Not Just Covers, But Every Page: Why Writers Should Talk About Book Design Early On

Readers spend most of their time inside books. That’s where the action is. But when talking about a book’s design people usually focus on the covers: ooh look at that beauty or how interesting, I want to pick that up . But you might not realize that the inside of books is also designed, every single page. Interior design’s aim is to make reading easy. It creates order out of chaos and bestows authority (warranted or not) on an author’s words. Type, hierarchy, and space guides readers, showing them where to look and how to make their way. Flip open a book and you’re on the half title page. Someone’s thought carefully about how that should look. Interior design is both micro and macro. It involves technical prowess and creativity. There is line-by-line typesetting and there is translation of vibe. Take, for instance, chapter openers. Most books are divided into chapters and an author has decided if they each have chapter titles or just numbers, or both, or neither, or additional info like a subtitle or time stamp or narrator name or geographic locator or setting-up-an-idea pull quote. The designer, then, must figure out how to make those pieces of text—many or few—look nice and clear on the page and put forward an aesthetic, bringing visual voice to the writing voice. Which font? How big? How bold? Italic? Centered or no? In a single line, neatly stacked, cascading? Each decision is literal and expressive. Interior design’s aim is to make reading easy. It creates order out of chaos and bestows authority (warranted or not) on an author’s words. And chapters don’t get going at the tiptop of a page. There is space at the start of a new chapter, announcing to the reader: new subject, new idea, new time period, new location, new character, a pause in the story, or whatever the author is doing dividing up their text. Designers signal this literal break with a visual break. Empty space. Quiet. We consider how far down on the page we want to place the chapter titling and how far […]

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