Study Questions

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I have been shocked—shocked!—by the amount of interest in this post since it was written up on Kottke.org. Usually when I talk about what I do, people are like, “Uh huh, that sounds really, um, interesting. So, do you design covers, too?” Covers are sexy; everybody notices book covers, even if they don’t read much; no, I don’t do covers. (Well, I’ve done three. One was an unfortunate accident, and the other two are nothing special.) So, yes, all this sudden interest is very interesting to me. Plus—happy graph! Woo!

The Kottke Effect

What’s been even more surprising, though, is that so far no other designers have dropped in to say, “You’re reading the castoff numbers all wrong.” “I can’t believe you used a typeface called fucking ‘Manticore’ for a fucking fantasy book!” “Trim size is actually determined based on X, Y, and Z.” “Quark is the best piece of software in the universe!” And nobody’s said, “But, the process for designing a cookbook/dictionary/art book/computer book is totally different; your half-assed workflow would never work for that.”
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InDesign vs. Quark: 4 things

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If you’ve ever sat near me while I’m working in Quark XPress, you know what a charming vocabulary I have. I !@#$% hate Quark. It’s a $&%@! buggy piece of #@&!. I may need all the glyphs in the Unicode set to type my distaste for it.

But having glanced for a minute at Layers magazine’s new “InDesign Advantage Center,” I see a solution: I can follow their example and express my displeasure by highlighting a couple of my favorite InDesign features—which, gosh! how shocking!, Quark 6 doesn’t have. I haven’t yet played with Quark 7, but I’ve been reading reviews and think it’s safe to say these are all features it’s still missing. If I’m wrong, feel free to let me know—not that it’ll make me loathe that *&%$# plate of spaghetti code one bit less.

So. Here are the four InDesign features that I miss most in my current workflow:
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Typographic Trivia

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Here’s a little article that I must have read before—as I converted it from HTML to XHTML for John six or seven years ago—but had entirely forgotten. If you enjoy typographic trivia—and who doesn’t?—it may be just the lazy holiday afternoon silliness for you: Lost Things in the Garden of Type by John Tranter, 1997.

Confessions:

  1. I can never keep Janson, based on type cut by Nicholas Kis, and Jenson, based on Nicolas Jenson’s roman and Ludovico degli Arrighi’s italic, straight in my head, though I know that one is plain and straightforward, while the other is foofy. I’ve never designed a book in Janson (though I’ve handled it when setting other people’s designs), but I used Adobe Jenson Pro for the subtle jubilat redesign (to replace the PostScript version of Centaur MT, which is based on the same originals). It’s also the face I used for that grief book.
  2. I don’t think I’ve ever known until just now that Bell is totally unrelated to Bell Gothic and Bell Centennial. Not that I’ve ever tried to mix them, but I might have at some point. Phew!

Making Castoff

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Last week I attended a reunion of people who used to work at a certain nonprofit literary organization. Some are in publishing now, many are writers, and all are bookish people who buy and read books—past page 18—regularly. Yet I was asked several times, while catching up with folks, what it is that a book interior designer does. “So, like, you pick the fonts?”

I am used to being asked this question by normal people, civilians, but I expect more from those who read and promote literature. One friend who asked if I pick the fonts is now the executive director of a literary organization whose mission is to promote reading, an organization that publishes its own series of books. I attacked him—“You, of all people! Haven’t you ever looked at a book from Knopf and noticed that it looks nicer than one from [earnest but tasteless poetry publisher]? Haven’t you ever noticed that some books are more inviting or more readable than others?”

Apparently not.

I’m feeling my way around at the new job and having to actually think about what I’m doing from time to time, so now seems like a good moment to try to put into words what I do. I learned to do what I do from reading books (crazy!) and Just Fucking Doing It, so my methods may not be the most scientific and I may not be able to explain them very succinctly, but I’ll try to touch on the basics.
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Freestylin'

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Hip-Hop, Inc., cover This book was a bit challenging because the cover, er, didn’t give me much to go on. None of the typefaces used there was suitable for text, and only one was even versatile enough for use in heads. I also worried (hoped) that the cover comp I received was not final (it was), so I didn’t want to follow its lead too closely and then get left looking like I was the one with questionable taste, as has happened before. I wanted the book to look businesslike but accessible, so I used utilitarian type (Warnock Pro and Akzidenz Grotesk) but added a large image to the chapter openers to make them stand out. The book also contains some diagrams that match the aesthetic of the cover—lots of 3-D effects and shading—so I needed an interior design into which those could blend.
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Grief floats

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A Grief Like No Other cover This book—about how to cope when a loved one dies violently—is not the most uplifting title I’ve worked on, but I’m very happy with how the design came out. It was one of those rare occasions when (a) I liked the type used on the cover, and (b) the editor gave me some direction. In this case, she suggested that some sort of ocean/sailing/nautical theme would be appropriate, as watery metaphors are used throughout the book. Although I might have noticed that on my own1, I almost certainly would not have made such an overt design element of it. Because the editor made the suggestion, however, I felt comfortable using the water motif extensively.

If there’s an art budget for these books, nobody’s ever told me what it is, so I assume that everything has to be not only royalty-free, but free-free. Continue reading “Grief floats” →

Even More Puzzling

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Speaking of puzzles, I also recently got to design and assemble a book of crossword puzzles from a certain weekly progressive newsmagazine. There wasn’t much to design, and what there was of it I cribbed from the magazine itself. Nor was there much to typeset, since after a not inconsiderable amount of wrangling we were able to get the Quark files from the magazine. But I did learn how crossword puzzles are set, or at least how these particular ones are: It’s a typeface.
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Puzzling Samples

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Since that puzzle book I mentioned earlier (math, design) has now been printed and should be appearing in stores, I figure it’s time to post some pages of it here, for your viewing pleasure.

What I started with

A very complex manuscript overflowing with cartoony illustrations (none of which are shown in these samples), line drawings supplied as Word art, equations, and notes to the typesetter, e.g., “Start light red background,” “Set in Bible font,” “Set in e-mail font,” etc. Also, a reasonably high-res comp of the cover, which uses ransom-note typography for the title, a very staid sans serif for the author’s name, and a photo of a tangled ball of colorful wire.
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