Just sent, re a book that I redesigned twice, and whose trim size changed midstream:
Dear [X]/[Y],
I’m not sure whose query this is on the design approval memo, but in answer to the question of whether the castoff (352) is “shorter now because of [larger]-size,” uh, yesish.
I managed to make the [smaller]-size design come in at 384 (castoff was a tight 400) by using Stone Print, a condensed typeface intended for use in magazines with narrow columns. The final design uses Plantin, an average-width typeface more suited to extended reading in book format. So we lost some pages to the trim change and gained a few for readability.
The result is that overall the book is shorter, but not so much shorter as it would be had I merely widened the original design to fit the new margins. Had I widened the original design, it would have become repellent—it’s difficult to continuously read text that is more than about 70 characters wide. Your eyes can’t easily jump from the end of one line to the beginning of the next; your brain can’t hold the sentences together as well. Besides that, it looks cheap and unprofessional. And it makes babies cry.
Bad typography is, in fact, the reason why most babies cry. Now you know.
I hope that answers your question.
Yr hmbl srvnt,
—
India Amos
I only didn’t cite sources because, well, my dog ate them.
And then a cockroach ate my dog.
Bad typography is, in fact, the reason why most babies cry. Nicely said. And very true.
Gives you a sense of the quantity of bad typography out there, eh?
sorry about your dog.