Hi Bruno,
have you seen the Typophile Library?

A pick: Jost Hochuli: Designing books: practice and theory. By the same author: Printed matter, mainly books.
F

Thanks Dear

Info very useful for me!

Richard Hendel’s “On Book Design” is also quite nice.

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Personal Art and Design Portal of Ivan Gulkov
www.ivangdesign.com

The Hochuli (with Robin Kinross) book is still one of the best I’ve read. But Rich Hendel’s is the best, followed closely by Bringhurst. I know that we don’t normally think of The Elements of Typographic Design as a book design book, but there’s a lot of practical advice in it for the book designer—things on page dimensions and proportions (Chapter 8, Shaping the Page) are of particular interest.

Stephen Tiano, Book Designer, Page Compositor & Layout Artist
email: steve@tianodesign.com
website: http://www.tianodesign.com

Steve, you might want to reconsider putting your email address out so public for any harvest robot to snatch.

Hi.

Mitchell & Wightman’s Book Typography: A Designers Manual is a very useful and practical text. Highly recommended.

See also:

http://typophile.com/node/43770

Graphis Book Design 1,2, and 3 and the AIGA 50 Books/50 Covers are good references for book design, altho they are not how-tos.

Patty raises a good point. There are at least two kinds of books on *book design*. One variety is a how-to, which in many ways is a set of rules you should follow, and perhaps a list of typefaces. The problem with this is there is no one set of rules even at a given time, and moreover, the rules change with both technology and fashion.

A second kind of design book chronicles more how designers think about their work, what they see as problems, and how these problems are resolved. The problem with this is you need some background before you have an understanding of what the process is about; before you can glean very much from them.

I’d put Robert Bringhurst’s book in the first category, Rich Hendel’s in the second. You should probably have both, Though I’d prefer Tschichold for a “rules” resource.

And depending on you perspective, there are also two kinds of book design, the cover and the interior. The two should perhaps relate, but the question is how much? In university press publishing, by in large the function of the jacket is viewed to be the same as that of a poster. That is an advertising function, and ephemeral. With obvious exceptions, the interior is suppose to be timeless (though that too is in some real ways an illusion).

there are also two kinds of book design, the cover and the interior.

Depending on what sort of book you are designing. This is true of most Trade publishers - they even have separate departments to handle the covers and the interiors. But with the sort of books I do, illustrated books (which means a book that is illustrated throughout, whether with photography, graphics, or illustrations), the cover and interior are done together and relate strongly.

> there are also two kinds of book design, the cover and the interior.

There are also several sub-kinds of interior book design. The design considerations and parameters of a trade illustrated book (like Patty’s bread-and-butter) are different than those of scholarly typographic (more like Charles’ sort of thing). How-to and illustrated reference (of which I’ve done my share) are very different from poetry. Cookbooks are different from fiction. Gift books are a different breed from trade nonfiction. Etcetera, etcetera.

It occurs to me that we frequently fall into the trap of contrasting book design & typography with other design genres (“Please suggest a good font for books”) as though books comprised a homogeneous monolith. Which of course they do not.

— K.

Thanks, lady and gentlemen!

What did we do before Typophile?

Praise. @Florian - I just got that book after checking your link. Thanks