was used to print books that had high artistic value and exceptional intrinsic quality which was also known as Fine Press. The book is perfect bound and was printed in a letter press.

The highlights of Chapter name and number are very subtle as well. The text in the map is calligraphic and mostly a reproduction of letters made by hand. The body text is considerably small in size as the trilogy was to be contained in it. Even though the font is smaller than the acceptable size of 11 point (72 points in 1 inch), the type is very legible and readable as the kerning and leading are sufficient. I think the lower margin is larger owing to the style practised in that era and not the usability consideration as it is mostly meant for desk reading. The cover is hard bound to support and protect the delicate pages inside. This book is designed with the usability in consideration along with the trends of those times.

Book 03

Agatha Christie; Murder at the Vicarage.

Genre: Crime Novel.

Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers.

The first ever copy was published in Great Britain in the year 1930 by Collins. The first Agatha Christie signature edition of this series was published in the year 2002 whereas the referred copy was published in Year 2007. Typeset by Palimpsest Book Production Limited.

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Book Cover: Soft Bound.

The size of the book has 4 3/8 inches width and 7 inches height. It is tape bound. Also the margins are easily maintained in these types of binds. The outer margins and inner margins are 3/8 inch. The top margin and the bottom margins are 7/8 inch.

The pages are of cheap quality of around 100 gsm. The layout is asymmetrical.

The cover page depicts a tombstone in a graveyard to arouse a feeling of eerie and creep as the novel is of the crime genre. The title of the book is cleverly shown to be inscribed on the tombstone in Copperplate Condensed Bold which is a slab Serif font and the back of the cover is Franklin Gothic Light, a transitional Sanserif font. The signature of the author is used as the name of the series.

Copperplate was designed by Frederic W. Goudy and Franklin Gothic was designed by Morris Fuller Benton and released by ATF. The running heads on the left page is the signature of the author and on the right is the name of the novel in bold letters. They are aligned to the outward margin on respective sides of the pages.

Type: Type used for body text is Plantin Std Light in regular and Italic. This font can be categorised as a transitional typeface as well and was designed by Frank Hinman Pierpont in 2001. The serif fonts are extremely readable owing to the default kerning (space between the characters) by the serifs and the diagonal weights of the strokes of the alphabets. Also, the font size is big enough to read comfortably so that the pace of the story is maintained. Utmost care has been taking while choosing the fonts so that they are legible and sufficient leading (space between Lines) is applied to hold the attention of the reader Analysis: The book is meant for light reading and to be carried while either taking a journey or in a short break. Therefore, it is considerably small in size so that it can easily fit in a bag or a purse.

The soft bound cover therefore adds no extra weight to the book.

The page numbers are written on the outward bottom corners of the pages so that the reader can quickly glance and make a note of it while closing it. It is light in weight and is to be held in hand with the outward margins as support. The inside margins have been kept bigger so as to avoid the overlapping of binding even though it is tape bound.

The look and feel of the book is quite modern in terms of design but the fonts add a touch of the Post-Industrial British era in which the stories are shown to take place. The kerning is much more than default as the designer wants the text to be read with ease and slow the intake of the essence of mystery that drips through each word. The running heads are in a smaller size as they are bold and stand out from the body text and the designer does not wish them to hinder and overpower the body text. The font size of the page

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number and the body text is kept same as the page numbers are located at a considerable distance from the body text. Overall the book is designed to be user centric and satisfying the needs of an ever-so-busy modern man.

Critical Analysis: After analysing the designs of the books I am in total agreement with Bringhurst’s statement that Typography is a link and it ought to be as strong as the others in the chain. As mentioned earlier, the clever use of a single typeface in The Annotated Alice shows the conscious planning of typography since the 1900s and has helped the books become user centric in design with respect to changes in time and trends. This proves the statement by Muggeridge that types are forever motile and responsive to shifting demands stands true throughout the analysis of all the books. A great thought has been given to the selection of materials and printing mediums as explained in the essay Modern typography by Kinross.

Lastly I would agree to the thought of Warde that Type well used is invisible as type and is perceived to be a perfect talking voice of the author’s ideas and emotions as seen in all the three books where the serious attitude of book 1, narrative attitude of book 2 and thrilling attitude of book 3 has come out wonderfully by the use of right typefaces and type sizes.

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07

07 Josef Horak

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Josef Horak

A book is a thing to be read. It’s the combination of words and images printed on paper and bonded together into one piece, using typography as the tool to create the layout, margins, text size and the visual appearance.

Almost every modern book has a different typography and design, and most are following similar principals to achieve the best readability and appearance - keeping the reader interested and the flow of the text easy to understand throughout the whole piece.

Typography has a long history that has evolved over the centuries. The Traditional Typography used to be focused on “beauty” and “art” (Tschichold, The Principles of the New Typography) – with fonts being hand drawn ornaments, drawings and complicated, often hard to read typefaces.

In contrast, the Modern Typography is focused much more on “clarity” and “simplicity” communicating with the readers via clear message – font.

I would like to compare and discuss three different books.

Book 01

Ogilvy on Advertising David Ogilvy, Vintage Books, 1985 This book is written by the famous advertising legend David Ogilvy who is also the founder of international advertising firm Ogilvy.

The book is focused on advertising methods, how to produce advertising that sells, how to run agency, communicate with clients, make TV commercials, posters, print advertisement and gives the readers a great insight on advertising and what works and what might not.

The book is containing text as well as graphics. There are two hundred twenty pages in this book, including the index.

Most of the graphics are photographs and print ads from the newspapers or screen shots of TV commercials. The book uses the graphics as an example of advertising and then discusses it in the text - what is working and what not and why. The images are in various sizes and both color and black and white.

The book comes in unusual size with the dimension 18.6 cm X 24.8 cm in waxed paper soft cover.

The cover is definitely the strongest design part of the book.

It has the title that is in “Helvetica Neue”, Condensed Black, with the vertical scale around 130%, covering the whole front page. The interesting part of the design is that there is no author’s name, but a photo of David Ogilvy.

The cover of this book is bold, strong, and sends a clear message about the book. It’s very modern and it definitely grabs reader’s attention and leaves us with the curiosity of what the rest of

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the book will look like.

Unfortunately the rest of the book is not as exciting as the book’s front cover. The main text, the body of the book is set in “Minion Pro”, size at 10pt with the titles at 10pt bold with the chapter titles at 30pt bold.

The layout of the pages is pretty basic, with the top margins set to exact 10mm, followed by the chapter name, and double line – the top line is bold and thicker than the second line. From the second line the margins are set to 0.8mm before the first paragraph starts.

The outside margins are set to 15mm and the inside ones are also 15mm.

On the bottom margins are 10mm, followed by line, with the page numbers set on 0.8mm.

I my opinion the typeface Minion is bit outdated and not as modern as the other typefaces, but given the book being printed in the 90’s it still works. It somehow creates this unique feel, as the paper is a little off white, waxed paper that the typeface sits on very nicely.

The book in general feel well balanced, and easy to understand which is following essence of the New Typography that is clarity.

Book 02

Hungry Planet Peter Menzel & Faith D’Aluisio, Ten Speed Press, 2005 Hungry Planet is interesting book as it combines a text and series of photographs taken from different countries around the World.

It discusses the food consumption and the variety of food or groceries that are available in different countries. In each country the authors gathers around one family and takes a “portrait” style photograph of the family with the one week’s worth of grocery in front of them.

The differences are massive – from the families in Africa to obese American families. The book points out the differences about the packaging, serving sizing and the fresh / processed food ratio in their diets.

The book comes in a larger format, creating a great coffee table book at the size 30.5cm wide and 22.8cm height. The cover is a thicker, waxed paper with the title and feature images being textured – printed on foil, this gives the book more modern and appealing feel.

The title is relatively large and takes over the half of the front cover. It’s in semi bold, capital letters, in red on the white background. The typeface that’s used across the whole book seems to be “Latin Modern Roman” that can be identified by the bottom of capital letter “R” as it has this unique curve.

The second typeface used in the book on descriptions under the pictures is “FF Kievit” or similar.

The book’s layout is well thought though, the main or hero images are situated on the right page of the spread, covering the whole page and overlapping to the left page by 6.5cm. Each chapter has one or two hero images. The other images are orientated in the center with margins 2.5cm on the top, left and right, and 4cm at the

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bottom to allow space to put the description of the photograph.

The text is on either side of the spreads, with margin 2cm on the top and bottom and 2.5cm on inner and outer side. This gives the book nice flow and it creates a great sense of a story that is easy to follow, read and understand. The layout fits well with the book type being a photographic book and it would suit the target audience that would be a little older and ready to read and process more facts and information.

The only thing that could be changed is the choice of the font, it seems again very outdated, and old. The photographs are also old, but still telling us the story however the choice of different font, perhaps sans, or something cleaner with more clarity would make the book more modern.

Book 03

Notes From Underground Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Penguin Books, 2006 This book is a smaller format, at 11cm x 18cm, with a nice soft cover, and faded yellow paper. The book feels very old and lightweight, it has hundred fifty pages and the cover is made with two various fonts that seems to be handwriting going over a portrait of a man smoking a cigarette.

The book has quite small typeface, using “Minion Pro” but set to only 9pt., with the average of ten words per line and thirtytwo lines per page. This makes a little harder to read and the reader needs to hold the book closely.

The text is using the same layout and typeface throughout the whole publication, making a nice continuous flow.

The margins on each page stay the same – 1.5cm top, 1cm inner, 1.5cm outer and 2.5cm bottom. There are ten chapters in the book and each of them ends / starts at the middle of the page, giving four lines break and then continuing with the flow.

The book is relatively new, about twelve years old, but it feels much older as the design seems to be older, rather than modern.

There are no illustrations or images in the book, just a text.

I would say this book is a great example of traditional publication that has been following the same style / layout for decades.

Comparing those three publications I have come to a conclusion that it doesn’t matter as much when the book was published as it matter what design direction it was following.

The book from 1985 feels more modern than book from 2006, of course they are both very different publications, sending a different messages but still the difference is enormous.

As mentioned earlier and taken out of the reading, “The essence of the New Typography is clarity” this is the most important problem that designers have to solve by using typography, because “the function of printed text is communication, emphasis, and the logical sequence of the contents.” (Tschichold, The Principles of the

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New Typography)

References: Tschichold, J. (2006). The new typography (New ed.). Berkeley, Calif. ; London: University of California Press.

Gill, E. (2013). An essay on typography (New ed.). London: Penguin Classics.

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08 Yuchen He

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Yuchen He

The meaning of book fonts is to convey more information to readers. However, current fonts are divided into two categories, serifs and sans serifs. This essay will discuss the two fonts and use the relevant reference to demonstrate that the serif fonts are easier to read. And use three books to analyze the advantages and disadvantages of serifs and sans serifs. On the other hand, the way in which books are typographic will be discussed. Analyze the margins of books and compare them to get a common book layout margin.

The conclusions drawn will analyze how the way the book is typeset and the use of the font will give the reader a higher readability.

Book 01

The name is BARE BONES. The author of this book is Kathy Reichs. Similarly, Kathy has ownership of the book cover design. This is a novel published by Arrow Books, London in 2012.

First published in Great Britain in 2003 by William Heinemann.

This edition of the novel is the second reprint of Arrow Books.

There are about 5-6 edition of this novel that can be found. Also, each reprint uses a different type of font on the cover. And three versions use the sans serifs on cover, and two versions use the serif.

The currently owned version uses a combination of sans serif and serif on the cover. This makes them look very different. The font used in this version of the book now is: Plantin Std Roman. This is a serif. It was created in 1913 by the British Monotype Corporation.

Plantin would later also be used as one of the main models for the creation of Times New Roman in the 1930s. This book is printed on recyclable paper. This book has a lot of pages and looks very thick.

Due to the recyclable paper, the book is very light and easy to carry, without too much weight. Also, relatively light books are equally suitable for people to read on vehicles.

Analyze Book 1 By analyzing this book, it is found that the book has a large inside margin, 16mm. After opening the book, it will not affect the readability due to the thickness of the binding. As Bringhurst (2008) said, ‘typography must often attract attention before reading.

However, for readability, it must give up to attract attention.’ Therefore, readability is very important for most books. As this novel in terms of heavy wider margins may be maintained within the text is not obstructed by the seam. The body text uses the Plantin Std Roman font to give the reader a very comfortable reading experience. Most of the articles are written in the form of a dialogue, and each natural segment has a distance of two letters indented.

And the capital letters of Plantin Std Roman have a very clear recognition. The rounded and rich capital letters can obviously guide the reader to continue reading. The average number of characters per line is 9, and there are 32 lines of text per page. This reduces the

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line spacing of each page as a whole, which is more than readability, which will increase the reader’s reading burden. Therefore, the relative readability will decrease. The weight of this book is very light, although it has a lot of pages. And the size of the book is about the length of a palm, it is very convenient to carry. This weight and size is ideal for people with outdoor reading habits. The placement of folio is symmetrical, and the text occupies the vast majority of the page.

This proves that the task of the printer is to help the author add some edges, an artificial protective shell (Bringhurst 2008).

Book 02

he name is BURIED ANGELS. The author’s is Camilla Lackberg. The book cover design for this book was designed by Harper Collins. And Harper Collins published this novel in 2014 at Great Britain. This should be the only edition currently published.

The font for the cover uses bold sans serif, Proxima Nova. Frutiger Serif series for text. Mark Simonson designed Proxima Nova in 1994, revised 2005. Linotype has published Frutiger Serif in1957. This book also uses recyclable paper and looks very thick. But the weight is very light. It should be the same as the first book. Again, this book is still suitable for people with outdoor reading hobbies. This is one of the novels in the series. Relative to the other novels in the series, the design of the cover maintains a similar style. A story-based picture and Proxima Nova Sans Serif. The difference is the size and color of the font. But it can be analyzed through words and pictures that is a series of novels.

Analyze Book 2 The rhythm of the entire book text is relatively compact.

The inside margin is only 11mm. Although this does not obscure the text itself, it is an invisible reading pressure compared to the 12.5mm outside margin. In addition, the top margin of 9.5mm still gives a sense of oppression. This has a big impact on readability. A good type applies to any book, the size of the book is not determined by itself, but by the person who holds and read it (Gill 1988). Yes, books are prepared and printed for those who read him. Obviously, this book and the books in this series are designed to fit the people who have outdoor reading habits. Therefore, due to the circulation paper, the weight of the book is very light, although it is 29mm thick. On the other hand, the length of the book is still kept at 179mm. The book has an average of 10 words per line, with an average of 35 lines per page. This brings tremendous reading pressure to the reader.

Also, since the number of words per line is compared with the total number of lines per page, the word pitch and the line spacing are correspondingly compressed. This increases the reading pressure of the reader. Allow the reader to spend more time on carefully distinguishing between texts. In contrast, body text uses the Frutiger Serif, which is easier to identify than other serifs. This reduces the chance of readability due to an increase in the number of words and lines. The text may be too small from the top of the page. But the text of folios are symmetrical.

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Boo 03

The book is called OUT OF CONTROL. The author is Kevin Kelly. Cover design by Jean Seal. This book was published in the United States by BASIC BOOKS in 1994.

There is a hardcover edition in The Library of Congress.

The cover font is Univers Bold, sans serif, grotesque. Designed by Adrian Frutiger and released by his employer Deberny & Peignot in 1957. Subtitles use Futura No2 D SC Book and Futura SH Medium Italic. Sans serifs, geometric. Designed by Paul Renner and released in 1927. The paper used in this book is very delicate, the thickness of the paper is very comfortable, and the printed text is full of color.

However, the bottom margin with a small number of pages is lower than the average bottom margin.

Analyze Book 3 The book’s inside margin is very large, 20mm. The top margin is 23mm, because there are chapter subtitles, page numbers and book titles. Therefore, the overall layout of the page is at the bottom right of the paper. Similarly, a 15mm margin can also make the page look neat. The book has an average of 11 words per line, The average page text line is about 41 lines. But for a book with a page length of 230mm, the overall readability is still comfortable.

The subtitles on each page use the Futura font to quickly catch the reader’s attention. Folio is symmetrical.

Comparative analysis & Conclusion Through the analysis of these three books, it is found that the cover fonts of all three books use sans serif. This takes advantage of the sans serif to get the reader’s attention. So using sans serifs on the cover is taking advantage of it. In contrast, if the text field is used, it will make the continuous reading matter in bold sans serif difficult to read (Tschichold 2001 p.121). Therefore, the sans serif itself is too artistic and cannot satisfy the need for reading (Tschichold 2001).

And the serif of the body text of all three books. It can be confirmed that the readability of serif is indeed more readable than the sans serif. Therefore, the serif is more suitable for large-format text layout.

This will make the reader more convenient to read. The sans serif is more suitable for shorter titles because it is more easy to attract people’s attention. The margins of these three books are different, but folio is symmetrical. The text of each page is also basically centered. Through this analysis, it is found that the average text of each line is about 10. Regardless of the size of the paper, were maintained at about 10 words. Therefore, each line of 10-15 words should be suitable for people’s reading habits. Finally, by analyzing these three modern books, it is found that the inside margin is larger than the outside margin. The distance between the top and bottom margins is determined by the position of the page number and subtitle.

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Reference Gill, E. (1988). An essay on typography. London, Penguin.

Bringhurst, R. (2008). The elements of typographic style. Vancouver, Hartley & Marks Publishers.

Tschichold J. (2001), ‘The Principles of the New Typography’, Texts on type: critical writings on typography. New York, Allworth Press.

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09 Xue Jia

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Xue Jia

People enjoy to appreciate charming landscape through their eyes. Readers tend to choose a comfortable design to help them immerse in words, which is a parallel. Eyes are typography as carrier help to show the subject, and the landscape likes words as a subject need a good way to demonstrate value. In this essay, I will try to describe and analysis three unique books that I found as a learner.

Book 01

Fireflies The first book that I will explain is bought by me in half-year ago. I found it at NGV in Melbourne design week and it is designed

by Claire Denis. Why I made a decision bought this one is because that this book gave me a deep expression in method of typography.

It tells readers about work and story of Jia Zhangke, who is a pioneer in Chinese film director. There are two colors in this book, which like a wall to separate red part and blue part. When you open the red-side, you can read all of famous movies created by Jia Zhangke.

If you open the back-side (blue part), you can know a lot of stories about Jia Zhangke.

In the red part, all of the fonts and pictures that are edited are blue. The blue part is opposite using red color. Furthermore, about some details, this book is bound by glue as well as using softcover. And layout is asymmetrical. Typeface used for body text is ITC Mendoza Roman Book as serif and transitional.

From my point of view, I found some good points that I can learn in this book. Firstly, they use two colors to show different things, which is a unique and bold design. And these two colors, red and blue, are suitable for Jia Zhangke who is full of strong emotion in his life and movies. So when I look at the book cover, I can feel impact and contradiction form this book. McDonald (2009) said that: “Know when to break the rules and try arrangements that you don’t think will work to get a different perspective.” I think that designer uses 2 contradictable colors to break rules and layout, which makes me think of what method I should study. In addition, in this book, body text used by the designer is called ITC Mendoza Roman Book as serif and transitional. In my opinion, ITC Mendoza Roman Book is suitable for this book, which font as serif give people a classical feeling. Also it is beautiful in shape and is similar to the style of this book.

Book 02

Alphabet Soup Alphabet Soup, is a book that first published in 2004, introduces an A to Z of abbreviations, the body pages use slightly yellowed paper, and the color spreads deeper and deeper from the center to edges. Typeface used for body text is Frutiger Next Regular

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and bold. A clear heading in the softcover as well as simple decorations are some examples of abbreviations. There are some colors in the softcover, which show an agile atmosphere to readers.

In Alphabet Soup, I like body pages. When you open the book, the yellow paper and typeface gives you the idea that it’s a book with a long history, and you even want to sit on the grass under the sun and open it. But, about the cover, it shows a different feeling, which is too agile. There are seven colors in the softcover. Too many colors make it a little messy and fancy, which is over-designing. “Keep things simple”, Space said (2007). In addition, about bound of glue in Alphabet Soup, I find a little thing that is not useful, which is that the book can’t be spread out completely. So, some texts that are close to the bound is a bit difficult to read. I think that the designer needs to do some works about how to deal with it, such methods as preserving more spaces inside the bound.

Book 03

Agda poster annual Agda poster annual was showing a lot of posters about agda in 2011. This book uses of green color in hardcover, which is agile and attractive to reader’s eyes. In cover, the white color with some thin black line shows the name of this book. When I open it, I find Nuiver Cyrillic 45 Light as a Sans-serif is used for body text. Layout is symmetrical.

About picture, all of the pictures that show posters are clear to observe details.

“Printing should be invisible” I think this book shows it.

Designer must distinguish readability from what the optician would call legibility. In the cover, it uses green color that make readers feel modern atmosphere. And about body pages, designer uses symmetrical layout to make a visual point to draw people’s attention. At the same time, designer chose a sans-serif typeface that keeps modern atmosphere for readers. Therefore, there are lots of details to help reader keep paying attention to words in the book.

To sum up, three books are different style, different feeling and different knowledge make me to learn. Typography conveys thinking, pictures and thought from writers to readers, and needs to pay attention to purposiveness. In the past, I usually just focus on the visuality.

Actually, I need to pay attention to functionality. The three books show a lot of knowledges of typography. By analysing and reading lots of articles, I start to know that design needs to explore some alters to break rules, at the same time, typography does not forget keeping simple and being careful of over-designing. Furthermore, typography needs a coherence to any part even every detail.

References: Figuring Space, group exhibition catalogue, Henry Moore Institute, 2007 Peter McDonald, Art for Everybody, leaflet, Art on the Underground, 2009 v

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10 Zhengxuan Jin

Zhengxuan Jin

I grew up in a family with strict tutoring. From small to large, my life is full of rules and constraints on me. I am not dissatisfied with this, on the contrary, both my elders and I admit that the existence of rules is the foundation for ordinary people to build their lives. I use rules to restrict myself, but that doesn’t mean that I’m the slave of rules. Rules can bring convenience and joy to you sometimes, neatly arranged clothes by type or colour in the closet, for instance. Although I am not sure whether my love of the rules is one of the reasons why I am into typography, I believe that it plays a positive role in it. In this essay, I will use the typography design knowledge I hold (I know it is not much of it, but I do have some after all) to analyse the three books that I choose.

Book 01

The first book I chose is an economic management book called <Benchmarking for Competitive Advantage>, written

by Robert J. Boxwell, Jr, published by McGraw Hill in 1994 in New York, USA, printed and bound by R. R. Donnelley & Son Company.

This is the only version of this book and no reprinting version of this book since the same year it was published. The font used in the main headline is ITC Bookman, a set of fonts designed by Ed Benguiat for International Typeface Corporation in 1975. The set of fonts contains a total of four type weights and the headline used the Medium weight of this typeface. The subtitle used before the body text is the ITC Bookman Bold, which is also a member of the ITC Bookman font family. The font used in the text is Palatino, which was designed by Hermann Zapf in 1949. The name of the font comes from the 16th-century Italian calligrapher Giambattista Palatino. Due to the change of proportions of x-height, Palatino is more slender compared with other fonts in the Renaissance period, increasing legibility. The binding type of this book is dust jacket hardcover and printed on recycled, acid-free paper containing a minimum of 50% recycled de-inked fibre.

As for the design of the book, the margins on top, bottom, inside and outside are 15mm, 29mm, 17mm and 20mm respectively. Due to a relatively heavier cover, it would be easier for hardcover books to open wider than a paper cover books (which is how the second book looks like), because the cover will starch the inner pages, which means that readers can easily see the leftmost (or rightmost) content of each page, and the large inside margin is making this experience even better, without cause the situation of an over-narrow reading width on each page. As mentioned above, the typefaces of headline and sub-headline are ITC Bookman in Medium and Bold. For me, this is a confusing choice of letter weight (See Figure 1).

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Figure 1

Zhengxuan Jin

Figure 2

The variations of typographic should be obvious by using bold weight after regular weight directly, creating the palpable sense of ‘ladder-climbing’. The headline of the book uses the medium font, and the subtitle uses the bold font on the contrast. And because the subtitle’s font size is significantly smaller than the headline, subheadlines using the bold font are sometimes show like a blurred stain of ink, which reduces the legibility of the text (See Figure 2).

Book 02

The second book I want to introduce is <The Lucky Country> written by Donald Horne. This is the sixth edition of the book, published by the Penguin Group in Australia in 2005. The first edition of the book was also published in Australia in 1964 by the Penguin Group. The cover was designed by Claire Wilson and the text is designed by Scott Williams, with the typeset of 11/14 pt Weiss.

The name of the book is also the reason and original source of why Australia was called ‘The lucky country’ in the first place. The font used in this book, Weiss, including Weiss Bold and Weiss SB Regular, was designed by German typographer Emil Rudolf Weiß in the early of 19th century. This is a perfect binding paperback book with a size of 5.1 inches wide and 7.3 inches tall. As a social and humanities book, the fortunate country mainly introduces Australia’s customs, social concepts, and Australia’s position in the international situation.

This would be a nice book for foreigners who are interested in Australia and its culture, or for citizens who want to know more about their motherland and its position in the world.

The top, bottom, inside and outside margins of the book are 15mm, 15mm, 15mm and 15mm respectively. I noticed that, unlike the first book, the design of inner pages of <The Lucky Country> is more concise that main text body, top-centred sub-headlines and page numbers are the only 3 elements appears on basically every inner page. I believe that this is a practice of Warde’s theory of the crystal goblets. The essence of the text is the transmission of information and ideas that contain in the information. The book, as the carrier of the text, does not need to

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change that essence (Warde 1955). Having said that, there are still, what I believe, some minor issues exist in the inner pages. The size of this book is somehow between the size of a regular, ‘normal’ book and a pocketbook, which makes the margin-set extremely wide and tall compared to the physical size of the book, kind of like an overspread pancake (See Figure 3). Besides, the line spacing of this book is too wide for the length of the line, and this has caused some problems such as readability interference and lack of focus (See Figure 4).

Figure 1

Figure 2

Book 03

The last book is a lovely perfect bounded, dust jacket hardcover book called <Up the Down Escalator: Why the Global Pessimists are Wrong>, written by Charles Leadbeater, a British author and former advisor. The book is the only exist version, originally published by Penguin Group in London and printed in Great Britain in 2002 by Clays Ltd. This book used only 2 typefaces, Alternate Gothic ATF Demi for book cover and Monotype Bembo, set in 12/14.75 for the main body text. Alternate Gothic ATF Demi is a typeface designed for the A.T.F. in 1903, as a moderately bold condensed version of Franklin Gothic (Wikipedia 2018, para.3).

Bembo is a serif typeface created in the 1920s as a popular main body text (Wikipedia 2018, para.1).

The typeface used in the main body text of this book has a lot of details in the tip of several letters such as ‘e’ or ’t’, provides a refreshing and neat look if you observe a single page as a whole picture (See Figure 5). Like the idea in Bringhurst’s article ‘The Grand Design’, typography should be able to draw attention from the reader before they start to read. However, this very attention must be abandon after the attention was drawn (Bringhurst 1992).

In general, the arrangement of main body texts of this book, letter spacing especially, is very delicate, but there are sometimes when a word is taking a new line as a line ending, or in Muggeridge’s phrase, shows widows and orphans (See Figure 6) (Cotterrell 2009).

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I have always agreed to the idea that “text is a tool”.

Calligraphy has evolved into an art form because, as a tool, the processing efficiency of words has been increasing rapidly. The most primitive and important function of words is to communicate and idea exchange. If one-day humans evolved to a very high degree, using telepathy to communicate with each other and giving up the use of words, I think that is the end of the typography. But at the moment it seems that this is still a comical assumption, and before that day, typography will still be a matter of finding freedom in the rules.

Figure 5

Figure 6

Reference list: - Warde, B 1955, ‘The crystal goblet or printing should be invisible’, An Approach to Typography, pp. 11-17.

- Wikipedia 2018, Franklin Gothic, viewed 4 Aug 2018, <https:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franklin_Gothic#Alternate_Gothic> - Wikipedia 2018, Bembo, viewed 4 Aug 2018, <https:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bembo> - Bringhurst, R 1992, The Elements of Typographic Style, Hartley & Marks Publishers, Vancouver, Canada.

- Cotterrell, D 2009, ‘Aesthetic Distance’, Danielle Arnaud Contemporary Art.

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11 Nick Jumara

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Nick Jumara

This essay is about books. It is in some way about authorship and in another way about objects. Then again, it’s about illustration, something I know very little about (I mean here illustration in terms of the way that one could put any mark on anything). It is also about type, of which I know only slightly more about than illustration.

Wait, it’s also about me, and I guess in some sense it will be about you. But I would have to say I know the least about you, because I’m stuck being me.

Book 01

Certain books are so intrinsically linked to how they currently exist, it’s as though they can’t really work in another form. On the other hand, some books could be brought into existence in multiple forms. They could be paperbacks or hard, bound differently, use different paper and type, have a range of illustrations and we would say, “That’s the same book. It’s just presented in a different way.”

Some examples of this include the Bible, Alice in Wonderland and every John Grisham novel. Actually, most books fall into this category.

The books mentioned before, the ones that are tied to how they are made, are different in some fundamental ways. They make some assumptions on the part of their creators that, though common in a typography and design class for example, the majority of the population may not notice nor really care that much about. But there are repercussions and some interesting things happen.

I guess this essay is about that.

The Medium is the Massage, Ways of Seeing, and The Age of Earthquakes are three books that ask us to question some of the values and assumptions we make about books. They can force questions like, “What is a book supposed to do?” “Who really makes a book?” and “How can one technology echo another?”

If we basically look at a book as a piece of technology we can see: it’s some kind of material, usually folded over creating a spine, with pages that contain scratches to which we all collectively agree, if we like it or not, to ascribe meaning.

In order to understand some of the ways the books in this essay convey meaning, it’s important to cover how the books exist.

What size they are, what type they use and some of the illustrative choices made become important ways to see how they are acting in response to some of common conventions of book making and reading, along with the parroting of other technologies, to create a subtle layer of meaning that interacts with and amplifies the meaning in the text. It’s impossible to look at these books as just text on pages.

The Medium is the Massage – An Inventory of Effects 1967 Marshall McLuhan Quentin Fiore

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Set for a 50th Anniversary facsimile release early next year, this book is seminal for numerous reasons, the focus here is on two main attributes of the book. First is the concept of the book as co-authored work by both Marshall McLuhan and Quentin Fiore.

The second focus settles on the attempt to use one technology, the book, to convey a sense of another technology, the television. This is something that will come up again in The Age of Earthquakes.

The original cover of the book marks the, “close conceptual relationship between the designer and writer – like El Lissitzky and Mayakovsky, Heartfield and Tucholsky, Guylas Williams and Robert Benchley.” (Heller 2012) This is one of the first books to so prominently display the graphic designer of the book as co-author of the book. Here the work is intrinsically linked to the way it is designed. The idea of contradiction was important to much of McLuhan’s work and inherent in his theory was the concept that humanity had lost touch with their oral tradition. Reading and writing had turned human beings into more solitary versions of their oral cousins.

McLuhan can be seen on one end as decreeing the end of times because of the villain of technology and in another exalting the increased participation that television would bring. Somewhere in this sat Fiore’s brief, or at least the foundation for the graphic design of the book. (Heller, 2012) How could this book be made to feel like television?

No longer is the book just commenting on new modes of technology from an outside perspective. By making the book feel like TV, the reader is meant to further experience the concepts of the text in layered and subtle ways. This could be one of the more true representations of medium being a distinct part of the message.

“Fiore designed it as a kinetically flowing collection of word bites, iconic images, and clear and crisp typography.” (Heller, 2012) This is the attempt to use one form of technology, the book, to comment on another and therefore raise questions about how we as people have changed because of that. The ubiquity of the book only makes it a more powerful tool in this case. It is because of how we see books that Fiore was able to comment on how we have changed. Another work that followed how we see went another step further.

Book 02

Ways of Seeing 1972 John Berger “This book has been made by five of us.”

The first line of the ‘Note to the Reader’ in John Berger’s Ways of Seeing lets us know that it is not really John Berger’s Ways of Seeing. It’s John Berger and four other people’s Ways of Seeing, namely Sven Blomberg, Chris Fox, Michael Dibb and Richard Hollis.

Let’s look at some things that are true about this book.

John Berger made this book.

Four other people also made this book.

The layout and design of the book intimate some of the truths the traditional content of the book is trying to elucidate.

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I have a specific way of seeing based on the culmination of all my knowledge and experience to date and when I use that to read or see this book, I write a version of this book that is in some way only mine.

You have your version of above.

There is no truth.

Ahhhhhh.

Not to mention that this is a book exploring the time before words which, by nature of being a book has to use some words to talk about it. In light of that, the use of image and illustration become important tools to explain things that words may fail to do so. And why do words do that? Sometimes a word might brutally define something at the exclusion of other concepts, whereas an illustration might lend to a more subtle and intentionally subjective interpretation of the intended meaning. Berger refers to how, “this seeing which comes before words, and can never quite be covered by them…” (1972, p.8) As for the book itself, the original version from 1972 is a hardback roughly 13 centimeters wide by 20 centimeters tall. Set in ‘Monophoto’ Univers, this realist neo-grotesque sans-serif type from Adrian Frutiger is prized for its clarity. Used widely throughout signage and officially on tests and exams in the UK, this type means what it says. (n.d., 2018) With little ornamentation, the intention could be construed that the type is meant only to convey the meaning of the words that it assembles, and nothing else. Beatrice Warde would argue that this is the true meaning or calling of good typography, that at all costs typography should get out of the way and reveal the true meaning of the text and therefore the author.

(Warde 1956) Some of this thought pattern is dependent on believing that there is a true meaning at all, that we can actually decipher what that true meaning is and that it was divined from or to or through an individual who meant exactly what the words on the page say and only what the words on the page say.

But language is messy.

Book 03

Ways of Seeing may be taking an entirely different approach for how to use typography. Univers is quite clear and brings with it forward and bold gravity, but it could be argued that that clarity is being used here to illustrate how the nature of words can cause limited and rigid definitions of experience. How and what type is used is an explicit choice of the authors to convey another level of intended meaning The cover of the book adds yet another. Instead of having a separate illustration and summary of the contents of the book, the cover is composed of the title of the book and author, the publisher and content from the first chapter. This is funny as apparently you can judge this book by its cover.

This is a book of now, the now when it was made. Though covering a range of topics under the epistemological and existential relationship between a human and the other throughout history, the

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culmination of that thought, this book, is meant to be describing the contemporary predicament of those reading it. The design of the book ties it to the time it was made.

That quality is something that the following book makes even more explicit.

The Age of Earthquakes 2015 Shumon Basar Douglas Coupland Hans Ulrich Obrist As much a revamp of The Medium is the Massage for the Internet age as it is a question of how much the internet affects and changes humanity, The Age of Earthquakes is firmly reliant on design to convey meaning.

At first the book appears essentially similar to the paperback version of The Medium is the Massage. They share a similar size, layout and base typeface. Most importantly, the design of both books attempt to achieve the kinetic movement of the respective technologies theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re imitating. The sense of movement happens when pages are so quickly turned due to a low amount of text and it happens internally as subject matter shifts violently from one obtuse point to another. Thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s kind of like the internet.

Overall, the book is still a book and it must use what it has at its disposal. In this case, repetition, composition and illustration allow the reader to move quickly through the short content and produce a feeling not unlike surfing the web. Eschewing normal book conventions and beginning the work on the first page further allow the reader to feel a sense of inundation and speed when reading the work.

Though critics of the book abound, there is something achieved that points to how integral typography and overall book design can be to conveying the entire message and authorship of a work.

Is it the case that the typography and design in the above books has detracted from the inherent message in the text they were so nobly charged with representing? Or, is it the case that the design further helped to elucidate meanings that are often difficult to describe with words through an act of illustration? In this sense, the typography has done more to reveal the true meaning of the text rather than conceal it. The designs have offered up idiosyncratic renderings of ideas. And one could just as easily say the texts have done the same. To add yet another layer of meaning, I have a different way of reading that subtle complexity than you. (That was the part about you.) When there is the chance for interpretation, maybe every design choice has a meaning.

References Berger, J Blomberg, S Fox, C Dibb, M & Hollis, R 1972, Ways of Seeing, Penguin Books, London Heller, S 2012, Quentin Fiore Massages the Medium, PRINT, viewed 01 August 2018, <http://www.printmag.com/imprint/quentin-fioresmedium-and-massage/>

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Art and design always be discussed together, but the “pure design” and “fine art” has been entirely different in my deep inside increasingly. They are similar on the surface, but the essence is so different. Just like Warde pointed out that it is mischievous to call any printed piece a work of fine art because this implies that its first purpose was to exist as an expression of beauty for its own sake and for the delectation of the sense. (Warde,1955)This is cruel for designers who aspire to free art, designed should have principles and rules, and the essence of it is service rather than unlimited freedom of expression. So the typography as a category of design, the most important is functionality. Tschichold (2001, p.119) said ‘form must be created out of function’. The function of the printed test is communication, emphasis and the logical sequence of the contents.

Warde likens the content of a book to that of a fine wine, arguing that a book should be published transparent, like a crystal goblet, so that the author’s ideas can be fully appreciated without any other color or distraction. So in Warde’s typographic ethics, the idea that communication is good, the unnecessary trick is evil. I agree with this statement. In this essay, I will use this point of view to compare the reading experience and typography with three books below.

Book 01

The Berlage survey of culture, education, and practice of architecture and urbanism The Berlage survey of culture, education, and practice of architecture and urbanism is a professional book about architecture and urbanism, which face to the professional researcher or students in the field of this. (Fig.1) The author is Salomon Fraus and designers are Annett Holand, Simone Koller, Lu Liang, and Isabelle Vaverka in association with the Werkplaats Typografie Arnhem / ArtEZ Institute of the Arts. Eelco van Welie undertakes the role as publisher. The Berlage survey of culture, education, and practice of architecture and urbanism published in Belgium in 2011. The typeface FF Bau and Bureau Grotesque have been used throughout the publication. FF Bau is based on the late-nineteenth-century type -face Grotesk, originally released by the Schelter & Giesecke type foundry in Leipzig, Germany and used prominently by the designers at the Bauhaus. Bureau Grotesque is part of a family of fonts developed from the original grotesques designed by the Stephenson, Blake type foundry in Sheffield. The current family originated in 1989, was designed by David Breslow, and met with immediate success at the Tribune Companies and at Newsweek. Bureau Grotesque is recommended for use in newspapers and magazines.

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This book is heavy and thick, which separated into four different part and represents respectively in four different solid colors.

The text of this book has taken a big proportion. The designer used FF Bau grotesque font for the content layout, which has enough weight lead to a good legibility. The section of text layout page is mostly two columns or three columns, shortening the line distance, and also confusion when shifting from the end of one line to the beginning of another.

This is also reflected in the treatment note, where almost all of the treatment notes are in half of the original text column below, when I read a very thick book, my eyes build a temporary reading “habit” that follows the typography form, and the alignment of the annotations is the same as the text but the scale shrinks so that I can quickly get back to the text after looking for treatment notes. This “convenience” will go a long way toward reading a book of this thickness. Although it looks like a dictionary, I can find the right part quite quickly, because the designer put 2 solid color pages in front of each part to achieve a significantly clear structure. In addition to that,

Fig.1 The Berlage survey of culture, education, and practice of architecture and urbanism

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the solid color page mark on the right will allow matching the title of the current chapter in the process of reading.

Book 02

Power of style. An exhibition tour Power of style. An exhibition tour is a book about an exhibition of Max Schaffer, which edited by Janneke de Vries.

(Fig.2) It contains two languages that respectively in Germany and English, which use the same typeface of Sneak. It published by the Vfmk Verlag fur moderne in 2017 and printed in Germany.

Sneak is a sans-serif typeface which designed by Fabian Foher of TIGHTROPE in 2016. The look follows a customary neo-grotesque model, however, options a particularly unstable s that looks like itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s upside down. Sneak is offered in 5 weights with matching italics likewise as a monospaced version. The inside paper for print is Munken Print White 15 and cover for PVC Folie Gleckler. The audience of this book may be the people who interested in Art or installation art area.

Power of style. An exhibition tour is a book with half of the books are pictures The biggest characteristic of this book is that the outer margin only has 5mm, that is shocked me when I open it firstly (do not clear to know about the content.) Thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s mean there is no space for my finger when I hold it. Gill pointed out this like physical considerations like outer and bottom margins need more width than is required for mere isolation, for it is by these margins that the book is held in hand, enough must be allowed for thumps. (Gill,1988) However, there are two kinds of language inside. In order to separate two languages, the designer put German on each even page only, and English on the odd page. So that I just need looking through every odd page (right page) during my reading and holding left page by the other hand. Maybe that is the reason why it has such a small margin. However, this procession has taken a little bit long time to find this discipline actually, German and English both are not my

Fig.2 Power of style.

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first language, it is not instinctively easy to distinguish because the same typeface and weight which is not a significant difference as far as I can see.

Book 03

HARRY POTTER AND THE PHILOSOPHER’S STONE

At the last I want to mention here is a famous novel, HARRY POTTER AND THE PHILOSOPHER’S STONE by J.K. Rowling. (Fig.3) This super-famous series novel has been published countless edition all over the world. My favorite one comes from the Bloomsbury Publishing, this paperback edition first published in 2004 in London. The size of this book is a pocketbook with full text and no pictures, which accompanied all my journeys on planes and trains for many years. Compare with the other two publications, it does not seem to have much “creative” on typography. This makes so “plain” or even boring compared to other books, which used a single style of serif typeface and symmetry layout on each page.

However, aside from the personal preference for repeating this novel, this lightweight book has plenty conditions (appropriate margin for my finger to holding book; lightweight paper; the good size of typeface; enough line space can reduce fatigue and comprehension) for me to pass time on the way of every journey.

But the typography has a good legibility, and “simple” design makes me focus only on the work itself, and the top margin is very short, which makes body text not cramped or too small, everything is just right. The typography of this book is transparent to me, like a crystal goblet. Although I find it still has minor shortcomings in my repeated

Fig.3 HARRY POTTER AND THE PHILOSOPHER’S STONE

reading, I think its functionality has been maximized.

By comparing these three books, the most function of typography is communication, emphasis and the logical sequence of the contents. The individual will of the typographer cannot be readily expressed in their work, which is not at all the same as the self-

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expression essence of the fine artist.

Only a typographer’s wildest ingenuity can stop people from reading a really interesting test (Haylock, 2013) A book with clear and logical typography can make people feel clear and help to absorb more percentage of the content that’s mean the typography needs to be objective, straightforward, unadulterated by subjective factors, and serve the content.

Reference List: Gill, E. 1988, An essay on typography. London, Penguin.

Haylock, B. 2013, ‘The Critical Goblet’, Process Journal: Edition Rowling J.K 2004, ‘Harry Potter and the philosopher’s stone’, Bloomsbury, London.

Salomon F. 2011, ‘The Berlage survey of culture, education, and practice of architecture’. Belgium Tschichold J. 2001, ‘The Principles of the New Typography’, Texts on type: critical writings on typography. New York, Allworth Press.p.119 Warde, B. 1955, ‘The Crystal Goblet or Why Printing Should be Invisible’ The crystal goblet: sixteen essays on typography. London, Sylvan Press.

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Khuyen Phung

In publication design, typography is a significant element for designers to work with. The success of it is decided by the readers and the ability to portray the characteristic and content of the publication. To discuss the use of typography, I choose three books that seemingly have drastically different layout designs. All beautifully and uniquely designed, but lays within them is an array of traditions, logical and aesthetic reasons of their typographic choices.

The typographic analysis of ‘Giraffes, Telegraphs, and Hero of Alexandria’, ‘A Net of Fireflies’ and ‘rapt!’ will lead readers through the use of typography in traditional and contemporary context.

Book 01

‘Giraffes, Telegraphs, and Hero of Alexandria - Urban Design by Narration’ is an architecture book by SMAQ. The book was published in 2016 by Ruby Press, designed by Studio Katja Gretzinger. ‘Giraffes, Telegraphs, and Hero of Alexandria’ is a softcover book designed in asymmetrical layout. It solely uses a sanserif typeface - Atlas Grotesk, all in regular weight. There are three point sizes being used throughout the book. Body text is usually 18pt or 12pt, 7pt is being used as description for images and graphs or notes, and 18pt is also used for page number at the bottom of the page. The layout for text has 25mm left margin and 20mm right margin, but the images can go further with 5mm margin on both sides. It has 10mm top margin and 40mm bottom margin.

Comparatively, this book uses a grotique san-serif typeface just as many other architecture books. Perhaps out of the nature of architecture, a modern san-serif is used to best represent the structured, technological, modern and urbanized quality of any construction. A unique typographic choice can be seen throughout the book is the use of large point size as body text. 18pt is used for short to medium length texts that take from 1 to 5 pages continuously, when 12pt is used for longer texts. With many images, architecture drawings and graphs being used in-between the pages, the use of large sized type makes it easier to read from a distance, to both read the text and see the images without having to bring the book closer, or as well represents the monumental characteristic of architecture.

With 430 pages and a book size of H: 240mm x W: 170mm, ‘Giraffes, Telegraphs, and Hero of Alexandria’ is a quite thick and heavy book. Acknowledging this, the book has large margins on the right and left hand-side that allows reader to comfortably hold the book without the issue of fingertips covering up the text as they read.

A 40mm bottom margin gives a large negative space that makes the whole book feels much more breathable, which is also convenient if readers want to take some notes at the bottom of the page. Within

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this 40mm bottom margin is the 18pt page number, which is much larger than how page number usually is, gives the book a playful vibe.

‘Giraffes, Telegraphs, and Hero of Alexandria’ isn’t book that can be overlooked by readers, no matter what their interest background is, in terms of typography and layout. Its use of large sized type, generous margins and balance between images and texts gives a fresh, modern and playful characteristic to the book.

Book 02

Opposite to ‘Giraffes, Telegraphs, and Hero of Alexandria’, the book ‘A Net of Fireflies’ is rather a typical example of traditional book layout, but subtly designed stylistically to breathe characteristics into the book. ‘A Net of Fireflies’ is a Japanese Haiku and Haiku painting book, with verse translations and an essay by Harold Stewart. This book was first published by Charles E. Tuttle Co., Inc of Rutland, Vermont & Tokyo, Japan in 1960; book design and typography is by M. Weatherby. The edition I got my hands on is the twenty-first printing, 1973. ‘A Net of Fireflies’ is a hardcover book designed in symmetrical layout. It uses the classic old-style serif typeface Garamond in regular weight with different ways of styling.

12pt size is set for italic text - which mostly are the haiku poems, 5pt is set for all caps title and 8.5pt is set for the essay’s body text in regular style. It has 15mm margin inside, 25mm margin outside and 30mm margins on top and bottom.

‘A Net of Fireflies’ has all the traits of a traditional book design: a hardcover, humanist serif and symmetrical layout. Despite being so typical and seemingly boring theoretically, the typography in this book is being treated with delicacy to bring out a soft and soulful flair. When it comes to more than 100 pages of Haiku poems and painting, M.Weatherby treated the type with sensitivity. Set in Garamond 12pt regular italic, the poems become charming, elegant and somehow quirky just like how they indeed are. These two-line poems are spaced 10mm apart, ascended by 5pt all caps title and descended by 4pt all caps poet names that are right-aligned. Such choice of spacing and styling allows a spacious white space between the poems and around the pages, which creates a somehow purified space for readers to unravel the sophistication of the poems. This book can be so pleasant to read that the generic readers would almost go through it without noticing the typography at all, just as how Warde has discussed how great typography can become transparent (1955). ‘A Net of Fireflies’ surely is an exquisite example of traditional book design being brought to next level.

Book 3

Different from but somehow similar to the books previously discussed, ‘rapt!’ is a fascinating connection, a fierce integration of past and present, of traditional and modern design.‘rapt!’ is a book about 20 contemporary artists from Japan, a project organized with the cooperation of various facilities throughout Australia by The Japan Foundation. The book is published in 2006 by The Japan Foundation, designed by Mori Daishiro and printed by APOLLO-

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SHA, Co., Ltd. ‘rapt!’ wears a thick paper cover that is skinned with fabric, which stays in-between the definition of softcover or hardcover, and designed in symmetrical layout. The book is written in both English and Japanese. It uses many different typefaces throughout including serif, san-serif, script and display. Mainly, the old-style serif typeface Sabon 8pt in regular weight is used as body text, and the combination of other typefaces for heading, title, footnote and page number. The main part of the book has a 15mm margin inside, 7mm margin outside, 25mm on top and 20mm at the bottom with text divided to two columns. Another part of the book has 15mm margin inside, 25mm margin outside, 17mm margin on top and at the bottom with one column text. ‘rapt!’ uses two types of paper, both around 125mg thick, one with matte finish and one is glossy. The papers are printed in different colors, in CMYK and Pantone. Many of the pages are fully coated with vibrant colors with black texts, or white paper with bright colored texts. ‘rapt!’ is an untamed and expressive book, fueled with a creative use of colors, layouts, typefaces and printing techniques.

All of these bold elements come together to represent the limitless creativity that lays within the stories from the contemporary artists.

The design of the book is as inspiring as what the book contents.

Muggeridge stated that typography can be hypocritical: to break the rules, you need to know them. ‘Be careful not simply to follow fashion, as new pieces of work do not necessarily have to be new’ (Muggeridge, F). ‘rapt!’ has found itself a way to do so by connecting the traditional with the modern, break the rules but respect the rules.

Despite being so boldly designed, ‘rapt!’ is balanced by the use of the classic typeface Sabon as body text and a symmetrical layout as seen in traditional book layout. This typographic choice harmonises all elements together to create a playful, adventurous but coordinated and balanced book design.

Nonetheless, the disruptive design of the book can make it problematic when it comes to legibility. The main part of the book, which is interviews from the artists, has a font size of 8pt and a narrow margin on the outside of 7mm is perhaps challenging for readers because the text is small and the fingertips can easily cover the text. The bright colored text in 8pt size can be hard to read at times as well. However, the design of ‘rapt!’, as its name, is able to successfully depict the fascinating art scene and artists of Japan with a stylish personality and an interrelation of past and present.

Comparing ‘Giraffes, Telegraphs, and Hero of Alexandria’, ‘A Net of Fireflies’ and ‘rapt!’, it is apparent that typography can be used differently in different context, but sometimes the styles can be integrated when appropriate. ‘Giraffes, Telegraphs, and Hero of Alexandria’ is a contemporary approach to typography with its use of a groteque typeface Atlas Grotesk in large size and wide margins, ‘A Net of Fireflies’ is a traditional approach with a humanist typeface

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Garamond and wide margins, ‘rapt!’ is a combination of both and beyond - a contemporary approach with an old-style typeface Sabon, which was designed based on Garamond itself, in combination with other typefaces and narrow margins. As times go by, there’s no boundaries between tradition and modern, more interrelation between all design movements is being integrated into creative work, and so does the use of typography in book design.

References Fraser Muggeridge, ‘Typography with words’.

Beatrice Warde, ‘The Crystal Goblet, or: Printing should be invisible’, in The Crystal Goblet: Sixteen Essays on Typography, The Sylvan press, London 1955, pp. 11-17.

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Book, novels, magazines, newspapers, web pages and more specifically mobile applications, tend to grab our attentions on everyday basis. But what makes a good book page or web page more intriguing for us?. Whether we were designers or non-designers, there are elements that uniquely grab human eyes and make a layout more attractive and readable.

As a designer who is always keen to study the elements of good typography design, I will do an analysis on three books, which I think are very different in content and treatment of type. In this analysis I will consider the basic typography principles to compare and describe the graphic design used in the book layouts.

Book 1

Starting up, I will discuss the “Futurism” book, issued in 1972, written by Jane Rye, designed by Ian Craig, and published in great Britain in London by studio vista. The book has not been redesigned later in time, has not been translated to any other languages, nor they have written more editions for it. The audience of this book is typically artists and writers. The author takes the reader through the ideal futurism era, and explains its influence on art, sculpture, paintings, theatre, and literature. The text is guided by selected illustrations, explaining the futurist relationship with artists in different countries at that time. (Futurism, Rye) At first sight, looking at the hard cover of the book, it looks convenient, as it is handy; the size of the cover is 28.9x70.01cm. The cover has one of the futurist painter’s illustrations, reflecting on the content of the book. The title typeface though, is san-serif, gill sans which is a bit surprising as futurists were considered the leaders of modernism and gill sans is from the humanist typefaces, designed by British designer, Eric gill in 1926. (Ovenden, 2016) Looking at the body text, the designer has used universe sanserif font, which makes much more sense at the time of publication.

The captions are written in Folio Medium, while the folios and page numbers are also Universe typeface, designed by Adrian Frutiger in 1957 (Rose, 2017), classified as san-serif neo-grotesque typeface.

The inner papers are semi-gloss 100 GSM off white papers, which gives it the look of an old book. The type of paper used for the cover and inner pages, suit relatively to the time of its publication and the context of the book, as it gives the implication of vintage and artistic book. I also find the relationship between the book content and printing material used convenient for 17$ book.

The second book in this analysis is “Lines of Thought; drawing from Michelangelo to now”, written by Isabel Seligman, and design by Dobert lehman Foundation. The book was first

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published in United kingdom in 2016 by Thames & Hudson LTD in collaboration with the British museum. This book has one English edition and has not been redesigned nor translated into other languages. (lines of thought, Seligman)

Book 2

The book reflects the process of making selected drawings and illustrations, for over 500 years. It explains the process of the art pieces by the world’s greatest artists, from Michelangelo to Matisse, Durer to Degas, and Rembrandt to Riley. It also examines ways of thinking, brainstorming idea, experiments, thoughts, developments and decisions the artist went through in order to come up with these masterpieces. The book has detailed description of each illustration, including title, date, size, medium, and the place the art piece is exhibited. (lines of thought, Seligman) The cover is soft, 300 gsm gloss paper, a relatively big book, size 22x24.5cm, with perfect binding, and the spine is 1.5cm. The cover design is very interesting as it presents a famous drawing by Andrea del Sarto, studies of children, creating a strong relationship with the audiences the author targets; designers and artists mainly.

The title is written with Gothic 725.

The layout of the book is Asymmetrical; the size of the illustrations and body length differs along the pages, yet most of the body length is between 5-11.5cm, creating a nice negative space in relationship to the page shape and layout. The body text is written with Baskerville, 12 points size. Baskerville is a serif typeface designed in 1750’s by John Baskervilla (kane, 2011).

I believe using Baskerville contemplates well with the illustration on the cover and the content of the book, as it is a transitional typeface and the book talks about illustrations form 18th century to 20th century. Further, I personally prefer to read text in serf typeface, as it is easier to read. The margins are quite designed to enhance the negative space of the book, outside, top and bottom are 10cm, and the inside is 20cm.

Book 3

The third book is called “Earthly Paradises; ancient gardens in history and Archeology”, written by Maureen Carroll, first published in United Kingdom in The British Museum Press in 2004, designed by Andrew Shoolbred. The book is a collection of gardens in ancient world between second millennium B.C till the middle of the first millennium A.D. In Egypt, Italy, Greece, Near East. It examines the different gardens forms, either in houses, cemetery, churches, palaces, concluding the book with the Islamic and Byzantie gardens, and depiction of Paradise in the culture of those gardens.

The book has beautiful illustrations, images, manuscripts, wall paintings, and construction plans. (Carroll, 2004).

The book has a hard cover, size 22x22cm, in perfect binding.

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The title is written in Gramound italic typeface, and Garamond regular. Garamound is a group of fonts of old serif typefaces, called after 60th century Claude Garamound. It is a popular typeface and often used in the printing of body texts and titles. (kane, 2011) The designer has used the different styles of Garamound in an articulated manner on the cover, spine and back cover. The book weight 400 gms, as it is meant to be a reference book rather for everyday usage.

Looking at the inner pages, the paper used is 200 GSM gloss paper, for the purpose of executing nice printing of the photographs, I believe. The body text is written in Garamound typeface as well, in 12 pt sizes. The designer has nicely justified the text without rivers between the words. The Asymmetrical pages, the treatment of the photos, titles, body text, captions, folios, and page numbers are perfectly designed in hierarchical manner, that the reader eyes move smoothly through the information. The top and bottom margins are between 1.5 -2cm, and inside and outside are between 1.5-3.5cm.

The margins are consistent through the book, yet, the designer have flushed some photographs perhaps to show the significance of the artwork. In my opinion, the book is well handled in terms of context and design elements, which suits the audience of the book, who are artist and historians, and could be people who are interested in gardens arrangements. I think this book follows the theory of Bringhurst in the grand design book, “shape the page and frame the text block so that it honors and reveals every element, every relationship between elements, and every logical nuance of the text”.(Bringhurst, 2008 ) Out of three books, I consider “Futurism” the least designed book, although the margins play well with the illustrations and body text at some pages, in other pages, the margins seems cropped off by the perfect binding, therefore, many illustrations are cropped off unintentionally. The bottom and top margins are between 0.7-1.5cm, while the inside and outside vary between 10-15cm. The design of the book is generally asymmetrical, yet few pages seem perfectly symmetrical. The text in my opinion is not eye friendly for the reader, as the designer has justified the paragraphs, which created wide range of rivers between the words. The type size; 10pt, is working well with the shape and size of the pages.

If I would redesign futurism book by Jane Rye, I would start by building a better relationship between the titles and cover page, systemize and articulate the relationship of the illustrations with the shape of the book and in relationship with the body text. Lastly, it would be a more interesting book if the designer has categorized the sections of the books through legible titles, as the existing book looks like one single section, which is less interesting to read and analysis.

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“In a well-made book, where designer, compositor and printed have all done their jobs, no matter how many thousands of lines and pages, the letters are alive, they dance in their seats, sometimes they rise and dance in the margins and aisles”( Bringhurst, 2008 ) I couldn’t find a better way to conclude my short perception about book designs, I believe, designers should spend good time in understanding the context of books, and all other publications that they have been assigned to design. The design decisions will only be executed well if it plays the rhythm of the author words and content. We as designers should be as responsible as the author in dragging the reader through the book at first sight then into the pages.

References Bringhurst, R. (2008). The elements of typographic style. Vancouver, Hartley & Marks Publishers.

Rye, J., 1972. futurism. 1st ed. great Britain: studio vista.

Ovenden, M. (2016). Johnston & Gill : Very British types. London, UK: Lund Humphries.

John Kane, A type primer (prentice Hall, 2011), 14.

Archer, Caroline, Dick, Malcolm, Uglow, Jennifer S., & ProQuest.

(2017). John Baskerville : Art and industry of the Enlightenment. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press.

Rose, B. (2017). Junk type : Typography - lettering - badges - logos.

New York, NY: Universe Publishi]ng, a division of Rizzoli International Publications.

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Limeng Liang

Three books will be analyzed around their binding styles, paper stock, layouts, and typefaces, and advantages and disadvantages of these books based on some general rules and the designers’ experience will be emphasized. The three books are deliberately chosen because they can be found easily in today’s bookstore and they are not really well-designed elegant art-related books, thus increasing the reference value for most public readers.

Book 1

The first book I chose is an English children’s fiction named Operation Rhino by Lauren St John. The first edition with hardcover was published in Great Britain in 2015 but what I am going to focus on in this analysis is a paperback edition with mucilage binding which was published in 2016 by Hodder and Stoughton. There are five children’s fictions in this series called the White Giraffe series.

All of these children’s fictions are bound up with covers of animal illustrations designed by David Dean in 2015 and the title is set in a handwriting style font that cannot be recognized so far.

As for the font of the content, his book is set in a kind of serif and transitional font named Minion Pro Caption Cond Medium of Adobe designed by Robert Slimbach released in 1990 (FontsInUse 2018).

First of all, for the paper stock of this book the body text is printed on a kind of rough and warm white paper while the cover is a simple soft board without flaps. The choice of paper and the design of the cover is quite common on the market and not very elegant. When taking a closer look, I could tell the inner margin of this book is 13mm approximately, but the top margin is 12mm even narrower than the inner margin. Whereas, the outside and bottom margins are about 16mm and 23mm respectively. It is obvious that the bottom margin is much wider than the other three margins.

However, the outer margin is only 3mm wider than the inner margin, not wide enough as far as I can see. The margin rule states that the outer margin should be at least twice the length of the inner one (Gill 2013). Then, in regard to the number of characters per line, it varies around ten. Moreover, the proportion of this book is 128mm x 198mm, which is the basically the common size of novels and fictions books on the market nowadays. The folios are placed in the center of bottom margins so that the folios can avoid being covered by the thumb when turning the page. According to the advantages from mentioned above, this book is quite suitable for holding and reading by all means (Gill 2013). To sum up, even though there is a disadvantage on margins and paper stock, it still comes with a relatively good legibility as an accessible fiction book to the normal public.

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Book 2

The second book is a very famous novel written by John Boyne named The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas. Because of the historic meaning of this novel and the high quality, the audience of this book could be most people over 12 years old. So, this novel was translated into many different languages and printed in numbers of editions. The edition that I got is the first edition published in 2006 in Great Britain by David Fickling Books and it was printed and bound in Australia by Griffin Press. For the font, the body text is in New Baskerville designed by John Baskerville and subtitles are in the same font style but in the bold weight. This font is a serif transitional font, which is quite common in novel printing.

This book is mucilage bound with hardcover and a designed jacket made of textured paper, leading to a higher quality than other books with softcovers and good for preservation as well. However, the hardcover increases the weight of this book in the hand to a large extent, decreasing the portability. When looking at the margin, due to the mucilage binding style and the hardcover, there is a further request for wider margins. The top margin and the bottom margin are 20mm and 24mm approximately and both of inside margin and outside margin are about 23mm, providing enough space for the thumb to hold the heavy book (Gill 2013). In terms of the typefaces, the body text and subtitles are in the same font, and this kind of font is formal and not distractive, inviting readers to the content (Bringhurst 2008). Specifically, the body text is in 12pt. regular weight font and subtitles are in bold font of the same size, enhancing the difference between body text and subtitles. This agrees with what Muggeridge suggests in Figuring Spaceâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Make typography variations obvious: move from regular to bold not regular to mediumâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; (2010). The average number of characters of each line is around ten, which is an appropriate arrangement for reading. In conclusion, this edition of this classic novel is in a good quality, especially in layout, typefaces and binding style aspects.

Book 3

The third book The Toy Maker was written by an Australian writer named Liam Pieper. This book is the first published edition

by Penguin Random House Australia and the text designer of it showed on the title page is called Samantha Jayaweera. The typeface of body text is Adobe Caslon Pro, a serif humanist font designed by Samantha Jayaweera. In terms of the binding, this book was bound in mucilage binding in Australia by Griffin Press. According to the title page, the category is fiction for families and the story is about an Australian toy maker family. So, the audience could be most people and their families.

Book 3 analysis The measurement of this book is 153mm x 234mm, which is bigger than other fiction books I own. Correspondingly, the top

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margin and bottom margin are 26mm and 34mm respectively. And the inside margin is even 3mm wider than the outside margin, which is not suited for the general rule about margins that the outside margin should be twice to the inner (Gill 2013). However, this thick book was bound with mucilage style, covering some of the inner margins and decreasing the unsuitability of the wider inner margin.

When it comes to disadvantages, the number of pages of this book is influenced by its bigger margin, increasing the bulk of this book and decreasing the portability of it (Gill 2013). Moreover, when looking at the folio, the placement of it looks strange as well because the folio is in a little bit right position to the middle of the bottom margin.

Comparative analysis These three books are all most common books in bookstores that can be accessed by the public and there is a quite big audience group of each of them. The first and the third one are both in similar binding styles with similar quality of covers, but the third one’s portability is much lower than the first book because of the bigger bulk of it. The second book is bound with the elegant hardcover, which is more suitable for book collection and preservation. For the inner pages, there is some margins unsuitability in both the first one and the third one, increasing the inconvenience of reading.

Through the analysis, I can see that there are numbers of details on binding, typefaces, and margins in even the most common and text-dominated books. All these details will influence our reading experience to a large extent and they are not independent but should serve the function which is reading by readers (Tschichold 2001).

References FontsInUse 2018, viewed 5 August 2018, <https://fontsinuse.com/ typefaces/4291/minion>.

Muggeridge, F 2010, ‘Typography special section: Typography with words.’ Eye: the International Review of Graphic Design, no. 19, pp. 24–37.

Gill, E 1988, An essay on typography. London, Penguin.

Bringhurst, R 2008, The elements of typographic style. Vancouver, Hartley & Marks Publishers.

Tschichold, J 2001, ‘The Principles of the New Typography’, Texts on type: critical writings on typography. New York, Allworth Press.

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16 Yan Liu

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Typographic design has been progressing with the development of printing technology in recent centuries, while at the same time different fonts and boards were born. It includes several famous fonts, such as Sabon, Helvetica and Futura. All these developments are for one purpose, and that is to convey the message accurately. Warde(1955) mentions that the most important thing about printing is that it transmits ideas, images from one thought to another. This essay will introduces three books which involve their different kinds of fonts, type setting and other details, and will use critical thinking to analyse them separately.

Book 1

The first book was Aron Ralston’s <127 hours: Between a Rock and a Hard Place> published in February 2011. This was a biographical novel, with a total of 373 pages. Publisher was Simon & Schuster in Australia Sydney. Firstly, cover text includes Urbano bold and Foundation Sans style. Both are sans-serif typefaces, and the cover used for colour printing has the impact of matching a photograph of a canyon. Secondly, typeface used for body text is Garamond by Claude Garamond (ca. 1480–1561). This was an old serif font, compared with the Italian font, its features are more delicate and elegant. After several centuries of development, it continues to this day. This kind of humanist font works well with slightly yellowed paper. Next, this book is a gummed book with softcover and layout of main text pages are symmetrical. Finally, since the book is based on the author’s own experience, the story was turned into a movie in 2010. The film describe an outdoor adventurer who has to give up his right hand to survive an accident in the valley. Therefore, a large number of readers are influenced by the film and pay attention to the novel.

Many design elements could influence the reading feeling.

The most obvious is the choice of the main font and layout design.

As a novel, the volume of its text is much larger than the volume of its pictures. Take the first book as an example, as a novel of 130 mm * 198 mm, 16 mm inside margin is comfortable. Because the paper is relatively cheap, it is wise not to choose sans serif fonts in the text.

It’s easy to get the reader into the story when the humanist font is all over the page. It is worth that there are not many annotations throughout the book, only a few pages of colour printing are about the author’s photographs, and the annotations are around the pictures, which will not affect the consistency of the reading. Book design is not all about addition, Warde(1955) states that thousands of people prefer to paid money to read pages quietly. So fancy and useless typography is a major design sin.

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Book 2

The second book was Phil Baines’s <Penguin by Design: A Cover Story 1935-2005> published in May 2005. The book is full of pictures which includes penguin paperbacks 70-year book cover design. At the same time, it also involves the thinking of British designers on the development of book publishing in different periods. The atlas was 256 pages in total, publisher was Allen Lane; 01 edition. Firstly, cover text includes Chantilly series font which were sans-serif typefaces, and the cover used for colour printing full of the penguin design. Secondly, typeface used for body text are Garamond Serial by Claude Garamond and Savoy, both are serif typefaces. This type of font is in keeping with 70 years of book cover development and changes. Next, it is also a gummed book with softcover and layout of main text pages are symmetrical. Finally, this is a retrospective book published in 2005. Therefore, the main audience for this book are the practitioners or enthusiasts of the book or publication.

This is an excellent and instructive tool book, beautiful printing and fresh typography. As a picture book, there are more space to leave blank compare with general novels. The size of the book is 186 * 218mm with18 mm inside margin. In order to ensure the quality of printed pictures, the inside pages of the book are made of copperplate paper. Although the book does not have a hardcover, the weight of the book is quite heavy. Compared with other pocket books, this book is more suitable for reading on desk table.

Muggeridge(2010) mentions that ‘I am not trying to find the perfect typographical form or arrangement but rather hope to continue in a life-long exploration of choreographing letters on changing pages.’

This atlas is not bound by a typesetting, Rather than being bound by a single format, the atlas tries to use multiple variations to control the relationship between text and images. But it must be admitted that this format sacrifices some of the coherence of the reading.

Book 3

The third book was Paul Buckley’s <Classic Penguin: Cover to Cover> published in July 2016. Designer is Matt Vee. The book was also a graphic book which includes many of penguin’s awardwinning works over the past 70 years. The atlas was 288 pages in total, publisher was Penguin Books in USA; 01 edition. Firstly, cover text includes Futura and Mrs Eaves Italic font which include serif and sans-serif typefaces. The cover design includes colour blocks and some old design images. Secondly, the text font is very brave, although it only uses the two types of fonts on the cover, but through the use of different sizes and colours, readers mistakenly believe that the font is very rich. This is the only book of the three that uses both serif and sans-serif on the content pages. Next, this is also a paperback book with softcover and layout of main text pages are symmetrical. However, the text layout of this book is very wonderful, and the heading title uses some typesetting haemorrhage design.

The font recognition degree of the book is very high, so it does not affect the understanding of the content. Finally, this is a collection of

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published art works, so the readers are mostly design students and book practitioners Similarly, this is a very recent design book, through reading readers can feel the careful arrangement of the book designer.

The designer will arrange a design to occupy the whole page for each wonderful work, especially some works with rich details.

Tschichold(2001) argues that People always praise those expensive sports cars for their perfect appearance, but never consider that every detail is based on aerodynamics. The same is true of book typography. Many novice book designers prefer to make grandiose designs, but they also make serious mistakes. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s like drinking wine from a pure gold glass and losing the enjoyment of seeing the colour of the wine. The main text of the book is in geometric sans-serif, highlighting the modern feel of the book. The only fly in the ointment is that despite the softcover, the book is still too heavy to hold for a long time.

Compare the book design of these three books, the characteristic of the novel are small size and lightness. For readers with reading habits, the weight of the book in hand is a crucial factor, especially the novel. However, the design of this novel is very mediocre. At the same time, in order to achieve a lighter weight, the paper have to choose low quality. After a long time of oxidation, it will soon become yellowed. On the other side, atlas paper uses good materials to achieve a high degree of work reduction. Therefore, when discussing book publishing design, readers must separate the different situation, different types of books have different functions.

Focusing on the two penguin books. The 2016 edition is better than the 2005 edition, from font selection to typography control, the 2016 edition atlas gives a more thorough play to formal aesthetics.

For example, some of the images take up the entire page of paper to show the details of the work. This book uses a combination serif and sans-serif on the content pages. These fonts not only displays information content, but also is a visual symbol.

Different types of books convey different information. As story novels, they need to convey a coherent reading experience to readers. As a modern published design atlas needs to convey a rich visual experience. Such publications need to break the traditional reading habits to give readers fresh reading experience, but also to present accurate information. In addition, as a book designer, there are many other factors to consider, such as the main audience, production cost, environmental materials and so on.

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References Muggeridge, F. (2010). ‘Typography special section: Typography with words.’ Eye: the International Review of Graphic Design, no. 19, pp.24–37.

Tschichold J. (2001), ‘The Principles of the New Typography’, Texts on type: critical writings on typography. New York, Allworth Press.

Warde, B. (1955). “The Crystal Goblet or Why Printing Should be Invisible,” The crystal goblet: sixteen essays on typography. London, Sylvan Press.

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17 Cameron Stevens

Cameron Stevens

Typo-Archeological Investigation: Three Case Studies ‘Typography can be thought of as the vehicle by which we visualise audible language’ (Fellows, K.S. 2009), so why might it be important to unearth the more nuanced tones of typographic assemblage? How could this allow for a greater capacity to identify and command both the tacit and explicit intonations of past, present and future typographic practice?

This paper will critically interrogate three selected examples of identified typographic and compositional interest which will then be analysed in light of criteria relating to both the tangible and intangible aspect of the given artefact.

Note: Reference images pages 4, 5 & 6

Book 1

Dieter Rams: As Little Design As Possible;

by Sophie Lovell; designer Kobi Benezri; Published by Phaidon Press Limited, London, UK; First Published 2011; printed 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014; Hardcover Book with Finished Tactile Dust Jacket; Coffee Table Format; 270 x 205 mm 400 pp, 300 illustrations.

Our first typo-archeological dissection is of Sophie Lovells’ coffee table publication; Dieter Rams: As Little Design As Possible; a ’definitive monograph on Dieter Rams’ life’, whose pioneering clarity of form and a minimalist, but excruciatingly functional and considered design language is not only synonymous with the philosophy of the pre and post-war traditions of the Bauhaus and Ulm Design Schools, but also the lives and countertops of a reformed modern man.

This hefty Phaidon Press release sensibly adopts the clean and unostentatious appeal of the Braun designers work which is catalogued in exquisite detail through equal amounts of textual insights, and a luxuriant exposition of new and archival photographs, illustrations and diagrams encompassing Rams’ prolific career; his contribution to not only Max Brauns’ now infamous appliance company; but additionally, the realisation of what thoughtfully considered design processes can contribute to a society as a whole.

Exclusively commissioned in this publication is a proportional adaption of Müller-Brockmann’s Olivetii commissioned non-serif, grotesque and monospaced, Lettera typeface called Lettera-Txt, devised by the books designer, Kobi Benerzi. The type is described as bearing unusual proportions owing to its rounded bowls and short stems; fine detail which is not overshadowed by competing variants, weights or superfluous treatment.

Consistent with Rams’ emphasis on considered function; typographically heavy sections (notably the preface) fail to deviate from a ‘no-frills’ commandment; enlisting generously sized and

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spaced lines of type to occupy a single, asymmetric left aligned column typically mirrored upon each page.

Interesting is the books allocation of stock in which an uncoated matte, presupposed to aid readability, accommodates a text laden preface, archival and diagrammatic arrangements; while a contrasting gloss media relays newly commissioned, high-resolution photographic content which alternate between a full-page double spread layout *effectively omitting both margins and page indicators), and several smaller artefacts constituting an evenly spaced grid across single and facing pages.

This publication bearing homage to one of the 20th Centuries most consequential industrial designers is a fitting tribute.

The subtle tactility of the specially finished. debossed dust jacket, an embossed hardcover and thoroughly curated content gesture towards an ethos that remains in the 21st century, as pertinent as ever.

Photographic arrangement over double spread, gloss paper

Front (Tactile dust jacket over hardcover)

Side view illustrating depth

Book 2

Inside typical text treatment, matte paper

A History of Economic Thought;

by William J. Barber; Cover Designer Graham Bishop; Pelican Books Ltd, Harmondsworth, UK; First Published 1967; reprinted 1970, 1972; Soft Cover, Series Format; 111mm x 181mm 266 pp, Nil. illustrations. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;When I was growing up, paperbacks meant access to two things hard to come by in the postwar period: sex and knowledge.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; John Sutherland The End of History or the pinnacle of social and economic

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evolution was effectively signalled by the emergence of a single dominant ideology following the end of the Cold War; that of Neoliberal Capitalism, whereby the logic of the market is immutable in its ideological authority. This wasn’t always the case. Penguins non-fiction imprint, Pelican, produced 250 Million books during a 50 year production run which prospered on the back of an inquisitive, self-educating post-war generation, which Guardian associate editor, Robert McCrum described as ‘an informal university for 50s Britons’.

The budget, accessible, no-frills paperback entertained a buffet of potent and importantly; radical ideas, embodying all aspects of material and immaterial life. The much-adored pocket sized text could be said to have drawn influence from another Penguin Classic, ‘An Essay of Typography’ by Eric Gill, whom says the ideal model for the conception of a book; is first identifying ‘who is going to read it, and under what circumstances’.

First Published in 1967, A History of Economic Thought is immediately recognisable within the programme of the International Typographic Style; that which is defined by objective and universal typographic practices as profiled in Jan Tschichold’s (1902-1974), ‘Die neue Typographie’ of 1928; ‘the definitive treatise on book and graphic design in the machine age’ (Kinross, R. 2006); from which he prescribes an enthusiasm for clarity; namely through considered proportions; asymmetrical layout, and the dominate use of san-serif typefaces.

For Allen Lane, Tschichold’s typographic mastery and Baskerville was all that was needed. A point echoed by the typographer himself in saying ‘we do not need pretentious books for the wealthy, we need more really well-made, ordinary books’; a philosophy that was actualised during his late-1940’s appointment as the publishers typographer, which ushered in an era of previously non-existent compositional guidelines, production standards, and a general sense of cohesion (Doubleday, R. 2005).

These aforementioned guidelines can simply be referred to as that which embraced an exactingly spaced, humanist sans-serif, Gill Sans typeface (1926) on a hierarchically severe jacket, which was

Side view illustrating depth

Inside typical text treatment, matte paper

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Side view illustrating depth

Cameron Stevens

Inside typical text treatment, matte paper

later, refined by Polish graphic Designer, Romek Marber’s grid system

Book 3

GRAFILM; An Approach to a New Medium

by J. Byrne-Daniel; Published Studio Vista, London; First Published, (single run) 1970; Softcover Book; 96 pp.

GRAFILM; An Approach to a New Medium, published by the British publishing firm, Studio Vista established in 1961, was part of a paperback programme that was concerned with the production of texts that met the criteria of affordability; accessibility in the use of language; and availability; a rather stark contrast to a time in which books on the topic of design, modern arts, science and technology were largely difficult to come by (Waller, R).

Specifically, this release complied by Film Design Lecturer, J. Byrne-Daniel, ‘is all about the (then) emerging artistic practice of making films by (among other things) drawing on the film stock itself ’ (Montague, J) — Hence the aptly named title; GRAFILM (Gra (Graphic) and Film) comes into play. Having no shortage of siblings, this release was accompanied by releases concerned with everything from the films and paintings of Andy Warhol (Gidal, P. 1971); to the studies of the brutalist architect couple, Alison and Peter Smithson.

This once released text edited by typographer, printer and collector; John Lewis, also resides within the much celebrated SwissInternational Style of the 20th century, featuring an interior, spine and back, restrainedly set in two variations of Adrian Frutiger’s neogrotesque, sans-serif Univers typeface (9 and 12 Pt), while the title and authors names is boldly fronted in the neo-grotesque sans-serif, Helvetica Inside, the body copy is generously spaced and asymmetrically arranged into two or three columns, occasionally across facing pages. Overall, this text lends itself to a sensibly proportioned, relatively open layout that doesn’t seek to compromise the readability of the text (Tschichold, J); a desirable trait in a text implicated in educational and instructional function.

Contrast is readily observed across publication formats; the first, a hefty homage to a 20th century industrial designer; the later, two 1970s pint-sized non-fiction texts.

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First Page Summary Front Cover

Back Cover

Three column facing pages

However, a quality that is apparent in all three artefacts is an uncompromising adherence to a program defined by the metric of clarity; as Tschichold recounts in his The New Typography; ‘(The New Typography) is distinguished from the old, by the fact that its first objective is to develop it’s visual form out of the functions of the text’, a quality that in conclusion, can said to be found in all three of the texts surveyed in this article, and is furthermore, a defining set of typographic principals that will continue to set the standard for typographic practice, perhaps for decades to come.

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References Benezri, K; 2015; Lettera-Txt Typeface; retrieved July, 2018; <http://lettera-txt.com> Benezri, K; 2015; Kobi Benerzi Studio; Lettera-Txt Typeface; retrieved July, 2018; <http://www.kobibenezri.com/Lettera-Txt> Tschichold, J; 1946; Glaube und Wirklichkeit, Schweizer Graphische Mitteilungen Doubleday, R; 2005; Jan Tschichold at Penguin Books: A Resurgance of Classical Book Design Fellows, K.S. (2009), Typecast: The Voice of Typography, Graduate College of The University of Iowa. Page. 1 Lovell, S; 2011; Dieter Rams: As Little Design As Possible; Phaidon Press Ltd, UK The Independent; 1996; Obituary: John Lewis; retrieved August, 2018 <https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/obituary-johnlewis-1316202.html> McCrum, R; 2013; What would Allen Lane make of Amazon?; The Guardian; retrieved July, 2018; <https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/ sep/27/allen-lane-amazon-publishing> Montague, J; 2009; Daily Book Graphics #63 / Grafilm; retrieved August, 2018 <http://montagueprojectsblog.blogspot.com/2009/04/dailybook-graphics-63-grafilm.html> Walters, J.L; 2016; The case of Romek Marber; Eye Magazine; Volume. 23, Issue. 91 Waller, R; 2011; In praise of Studio Vista, Ken Garland and the good old days; retrieved August, 2018 <http://qwertyrob.blogspot.com/2011/03/ in-praise-of-studio-vista-ken-garland.html>

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18 Pam Suarez

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The main purpose of graphic design is to communicate ideas or messages in the clearest way possible. Typography plays a very important role when it comes to design, it is the key element in bringing text to life. Text gives a linguistic meaning to the book but typography makes each letter a graphic element that adds alternative information. A good typographic design can make any text achieve the same or greater impact than an image—it can even make the text become the main character in the design piece, elevating its value over imagery.

Book 1

Good typography is created by a range of different factors.

Type selection, together with layout, size and hierarchy of text, establishes the most important ingredients of the general typography on a page. The first thing that should be noticed, as Eric Gill (2013, p. 105) mentions in his book, An Essay of Typography, ‘is the act of reading and the circumstances of that act which determine the size of the book and the kind of type used’; in order to determine what type and size should be used for a book we must first know how it is going to be read. For example, reading a gossip magazine that has many type sizes and bold headlines is very different from reading a technical book that has a more structural and organised layout, while a handbook’s main function is to provide clear information so it should be designed in a way that is simple and accessible.

Book 2

Wally Olins’ (2008) The Brand Handbook illustrates what happens when function and design are disconnected. An attractive yellow cover with the title in huge, black bold type wrapped around the front and back cover brings to life the saying, ‘don’t judge a book by its cover’. It seems like a fun, easy-to-read handbook, but when open, the book is chaotic and stressful. It is not as digestible as a handbook is supposed to be. Exaggerated size, changes of font, lack of spacing between some paragraphs and the minimum use of margin space creates confusion around the text rather than guiding the reader to the information they are seeking.

Book 3

In Beatrice Warde’s (1955, p. 15) book, The Crystal Goblet, she comments on how typography’s purpose is to not distract the reader from the meaning of the text: ‘the book typographer has the job of creating a window between the reader inside the room and that landscape which is the author’s words.’ When selecting a type, layout and size it is important to always keep in mind the author’s words and how we can transmit their idea by creating a suitably legible typographic composition. A legible typeface is one that is transparent to the reader and does not attract unnecessary attention.

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There are several ways to make a typeface transparent; wide features make it easier to recognize each character, like open counters that have more aperture between the letters (that is, when letters such as ‘o’ and ‘d’ have an open, rounded space) and ample lower case x-heights (the height of lower case letters, based on the lower case ‘x’).

The most legible typefaces are also subtle—they don’t have excessive weight changes (they are not extremely light or bold) and serifs shouldn’t be used for ornamentation or call attention to themselves.

Typography is a basic tool used by designers to transmit an idea and it could be the one feature enhancing or destroying a project. Typography’s primary goal is to communicate the meaning of the text, but it can be easily manipulated to communicate tone of voice, gender, mood, personality or an ideology—even accidentally.

Choosing the most suitable typography for a project is not easy.

Knowing more about the history and the rules of typography can create a book that will satisfy the designer’s sense of aesthetics as well as creating reactions in the readers.

References -Warde, B 1955, The crystal goblet or Printing Should Be Invisible, Sylvan Press, London.

-Gill, E 2013, The Book, An Essay on Typography, new edition, Penguin Classic, London.

-Olins, W 2008, The Brand Handbook, Thames & Hudson, London.

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19 Chunxiao wang

Chunxiao wang

This is a critical essay aim to explore the contemporary typography for publication design via analyzing the three books that I selected from the library at random. By analyzing and comparing the similarity and differences of this three books to have a basic insight into typography.

Book 1

Jewyo Rhill Walls to Talk to Jewyo Rhii: walls to talk to, this is a book documented for Korean artist Jewyo Rhii installation art in an apartment in Seoul, with drawings and documentary photographs. It was edited by Nick Aikens and published on the occasion of the 2013 exhibition touring to Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven; MMK, Frankfurt; and the Artsonje Centre, Seoul. The publisher was Koenig Books, London, a German-owned independent bookshop specializing in art, architecture and photography tomes. When you browse this book you would find the whole book was constructed in two languages English and German. Left pages are in English, right pages in German.

Obviously, it was designed with asymmetry typography. Have a quick browse through the book, whether it from font and color selection or typography, it has a strong sense of contemporary art which conform to the theme of this book, contemporary installation art.

The typeface of text is a sans-serif called Neue Haas Unica.

Originally released in 1980 by the Haas Type Foundry and designed

by Team’77 — André Gürtler, Erich Gschwind and Christian Mengelt until now Toshi Omagari of Monotype Studio has given this classic a fresh, digital facelift with more weights, more languages and more letters to meet today’s digital and print needs.Similar with the Neue Helvetica and Univers Next typefaces, this typeface could be used in broadly of any project. From the content perspective, the audience of this book could be some artists and public who interested in installation art. Then according to bold typesetting and page colors application, different paper textures, and creative typography, the audience might be the contemporary typography lovers.

Analysis: Tschichold (2001) states that the old typography concern itself much more on superficial formal aesthetics than font functionality. (2011,p.115) Clarity and purely appearance as the essence of new typography reflect the characteristics of our times.

Be different from old typography, the new typography emphasizes the form must be created out of function, all typography could be regulated via type sizes and weight, the arrangement of lines, use of color, photography to achieve the logical sequence of the

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content and have a better communication with readers.

For example, this is a book about the contemporary art with the part of the author comment, interview content record, artist manuscripts and some photography. Interestingly, this book distinguished the different parts by using the different color pages.

The main text is in white pages, the pink page is interview content, the green and blue page represent the artist different project. The placement of color pages helps people to quickly locate desired content upon massive pages.

The whole book adopt asymmetry typography form, the main text left and right page are in the same typography, the left page outer margin same with right page inner margin is 0.4mm, similarly the left page inner margin equal to right page outer margin is 45mm (except interview and picture pages)The top margin is 0.4mm, bottom margin is 21mm. Obviously, the location of the text block is in the upper left of the edge of paper which is in accord with the human reading order, from left to right, top to bottom. Tschichold (2001) points out in the new typography margins often almost entirely disappear but typeface cannot in most cases be set right up to the edge of the paper, which would hinder legibility.(2011,p.120) Hence,this bold attempt make this book more attractive and unique among the numerous typography.

Book 2

Guy de Cointet Guy de Cointet, an overview of Californian Conceptualists and performance artist Guy De Cointetâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s artworks which was created by Marie de Brugerolle. It was published by JRP/Ringier and designed by Gavillet & Rust. It had a total of two editions and formats and all of them were hardcover. This book was the first edition published in 2011, the 2nd revised edition was in 2017, they all have 160 pages in perfect binding and the product dimensions of those two editions was 6.8 x 0.6 x 9.3 inches (0.43kg) The different of those two editions were using the same cover typography but in using different font type, color and photography. Also, different authors but the same publisher. The second edition was written by Guy De Cointet himself. The whole book only has one language is English. The typeface of this book is san serif font: Littera Text font family which designed by Abstrkt. It was available in five types light, book, regular, medium, bold and Italic. This book was composed of three parts, there are body text, annotation and pictures, the Littera Text Book and Italic become the main typeface of this book. The designers, artists and Guy De Cointet supporters could be the main audience of this book.

Analysis: I was attracted by the concise typography of this book, this is a symmetry format book. The text was divided into four chapters, different from the last book that distinguished the different parts by using different color pages, this book uses different typography to lead the reader into the next chapters. Before reading the next chapter, it leaves a single page for the title and places it in the middle of the

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page. The title is up to three lines, each line no more than eight characters. Gill (1988) claims by increasing the margins and use of leads may give content a great legibility and interesting. Hence, the delicate typography in large areas of white space would more attractive after reading the dense body text. (Fig.1) The body text (Fig.2) has been divided into two columns in each page, one column has 54 lines, no more than 7 words in each line, according to research that eyes read lines of more than 10-12 words will feel awkward, so it has around 7 words in one line which means is in a proper readable range, the whole text is placed in the 110mm* 170mm block, outer margin is 44mm, inner margin is 7mm, top margin is 20mm, bottom margin is 45mm. It is obvious that the font in the body text is small and dense, but it does not influence legibility because the whole book is using the simple and legible sans-serif font. Also, Gill (1988) states the general typography rule should be: a narrow inner margin, a slightly wider top margin, an outer margin at least double the inner, and a bottom slightly wider than the others(1988,p.110)Obviously, this book text proportion match with this rules, so overall typography present in comfortable human reading state.

In this book, the majority of pictures or photography are placed in the middle of the page, each of pictures annotation is placed in the fixed bottom left corner (outer margin is 6mm; bottom margin is 9mm) The outer margin of each picture wonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t exceed this fix margin 6mm. This is an important way to balance massive pictures in visually.

Figure.1 Title page in left page

Book 3

Figure.2 Body text typography

Willem Sandberg :portrait of an artist Willem Sandberg: portrait of an artist, the author is Ank Marcar. The publisher Valiz is an independent international publisher on contemporary art, theory, critique, design, typography, and urban affairs. It was first time released in the English version, it translated by Jonathan Ellis. The first published was 28/2/2014, this book was published in 31/3/2014. This book described the famed Dutch typographer and museum curator edited by art historian Ank Leeuw Marcar through interviews compiled more than 30 years ago via the well-edited reprint of the original book show the Sandberg achievement. It is a soft cover book which has a total of 327 pages in perfect blinding.

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Analysis: The first impression of this book is the bold color application, from the cover to content, red, blue and white as the main colors through the entire text. The artist Willem Sandberg as the protagonist in this book, blue and red are his frequently-used colors in his artworks which for catering his personal style so the main text is used red words on the white page, introduction and index are used blue words on the white page. A few pure red pages appeared in the text to write the title and use to separate each chapter. This is an asymmetric format book, the body text（Fig.4） font size is 17pt and the title (Fig.3) is 40pt, compare with the last two books that I analyzed before, this book font relatively large than others so there is only one text column placed in the single page. The outer margin is 13mm, the inner margin is 22mm, the top margin is 7mm, and bottom margin is13mm, it obvious that the text block takes a large proportion of the whole page, according to the best proportion for lines & mass of type printed, and the physical consideration, Gill (1988) states the inner margin exist simply to separate a page from the one opposite to it and need be no wider than is enough to keep the printed words clear of the bend of the paper where it is sewn in binding. (1988, p.109) The outer and bottom margin should leave enough space for thumbs and held the book in the hand. This book typography is not accord with this physical rules the folio page inner margin is almost double of outer margin, the text block is close to the edge of paper which leads the hand could be hindering some words while reading, also this typography would give people a feeling like pushing text outward off the page.

Figure.3 Title page

Figure.4 Body text typography

Comparative analyse Whether from typography or content, these three books have a strong connection with contemporary art and typography.

Tschichold (2001) states our age is characterized by an all-out search for clarity and truth, for purity of appearance, a good letter is one that expresses itself, or rather “speaks”, with the utmost distinctiveness and clarity. (2011, p.123) Hence, those three books are using san serif font to present their content, get rid of unnecessary ornament thus making the fonts going to clear and legibility. All of them belong to new typography but these three books present their personality by the different format which follows to the content. For example, the majority of books have various chapter how to present each chapter in a clear way these three books have their own approach. Jewyo

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Rhill Walls to Talk to, using color page to represent different chapter; ‘Willem Sandberg : portrait of an artist’ and ‘Guy de Cointet’ by using similar way to place title in the centre of single page to separate chapter, but the difference is for ensuring the typography consistency, they via the change of font size, colors, placement to achieve the function of separating. Overall, the content determines format, format prominent book personality. Typeface, typography, color etc are the tools to help achieve the personality.

This is Tschichold repetitive emphasized ‘functionality’ in new typography

References Gill, E. (1988). An essay on typography. London, Penguin.

Tschichold J. (2001), ‘The Principles of the New Typography’, Texts on type: critical writings on typography. New York, Allworth Press.

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Typographic design is a very interesting and meaningful topic. Different typefaces have different historical and cultural backgrounds. When we choosing a typeface, we need to think about the meaning of the text and choose a typeface that matches it. So we need to fully understand the history of the various typefaces and their meanings. This essay exploring three different books on their details such as typefaces, covers, binding methods and the relations between the text, typefaces and binding methods will be analyzed.

Book 1

Research Methods: The Key Concepts The first book is called‘Research Methods: The Key Concepts’, written by Micheal Hammond and Jerry Wellington, who are scholars in England. They wrote the book to provide a comprehensive overview of the main methods and methodologies of the social research. The book was first published by Routledge(an imprint of the Talyor&Francis Group) in 2013 and simultaneously published in the USA and Canada and was printed and bound in Great Britain by TJ International Ltd, Padstow, Cornwall. This company also published a series of similar books about research methods written by other experts, and this seris of books have the same appearance because they were made by the same printing and binding method.

The designers used two kinds of typefaces in total, one of them is Helvetica, a widely used sans-serif typeface.It was used on the cover of the book.The other typeface is called Bembo, which is a serif typeface created by the Monotype Corporation in 1928-9 and most commonly used for body text. All the titles of chapters were used in Bembo Book Regular and the subtitles were used in Bembo book Std Regular,Furthermore, the main body was used in Bembo Std Roman. Some keywords in the text were marked in Bembo Book Pro Bold.

This book is a hardcover book. The cover is made of thick cardboard and has been varnished. The length, width, height of the book is 22.2cm, 14.3cm, 1.9cm respectively, It is easy to flatten the book with such a binding method, so the book does not need too much inside margin. Furthermore, the book is not very heavy,only about 0.3kilogram,so it is very easy for people to hold it . The design of the cover is very simple and clean, people can associate the blue cover with scientific and technological subjects. Personally, it matches the content very well. There is a line on the top of the text with an index word on the right side of it, and the page number is in the middle of the page foot. In addition, the margin of the right, left, inside, top and bottom are the same, which is 1.7cm, just enough for a thumb. So there is no more space for notes, but considering the function of the book, the audiences don’t need to take too many notes when they reading it.

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Visual Explanations-Images and Quantities, Evidence and Narrative

Book 2

The second book is called‘Visual Explanations-Images and Quantities, Evidence and Narrative’and is written by Edward R.Tufte in 1997. The author also wrote two other books on information design and he thought these books should be elegant, precise and selfexemplification, therefore, he designed and published the three books himself. The three books were bound in the same method and were used the same layout, which makes the books look identical. The book was printed by Herlin Press in the United States of America and this version is the fifth printing.

Bembo was also used as the main typeface of this book and the author chose Bembo Book regular as the text typeface and Bembo Book Italic as the title. The binding method is section sewn hardcover and is covered by canvas, so it is really durable.The length,width,height of the book is 27cm, 22cm ,2cm respectively.

Consequently,the book has an unusual proportion; it is wider than the normal books, so the author could divide the content into two columns. The left columns are bigger, account for 11cm, and the right columns only account for 5cm. The author put the main content in the left columns and put explanations in the right columns to make it easier for the audiences to understand the context.

The top, left and right margin is 2.5cm and the bottom and inside margin is 2cm, comparing with the last book, it gives more spaces for the thumbs and notes, so that is considerately and the binding method does not take up too much inside margin. The typeface is the same as the last book with is Bembo, but somehow, it gives me a totally different sense. The average number of characters per line is 10 in the two books, but the font size and line space are bigger in the second book. Furthermore, the author also gave the text corresponding pictures and some visual methods to visualize the text.

And the color of the paper of the second book is a little bit yellow, it can help us avoid visual fatigue. However,The book is a little heavy for people to hold it , we need to put it on the table when we read it, so it is not portable.

Book 3

A Very Short, Fairly Interesting and Reasonably Cheap Book about Qualitative Research The third book has a very long title: ‘A Very Short, Fairly Interesting and Reasonably Cheap Book about Qualitative Research’, the author is David Silverman. It was published by in2007and typeset

by C&M Digitals in India and printed and bound in Great Britain

by Athenaeum Press, Gateshead. The book was aiming to three kinds of audiences, which are students,employees, and citizens. It can teach them how to find out the underlying logic of qualitative, go beyond the limited horizons of the textbook and open the way to new possibilities.

The typeface is Classical Garamond, an old-style serif typeface, named for sixteenth-century Parisian engraver Claude

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Garamond. The typeface for the index is Classical Garamond Italic and the designer also used Helvetica Regular as the title of every chapter. The whole book has 159pages, the thickness is 1.5cm and the length and width are 15.95 and 12.5 respectively. It is a paperback book, the binding method is perfect binding, which is very fragile. Some of the paper fall over when I borrowed it from the library. The margin of the top margin and inside margin is 1.5cm, the right margin is 1.1cm and the bottom margin is 1.9cm. The page number is on the top left with an index title beside it.In my opinion, the designer considered the portability of the book and he wanted to make the book small and light enough for people to take it with them, so they can read it on the bus, in the airport or in the classroom. And the cover of the book is really unique. The designer used the grid as the background and chose a casual handwritten font.

The title is written on the front cover and there are some excerpts of the content, and the keywords are marked with fluorescent colors, which look like a well-organized notebook. I think this style is very special, but it is not in line with its academic and professional content. In addition, some of the text fonts are very small, It is not very comfortable for me to read it, especially when we read in a swaying car. Maybe this is the designer’s way to compress the number of pages in the book.

Comparative Each of these three books has its own characteristics.

The first book looks like a very academic book. The design of the whole book is very simple and clean. There are no extra decorative patterns and illustrations in the book. The reader needs to focus all their attention when they reading it. The second book looks simple, but after opening it, you will find its content very fascinating.

There are author’s drawing manuscripts, illustrations for text, and beautiful typography. Compared to the previous book, it is very artistic and can easily attract people’s attention. The third book is very lightweight and can be held in people’s hand, so it is very portable. The choice of paper, the way it was printed and bound are very cheap, so the price can be accepted by most people. All of the designers of the books chose the serif typeface which are Bembo and Garamond for the main body, and in my opinion, Bembo is modernized and simplified.On contrast,Garamond is a typical old-style serif typeface and looks classic and elegent. In addition, Helvetica appears in both the first and the third book, It proves that this font is very popular and can cooperate well with other typefaces.

As Warde maintained that‘Type well used is invisible as a type,just as the perfect talking voice is the unnoticed vehicle for the transmission of words,ideas.’(Warde,1955)Helvetica is the typical representative of modernism in the art of font design.It allows the reader to focus on the content of the text while reading, without paying attention to the font itself.

In conclusion, the first and the third book are academic, so the designs of them are very simple. The second book is really artistic, It can be seen that the author was very careful in typesetting.

All the three book used by very classic typefaces.As Tshichold

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said‘They are legible; They are also above all in a technical sense useful and free from personal idiosyncrasies.’(Tschichold, 2001) Typography is a subject worthy for further study,it has some constraints but also need us to break the rules to make more creative works.

References 1.Warde, B. (1955). “The Crystal Goblet or Why Printing Should be Invisible,” The crystal goblet: sixteen essays on typography. London, Sylvan Press.

2.Tschichold J. (2001), ‘The Principles of the New Typography’, Texts on type: critical writings on typography. New York, Allworth Press.

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The history of books can be traced back to ancient times, when people engraved information on the bones of animals or on rocks to preserve information.Nowadays, books are not just the carrier of information. After a long period of development, book typesetting logically arranges the information in books, which not only looks good in the form of books but also has functionality.

However, due to the impact of new and old design concepts, the different views between traditional typography and modern typography still exist, just as the aesthetics and functional issues of books can be solved together.

In the previous undergraduate study, I did not carefully study the details of book typography. However, this course taught me the variety of English fonts, also learned the functional side of book typography, even the history and changes of font development. This has given me a great interest in book typography. In this essay, I will discuss the different functions of book typography in different types of books through the analysis of three different book designs.

Book 1

Shakespeare The book Shakespeare is a very classic old book. I took it home from the old bookstore. It is a book that introduces Shakespeare’s life stories and works. In the old bookstore, the cover and the back cover have no words and all are bright yellow that caught my attention. When I picked up the book, I found a rectangle printed in black on the spine, with the title “SHAKESPEARE” written in bright yellow and the author name “IVOR BROW N” on the bottom. The cover of the book is a hard cover. The book was first published at London in 1949 and then republished by “COLLINS SONS & SONS & CO.LTD” in 1951. This book has a history of 67 years. Because of its long history, many typography and texts in the book are presented in very old ways. For example, all published information in front of the catalogue is written in small capitals.

In addition, directory contents are all in italic fonts. The font used in the body part is Baskerville, which is a serif font designed in the 1950s and is widely used in the UK. The Baskerville font was a transitional font in the UK at the time. Compared with the old font, it increased the contrast between thick and thin lines, which made the serif more sharp and correspondingly improved the quality of book printing at that time.The number of the left page is written in the upper left corner of each page, while the page number of the right page is symmetrically written in the upper right corner.The title and chapter name are written in a line parallel to the page number, using the small capitals of the Baskerville font. The top margin is 15 mm, inside margin is 16mm, The space left is enough for people to hold the pages with their fingers without occlusion.Interestingly,

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at the beginning of each chapter, the top margin is increased to 35mm, and the page number is placed in the center of the page below the body.In addition, The first letter of each chapter uses the drop cap. Unlike usual, although the first letter is only enlarged, the first word is in uppercase. Moreover, The text uses an aligned form and the overall look is very neat. The difference is that I found that the period after the period in the body is twice the space between ordinary words. I asked the teacher and learned that this is an old way of space: after the end of a sentence is a double space.In my opinion this approach gives readers a clearer signal and increases the flexibility of typography. The serifs and arcs of the fonts are also very beautiful. For me as a reader, it is just a pleasure to read. However, Jan Tschichold in his《The Principles of the New Typography》 emphasizes “The essence of the New Typography is clarity. This puts it into deliberate opposition to the old typography whose aim was ‘beauty’ and whose clarity did not attain the high level we require today. “（Tschichold 2001, p.115）.In response to this view, I believe that the serif font cannot be abolished in a partial manner. For serious military or political books, sans serif fonts can be used to highlight the information in the article. However, for novels, poetry collections, and such cultural and artistic works, the use of decorative serif fonts can improve the reader’s reading experience. At the same time, in this books, serif fonts do not impair the function of transmitting information. Overall, I really like the design of this ancient book, whether it’s font or typography, or the design of the cover. A good book design will increase people’s desire to read.

Book 2

New believer’s BIBLE The second book is a Bible written for new believers:《New believer’s BIBLE》.My believer friend gave me. New believer’s was first published in 1996 by the “Tyndale House Publisher” press in Illinois. They were reprinted in 2005 and 2016 respectively.The designer is Ron Kaufmann and Timothy R. Botts. The book is about A5 in size and 30mm thick, while the front and back covers are soft.

The catalogue font in the book is a sans serif font: “Muskamot Cond MF”.The chapter and page numbers in the book page are sans serif font: “Tolyer NO.1”. However, The font used is the serif font “Tilp Serif EF” . The chapters and pages in the book are placed on the top of the page as in the previous book. The difference is that the pages of the book are symmetrically placed on the inside of the page, and the chapter names are symmetrically placed at both ends of the page.

The top margin of this book is 8 mm and the margin is 10 mm. Each page is symmetrically divided into two columns, and the interval between the two columns is 4 mm. Interestingly, the book’s font size is very small, with the lowercase letters in the body part being only one millimeter wide and two millimeters high. The letters in the notes are smaller: both width and height are only one millimeter.

With this question, I found the answer in the book: “And as to size:it is impossible to print the Bible on too grand a scale,......Nevertheless, the reasonable producer of books starts with the principle that it is the reading, not the reading mater,which determines the size of

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book and style of type.” ( Gill,E.1988,p.106). Therefore, this book is a Bible for Protestants. The soft cover is easy to carry and read: the small word in text is because the amount of content is large, the small word means that the number of pages is reduced, and the relative book becomes lighter.Convenient for the believers to carry and hold.

Moreover, the paper on this book should be light and thin, and it should also be used to improve functionality and reduce the weight of people when carrying.

Book 3

The Kiss This book is a painting album about kisses, and there are pictures of kisses in famous paintings around the world. This book is the largest of the three books: 280 mm long and 215 mm wide.

The hard cover is used. In order to ensure the clarity and quality of each picture, 200g coated paper is used in the book pages. Therefore, this book is very heavy, not suitable for carrying, more suitable for collection. Then, this boo translated form the French by Deke Dusinberre and design by Noemie Levain.This book was published in Paris in 2012 by Flammarion. Cover font uses “Proxima Soft Medium”and comment section in the book is “Bulldog”,which are all sans serif font.

However, The font in the body part of the book is FF Celeste Pro Book, which is a contrasting serif font with thick and thin lines.

Furthermore, Because the book is mainly based on pictures, the article serves as an auxiliary part of understanding the painting, so the text is not much, and the margin is relatively large: the top margin is 70mm, the inside margin is 55mm, and the text part is leftjustified.However, this book only labels the page number on the page with text. Although this guarantees the integrity of the image, I think this typesetting is not conducive to the reader to find information.

And in the case where several consecutive pages are pictures, the reader will have difficulty distinguishing the page numbers.

Conclusion Through this period of study, and analysis of the three books, I found the importance of typesetting for a book. And understand how to balance the functionality and aesthetics of book layout; how to distinguish the style of the font. This made me very interested in typography , also allows me to understand the history of font changes in depth. I hope that I will learn more about the history and knowledge of book typography in the future.

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Reference

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Tschichold J. (2001), ‘The Principles of the New Typography’, Texts on type: critical writings on typography. New York, Allworth Press.

Gill, E. (1988). An essay on typography. London, Penguin.

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Introduction With the rapid development of paper publications, typography has become a significant part of layout design, at the same time, design of letterforms and fonts also plays indispensable role in new typography development. Tschichold (1995) points out that whether a modern man has needs or not, he will receive a lot of paper material which is printed from his letter-box. That is right. To be more specific, typography includes the design of letterforms and fonts, the styling of texts, and the design of raw pages and printable structures. Different design style has different culture meaning. In this critical essay, I am going to critically analyze the typography designing of three books. These three books are Dark habits, China live and CaiGuo-Qiang: long scroll. These three booksâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; authors from different country. Maybe they have different religion. Therefore, it is necessary to analyze their typography and do some comparisons.

Book 1

Book 1 description The first book is Dark habits written by Oreet Ashely and other authors, it was edited by Bren Oâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Callaghan and Sarah Perks.

This book is published in 2017 and talk about art and popular culture. The audience maybe is graphic designer and university students whose major is art design. Dark Habits first published in the United Kingdom and published by HOME Publications.

The language of this book is English, and this book has not been translated into another language. It was proofread by Greg Thorpe.

The design and art direction was done by Minute Works. It has 191 pages and the top of this book is 25mm, the bottom is 29mm, the inside of the book is 24mm, and the outside is 29mm. In terms of the typeface style about this book, the typeface used in the body paragraph is Hess old Style RR Bold, which is designed by Sol Hess and Steve Jackaman, and this typeface debut in 2002 by Myfonts.

Another body paragraph typeface is Caslon SB regular and this typeface designer is William Caslon, the year of design is 2004. The cover font and title-page font is same; they are serif font. However, maybe because it was designed independently, so it is a little bit difficult to define the name.

First book analysis: Dark Habits is softcover, it is lighter than hardcover books, the cover material is special, which means that the designer use higher design printing technology to make the cover. Compare with the hardcover, the cost of softcovers is less than hardcovers.

However, the quality of the softcovers is not as good as hardcovers.

In terms of typeface design, the body paragraph typeface use Serif font, Serif fonts are typical and common in many printed products.

Another typeface is Caslon SB regular which is mentioned before, this kind of font is easy to read and it is also one of the Serif fonts.

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The sub-title of this book used a bond font, and the body paragraph uses unbold font, it could help reader read book more efficiency.

According to â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Typography with wordsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;, Muggeridge points out that keeping typographic simple and do not over-designing is one of the typography design principals. To some extent, this book has been follow this design principle. However, the design of title pages is not really good, word spacing is to far with each other, so sometimes it is to difficult to read and understand, especially for second-language reader.

Book 2

Book 2 description The title of the second book is CHINA LIVE: reflections on contemporary performance art. The book is designed by Hoop Associates, and published by the Chinese Arts Centre in collaboration with Live Art UK, which is located in Beijing. This book was edited by the UK editor Daniel Brine and the Chinese editor Shu Yang. In addition, the publication date of this book is October 2005. The language of this book is published in both Chinese and English, translated by Carol Lu and Francesca Jordan, the additional translation was done by Katie Hill. This book is talk about performance art of China, students and behavioral artist could become audiences. The book has 152 pages and many illustrations, and this book use two types of paper, which is coated and uncoated.

The length of the book is 20cm, the top of the book is 43mm, the bottom is 12mm, the inside of the book is 23mm, the outside is 24mm. Typeface used for body text is Univers Cyrillic 45 Light, designed by Adrian Frutiger and Alexei Chekulayev, and published

by Linotype. Typeface used for the cover is Europa Grotesk Nr 2 SH Ultra Bold Italic and design owner is Scangraphic.

Second book analysis: The book CHINA LIVE is designed as a softcover, both use coated and uncoated paper, the paper of pictures uses coated paper, the advantages of using coated paper is that picture could become more colorful. Although there is no distance between subtitle and body text, the relationship between subtitles and body paragraph is obvious, because book designer use different color between the subtitles and body paragraph. However, the line spacing of body paragraph is too close to read, so it could easily lead to visual fatigue.

Distance between paragraphs are about 7mm, I think this is really suitable for reader.

Book 3

Book 3 description The title of the third book is Cai Guo-Qiana: long scroll.

The creator of the book is Cai Guo qiang who is born on 1957. The contributor of the book is Mayo Graham, Jonathan Shaugnhnessy and National Gallery of Canada. The book was published by the National Gallery of Canada. It is categorized as exhibition catalogue.

The audience of this book maybe a art students and people who are really interested in art exhibitions. The book has 90 pages and many illustrations. The width of book is 22 cm, the length of the book

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is 24cm, the top of the book is 76mm, the bottom of the book is 79mm, the inside of the book is 42mm and the outside is 17mm. The book was published in English. The font of the body text typeface is Lemon Sans Rounded, designed by JĂźrgen Huber and published

by Type Department. There are two typeface used for cover, one of them is Halvorsen Light from Halvorsen by Australian Type Foundry, another is Eurydome, created by Emboss, they are both belongs to the Sans-Serif fonts.

Third book analysis: CaiGuo-Qiang: long scroll is a softcover book, its advantages are light and soft. As a book with 90 pages, the softcover is a better choice than the hardcover, for the book is not thick, if the book was designed as a hardcover, the cover and the book will not be well-matched. Also, the cost of the hardcover is too high, it is not proper for a relatively easy-reading book. Lemon Sans Rounded as a body text has a very good readiness. However, there are some disadvantages of this book. Firstly, the size of words is little bit small and difficult to read, and the length of line is too long to read, it will lead to reader read articles inefficiency and feel tired. Secondly, as an art design book, the picture is not high definition, so the picture quality of this book is worse. Another disadvantages are text layout of this book is too dense, which means that reader will not want to read because sometimes too many words in one page will lead to people lose their patience.

Comparison: Basically, these three books could be all categorized as the art books, the first book Dark Habits used a very typical font as its typeface, which is very tidy and simple, it also has a feeling of art.

Comparing to the first book, the font of the second book is more typical and has a better readiness. The third book uses the Italic fonts as its typefaces. One of the biggest advantages of the Italic fonts is that it is very distinctive. These three books are all softcovers, softcovers casts less. And the sizes of these three books are totally different, therefore, the length or width of these books are different, either. As the art books, the layout design of illustrations are also very different.

Conclusion: To sum up, every book has different designing methods and style of font design. Although sometimes they have some drawbacks such as line spacing is too close or the size of words are too small to read. However, the font design of each book follows the design principles. They keep simple and do not have over-designing. It is important to look at the history of print through the eyes of typography and decide if multimodal methods of arranging type are appropriate or even possible in the modern book (Warde,1956).

There is some book typeface design that try to break the design principles and develop a new design style. Although sometimes the identifiability is not very easy and difficult to read, it looks more modern.

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References Tschichold, J, 1995, ‘The Principles of the New Typography’, The new typography: A handbook for modern designer, vol.8, pp.115-118, viewed 29 July 2018, ProQuest Database.

Warde, B, 1956, ‘The crystal goblet or printing should be invisible’.

The crystal goblet: Sixteen essays on typography, pp.11-7, viewed 29 July 2018, ProQuest Database.

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Books as an essential way for knowledge and information spreading, whatever in ancient or modern world. The typography of books not just have the function for organizing the words, but also lead readers to really into the books. Readers can easier to understand author’s thoughts and emotion through good typography design. This article will contrast and compare the typography of three books to analysis the important of typography. There is an article which point out ‘Typography is a grid’. Not just the text can be a grid. The image in the context also can be regarded as a grid.

Book 1

The 1st book, Philip Guston The Studio

This is a book about a collection of personal works with soft cover, which designed by Craig Burnett, published by the MIT Press. The size of this book is 209mm*149mm. The main text page uses very thick paper. In addition, thicker coated paper is used on pages with images. The main font in this book is ‘Sagona Semi’. The typeface used in the image title is ‘Bodoni Egyptian Pro Italic’. This is a symmetrical book. The top margin of the main text is 15 mm, the bottom margin is 31 mm, the inside margin is 25 mm, and the outside margin is 17 mm. There is a brief description of the book and some information about the series on the back cover. The size and weight of this book is great for carrying around or putting it in your bag.

The layout and design of this book is very simple and generous. The typesetting in the book does not use a lot of columns,

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but directly arranges the text in two-sided alignment. The choice of fonts is also great. This font is very simple, so readers can clearly understand the article while reading a lot of textual information. It is worth mentioning that the choice of paper material for this book is also very good. Because this is a book about the studio artworks, the designer choice the thick coated paper material on the artwork page, which can largely restore the original color and texture of the work.

On the other hand, the layout of the pictures in this book is also very interesting, after reading a lot of paragraph of text content. The author directly arranged more than a dozen artworks in the book. There is no page number on the page where the work is displayed. Then there is a large text, and then a continuous artworks.

I want to say that the advantage of this typesetting is that when you read this book, really like you are participating in a artwork exhibition. There is a feeling of being immersive.

Book 2

The 2nd book, Patron Saints Collecting Stanley Spencer

This is a book about oil painting with a soft cover, which designed by Laura Parker, published by Paul Holberton Publishing. The size of this book is 236mm*194mm. The entire book is made of coated paper. The title typeface is ‘FF Kievit Std Bold’. The main font in this book is ‘Malaga Regular’. The typeface used in the image title is ‘Aptifer Sans Pro Light’. This is a symmetrical book. This book has a total of 80 pages. The top margin of the main text is 14 mm, the bottom margin is 20 mm, the inside margin is 20 mm, and the outside margin is 15 mm. The distance between all titles and text is 20 mm, and the distance between all pictures and text is 10 mm. There is a description of the artist’s profile on the back of the book.

This book uses a two-column typesetting on each page.

This book has about 50 characters per line. Text is typeset in a left-aligned manner. I think the layout of the text in this book is based on the location of the image. Because of the different sizes

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of oil paintings, the orientation of the canvas is different. So the text needs to be typeset according to the specific oil painting. The layout of the pictures in this book is not like a regular typography, but the designer can grasp the balance between the picture and the text. Let readers appreciate both the work and the content.

Book 3

The 3rd book, ROME: Urban formation and transformation

This is a book about urban design with hard cover, which designed by Jon Michael Schwarting, published by Applied Research and Design Publishing. The size of this book is 280mm*280mm. The entire book is made of coated paper. There is just only one typeface in the whole book which is â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Arialâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;. This is a symmetrical book. The top margin of the main text is 13 mm, the bottom margin is 13 mm, the inside margin is 13 mm, and the outside margin is 13 mm. The book is particularly heavy and the hard cover of the book is wrapped with a plastic film. The text in the book is typeset into three columns.

This book is particularly centrally symmetrical, no matter in size, typography or the margin of each page. The margins of per page is 13 mm. So the contents of the entire book look particularly symmetrical. The binding method of this book is thread binding.

Because this is a book about urban planning, there are many drawings on urban planning in the book. The proportion of pictures in the whole book is much larger than the text. The designer is quite good at controlling with white space in this book. Because there are a large number of pictures in the book, in order to get a better visual effect, the designer use a full page of blank space on some pages.

Comparative analysis & Conclusion All three books are symmetrically designed, with the first book and the second book using three fonts, and the third book using only one font. In my opinion, a book is best not to contain more than five fonts. Because once so many fonts in a book, it will give the reader a sence of messy. By contrast, if designer only use one font, it may be a bit boring. In addition, blank space is also an important

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aspect of typography. Because blank space will make the proportion of text and pictures more coordinated. In contrast, the third book is the biggest of the three books, but the margin is minimal. This is because the book is very big and heavy, and readers usually read it on the table and do not hold it by hands. The place where the finger covers the content will be less, so the page margin will be smaller accordingly.

In short, the application of fonts and the control of the space in a book play an important role in the layout of the entire book.