My first book design assignment was a book of poems. Good luck, and please post some sample pages here when you're done.

Victor thanks, this is also my first book design assignment in business.

I'll post soon with some sample pages and also cover lettering.

Let me add a few things to Mojo's very sensible comments.

PAGE SIZE is very often dictated by the publisher. Even publishers most sensitive to poetry will often tell designers what the page size is to be. Publishers have their own arcana on this matter, which they consult during séances. When the publisher tells the designer the page size it almost inevitably creates difficulties (OOOPS: I mean "challenges and opportunities") for the designer and/or compositor.

PAPER is also often chosen by the production manager at the publishing house. If this book will be printed by a book printer, paper choice will be further limited by papers the printer keeps in stock. Few books of poetry will have sales enough to warrant a special order of paper. Mojo's right: natural or off-white is best.

FOLIOS need to be discreet in size and placement. Head to the library and look at a lot of poetry books and folio placement. This can be a tough nut to crack with poetry books, thanks to the white space Mojo mentions.

RUNNING HEADS cannot be automatically dismissed. A poetry anthology may require them. Even at times a book by a single author may require them. This may be more of an editorial call than a design call.

Designing poetry books can be a lot of fun. In my current job I miss doing poetry. At times designers get lucky and end up collaborating with editors and poets, engaging them in discussion and showing alternate examples of settings. It often reduces the profit margin on design & composition even further than its already low state. But you may find some excellent writing and you may make a pal of a poet who gets a good design. I'm eager to see what you come up with. Good luck; have fun.

powers

Once you decide on a nice typeface, I would say pay close attention to ligatures.

good suggestions were given above.

if you encounter difficulties with any aspects of the book,
see if you can communicate with the poet to resolve them.

you might find s/he is more than willing to do rewriting
-- e.g., to choose a linebreak rather than have you force
one -- and this will make both of you feel much better...

-bowerbird

> Publishers have their own arcana on this matter, which they consult during séances.

Ha, ha. However, for those who might not see this as a quip, I want to point out that the publishers dictate page size based on press specifications. If you add even a quarter inch in dimension to a page, you make it too large to be printed economically on a certain press. The result is that the job has to be printed 8 pages at time instead of 16, effectively doubling most of the production costs.

It may seem like arcana if you don't know the procedure, but in fact it is simple math. And economics.

Don:

I was indeed attempting a quip. But there's a bit more to it than the purely math and economic aspects of paper size and press size. Why, for instance, do many publishers reckon the "right" size for a book of memoirs is to be 5.5" x 8.5"? Why not 6" x 9"? Why must academic books be 6" x 9" instead of 5.5" x 8.5?

Why cannot a book be an "odd" (say, tall, and slender) size if the economics are not negatively affected? Trying to get these notions changed for a book that may need a special treatment can be a tough nut to crack. I've been exposed to these decisions for decades now, and I'm often flabbergasted. Especially with poetry, some works call out for a different size, but publishers cannot be convinced. Often the discussions do take on the aspect of a séance.

It should also be noted that bookstore shelf size is also a factor in deciding the size of many books.

powers

I'll echo what Will said. Having also been involved in some of these "calculations" when I was Creative Director at Storey Publishing, I will say that there are a number of factors which make up the "arcana."

Production economics are an important factor. Those being met, then design considerations and suitability to the content may come into play. But market expectations and trade considerations will also play a key part. (Even down to what will fit on the shelves in a particular section of a bookstore, as Will pointed out; some sections will have taller or shorter or deeper or shallower shelf sections -- think art books vs. fiction.)

You could theoretically have the exact same book (same title, same content, same production costs and price point) but markedly different proportions -- say, one tall and slender, the other nearly squarish (remember, I did say "theoretically") -- and one will be deemed more sellable than the other.

As with any design destined for the marketplace, there is a delicate dance to be found between going with the flow and standing out from the crowd.

Paper can comprise half the cost of manufacturing a book, so publishers and printers are keen not to waste any. 6 by 9 inches is an economical size because most book papers are manufactured in a 25-by-38-inch size, which just fits 16 pages (four 6's out of 25 and four 9's out of 38, with just enough left over for folding and trimming).
If you're printing a quarter-million copies of Harry Potter and the Dingbats of Doom, it makes an enormous difference whether your trim size is 6 or 6-1/2.
But this ain't Harry Potter, it's poetry, and if the print run is more than 1000, I'll eat my Haberule.

(My Haberule)

Poetry lives on the fringes of the publishing world, where you don't enjoy economies of scale, but you're not subject to the tyranny of scale, either. Random House can't afford to let a designer suggest a different trim size or kind of paper, but most poetry publishers are small, independent operations who are more likely to engage in a dialogue.

Quick poetry related question. Would anyone ever consider placing folios centered on the sides of pages? Just something that crossed my mind.

Mr. Electricity, folios centered north-south on the outside edge of the page can be an elegant and distinguished look, but remember that most poetry is ragged right. The pages have a clearly defined left edge and no visible right edge, so your left-hand folios will have a very different relation to the mass of type on the page than your right-hand folios will.

But maybe that's the effect you wanted.

Thanks for the quick reply. I'm fairly new to all this and the idea just sort of popped into my head.

speaking as a poet here, i find most books of poetry are
deadeningly boring... i suggest adding pictures to pages,
with the poet or an art-director choosing which ones to uses,
utilizing creative commons pictures if that's all you can afford.

i'm just sayin'...

-bowerbird

I agree with bowerbird about the majority of poetry books being rather uninteresting in terms of typesetting.

To me, careful and individual placement of poems is the most important aspect; each poem must relate to the page as a whole. This fails miserably in the case of short poems clinging to the upper left corner of the text block. The most pleasing -- but also the most functional -- placements, which allow the poems to breathe, are (visually) centered on the horizontal and have maybe a generous vertical indent, too.

I've seen many books where the poems were set so that their last line was always at the bottom of the text block -- what was changing was the vertical position of the first line. This doesn't always work, though, and sometimes too much jumping around can also become distracting. You have to figure it out accordingly.

There's an example of a poetry book in Hochuli's Desining Books with the title on the verso and the poem on the recto.

Nothing fancy, no poetic cliches, but make sure that individual poems don't look like they were falling down or out of the page. Don't make them look ashamed of their existence, place them in a way that will underline their self-sustained aesthetic importance.

excellent input, omeld...

i'm a performance poet, who no longer even bothers
to output pieces to the page, but back when i did that,
and cared about what they looked like on paper, i'd
adjust the _leading_ of each piece so that top lines and
bottom lines always fell at page-top and page-bottom.
(my lines are always centered, if it helps you visualize it.)

it worked for me; i liked its sensibility.

so if the poet has interest or input on how s/he would
like the poems to look on the page, i'd listen carefully...

as for graphics, a friend and i designed his chapbook
using maps as graphics on most of the pages, which
would be extremely simple today with google maps...

i'm also constantly on the lookout for the poet who
wants to hand print her chapbook in her own writing,
because i sense that i'm going to find her _eventually_.
(that's how i know it's a woman.) however, if you should
find her first, do please go ahead and suggest it to her...
(she'll know immediately it's what she wants to do, and
she will thank you then and there, and later, repeatedly.)

-bowerbird

> Why must academic books be 6” x 9” instead of 5.5” x 8.5?

Because publishers charge a fortune for them, since adopted texts are a captive audience, and the larger size is a rationale they can use for the higher fee. (Like a unit price of 4.27 for the smaller size, and a unit price of 4.59 for the larger price justified selling the book for $40 more).

Computer books in the 90s were other books that would sell at any price, and thus were overpriced. They also tended to be a slightly larger format.

(I just got a book from the college bookstore yesterday for a course I am building. 1 inch thick (500+ pages) 9x12 hardcover format, and a price tag of $142.75 Canadian. Something tells me that the poetry book that this thread is about will cost closer to 10% of that.)

> i’m a performance poet, who no longer even bothers
to output pieces to the page

With me it's the opposite: that's how I got into typesetting ;-)

I also came to typesetting and book design through poetry and I can't stress the importance of materials and size when making these things enough. I work on a lot of pamphlets and I always go pocket size, nice cover boards and endpapers. Length of poem to page as well. I do like folios but placement can be tricky - I centre on the longest line in [ ].

Here are some sample of first mockup pages:

http://umas.hr/~sandro/nevio.pdf

Whole book is mixture of all kind of styles, themes, subjects, varying in extremes from very short to very long poems, but in the end sea and life at the sea is most frequent subject and that gave me an idea... Author of the book is old sailor, bohemian, man that has free spirit. He had ideas about pictures, colors, crazy typographic compositions that can't go thru because of the costs.

And now to elaborate my approach, i created horizon line that all poetry aligns thus creating dynamic movement thru whole book that resembles waves and sea. So that is why titles are beneath poems.

And numbers are not numbers of the pages, they are numbers related to songs.

Also sometimes poems become horizontal if they are too long or if I have opportunity to place them on a spread.

Should I use running heads? To even these numbers position or something.
_
Any constructive critic is welcomed.

Thanks

S.

What exactly are the numbers for? Is there and accompanying musical composition?

ravel said:
> He had ideas about pictures, colors, crazy typographic compositions
> that can’t go thru because of the costs.

do an e-book for him. pictures and colors cost absolutely nothing!
and he can distribute the thing freely, throughout the entire planet...

> And now to elaborate my approach, i created horizon line
> that all poetry aligns thus creating dynamic movement
> thru whole book that resembles waves and sea.
> So that is why titles are beneath poems.

very creative! good for you. i'll take a look at the .pdf tomorrow.

-bowerbird

E-book is not an option. He want real, solid book, that will be given as a present mostly, maybe some copies would be sold.

Also there are about ten photos in whole book that has about 120 pages.

About the numbers, they told me just that numbers are numbers of poems, and yes some of them are lyrics for songs.

I like the titles at the bottom, in this type of work. Very creative, and it fits well with the constant baseline for the works. I browsed the book before seeing you explanation ... the waves didn't register for me, but there was nothing negative about the placement.

I think running heads would be a distraction.

I did feel the amount of margin at the bottom was a bit much. What do others think?

Printed, bottom margin is optimal, especially because format and margins are built on golden ratio of format itself.

Uploaded new version of sample with different kind of style for horizontal layout poems.

What do you think of notes on first page, author wanted place and date with that poem?

new one http://umas.hr/~sandro/nevio.pdf
http://umas.hr/~sandro/nevio%20old.pdf

ravel said:
> E-book is not an option.

it's always an option, because it doesn't foreclose other options.

> He want real, solid book,
> that will be given as a present mostly,
> maybe some copies would be sold.

i understand. but he also had "ideas about pictures, colors, crazy
typographic compositions that can’t go thru because of the costs."
so creating a second electronic-only edition will nudge his creativity.

-bowerbird

p.s. the layout looks great. but the type could be a bit bigger... ;+)

Running text is set in 9 pt with generous leading at 12 pt, and titles in 14.56 pt.

I think that 10 pt would be little to much, and with the same leading wouldn't be the same feel, and because of lenght of some poems and layout I cannot afford to set leading 13 pt or higher.

E-book creation is also matter of time and budget... :) Budget that is pretty limited

>What do you think of notes on first page, author wanted place and date with that poem?

I like the idea how and where the note is placed, but i'm not sure that you need a itaiic, for me it looks a tick too colorful. Did you try the regular weight instead?

Yeah, had the same doubt, but wanted do differentiate from the poem type style, notes have same size as running text, so tought italic would make that difference. But I think that you are right that is tick too colorful.

What about horizontally placed poems? Centered or aligned left on horizon line?

ravel said:
> Running text is set in 9 pt
> with generous leading at 12 pt,
> and titles in 14.56 pt.

i'd use 10-point, or even 11-point, (or 10.7-point),
and still feel 12-point leading gives enough spacing.

i also feel comfortable changing the leading of pieces.
so i'd go with a generous leading for most of the book,
and tighten it up only on the few pieces when needed.
(oftentimes i'll make sure the leading matches for the
two pieces that compose a facing-pages spread, but
i don't think readers notice a change between pages.
and even if they do, what difference does it make?
i've known poets who set every poem in its own font,
specifically chosen for it, and i liked that just fine, so
i see no problem with doing intelligent copy-fitting.)

i'd also size the titles down, and count on bolding and
their separation/appearance to make their role clear...
that would give you a touch more room, when needed.

i also didn't care for the horizontally-placed poems...
but maybe that's just me, which brings up the disclaim:
this feedback is given solely because you asked for it.
you're the one doing the job; the decisions are yours.

-bowerbird

No problem bowerbird, I like to hear toughts of others.

Wouldn't changing leading confront the baseline and feel of reading, grey blocks appearing on back of the page?

i'm assuming no bleed-through
from the other side of the page,
due to thick-enough paper...

most poetry books are slight,
so one can afford thicker paper,
which will help fill out the spine.

-bowerbird

p.s. also, since you do not have
the same number of lines on each
page, bleed-through will be bad
for you anyway. the fact that it's
"on a grid" will be of little solace.

Had a little comment from the poet, and in the end, and it seems odd, he thinks that this solution is too experimental and he doesn't want to be experimented on. With these kind of poems, style, theme and everything in the end that seems pretty odd and experimental he thinks that is not for him.

Going back to "classic" drawing board.

> too experimental

ah well, i hope you had fun while it lasted. :+)

if it's any consolation, i thought your layout was very imaginative,
and did a good job of hinting at the lilt of the underlying content.

-bowerbird

I am sorry that you have to go back to the drawing board, for you have something really nice here. I'm pretty stodgy, but this does not seem "too experimental" to me.

I had meant to post some comments when you posted the first sample on the 23rd, but I got too busy. So I'll give them here anyway.

I really like the titles at the bottom, and the varying line lengths of the poems moving up. The undulation is very nice. I think I would have gone with italic for the poem titles. For some contrast, and to keep the idea of "flow" going.

The folios bother me a bit. At the risk of getting too fussy, I might have looked at a light sans for them.

In the poems on pages 11 and 12, how about tracking out the all-cap lines a bit? And then you'll need to adjust some pairs, such as RA to get even latter spacing throughout those poems.

The horizontal poem looks fine. A nice jolt there.

Type size and lead are fine; don't mess with them, especially differential leading among poems. The note at the first poem looks very nice; italic is right for that element. & don't worry about show-through. Unless you print the thing on cover paper you'll always have some show through. And for this book (if this is the whole extent of it) you will want a nice, flexible book.

As I say: I’m sorry to see you need to re-work this. We’ll be interested to see what you come up with.

powers

Bowerbird and Will thanks for comments, I really appreciate it.

Sadly this solution didn't go thru, I will try to do my best within given constraints.

Will I did some tracking, it's values are about 50 i think, without kerning or adjusting. Didn't want to go thru details at this stage.

Currently, author and his associate are trying to find sponsors for print so that they can print and put photos back in. Other side of this story is that visually, these photos are pretty bad, sometimes no motive or theme, just snapshots. What to do with these requests?

Some people would hold their noses, do the job, and take the check to the bank. many wold make sure they were not listed in the credits for the project. Others would decline to be part of the project any further. Every circumstance is individual. I designed and composed a poetry book a while back. The publisher and author wanted things I did not like. I sent them the files, told them to do as they wished with them, and told them to keep my name out of the book. It was a pro bono job so I was not going to get any loot anyway. The files had been done, they were of no use to me.

powers

My name in the book could give me some further reference and possibly more projects. Maybe I could do some safe net and write credits of photos directly to author of poems.

Other side of the story that these photos will downgrade visual quality of final product.

welcome to the flaky world of poets.

-bowerbird

http://umas.hr/~sandro/nevionew.pdf

Finally, we came to aggrement, no photos, no colors. I agreed on smaller format, now 14x23cm, with 10 pt poem text with side folios.

In the pdf are also centered folios.

I've been looking at your layouts and I preferred the first design rather than the last. What's your own opinion about the changes?