bookdesign_project | Entries tagged with front and back matter: contents page

Hilary Mantel. Wolf Hall. London: Fourth Estate, 2009. No designer information available, but typeset by G&S Designs. Collected 30 June

To finish off, I wanted to remind myself that book design doesn't have to be, and probably shouldn't be, eyecatching, dramatic, innovative or even visible to be good book design. I thought going through this book, a large trade paperback (very thin glossy card, uncoated book paper stock) from 2009, would be a pretty good opportunity to demonstrate that. Even though I've praised books with complicated design, that can go wrong more often than it goes right.
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Sarah Delahunty. Two Plays. Wellington: Playmarket, 2009. Cover by Sorelle Cansion and Sean McGarry; John Vakidis. Tzigane. Wellington: Playmarket, 2008. Cover by Sorelle Cansino; Gary Henderson. Three Plays. Wellington: Playmarket, 2007. Cover by Sorelle Palmer. All collected 14 July

Playmarket presents awesome series design in its New Zealand playwrights series. ( read more )

Current Mood: triumphant!

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Stephanie Pearl-McPhee. Knitting Rules. Massachusetts: Storey Publishing, 2006. Design by Mary Velgos and others. Illustrations by Diana Marye Huff. Collected June 14

Knitting Rules is a book of knitting tips and knitting humour in a fairly ordinary paperback with a fairly flimsy glossy cover and a standard white book stock. I don't really like the cover, but it's pretty to the point: a woman, (the author, who is a well-known knitter and author)knitting and dropping a ball of wool, with quirky typography and an exclamation mark. It might not be the world's greatest design, but it gets the job done. However, unusually, the book was printed in a maroon ink rather than in black. The first time I took notes on this book I found the entire concept so offensive that I fairly trashed it! However, on review, I don't feel quite so strongly. (For some reason, this text mostly scanned as black and white - take my word for it, it's maroon.)
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Making Stuff: An Alternative Craft Book. London: Black Dog Publishing, 2006. Designed by David Ottley, Chris Turnbull, and Angela Osgerby. Collected 24 July

Making Stuff is a pretty commercial book clearly designed to take advantage of one particular market. It isn't especially well-made and is clearly aimed at beginner crafters - no particular skill in any one craft is needed to make any of the projects in this book, so for me as a good knitter and an uncertain everything else-er I'm not sure how much of a wise purchase it is. However, it is a book that definitely knows its market, and I think its design is very coherent in that respect.
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Mary Ellen O'Connor. Freed to Care, Proud to Nurse: 100 Years of the New Zealand Nurses Organisation. Wellington: Steele Roberts, 2010. Design is likely in-house. Collected 30 July

This new hardcover book is heavy on the images, many of which are pretty neat, and it usually does a good job of showcasing them. However, on the whole the design gives me the feeling of being almost-but-not-quite great. ( read more )

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Ed. Michael Hoskin. The Cambridge Illustrated History of Astronomy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Design by Stuart Macready and various others. Collected 30 July

Apologies for the scans for this one, guys, it's a big heavy book and difficult to get on the glass. Hardback, gloss laminated pages, four colours throughout.( read more )

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Rowan Bishop & Sue Carruthers. The Vegetarian Adventure Cook Book: Menus from Home and Abroad. Lower Hutt: Mills Publications, 1988. No design info. Collected 30 July.

I sat down to trash this design, but I found that it had really grown on me. What I like about it is that it has a really distinct sense of the time it was written, while still being legible, useful, and even attractive twenty years later. (Also, remember when a cookbook cost $20?) Paperback. ( read more )

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Don Marquis. Archy & Mehitabel. Ernest Benn, 1931.

This book is included chiefly as a curiousity. The oldest edition of any of the books in the portfolio, I found its internal design interesting from a historical perspective. The imprint page is barely existent, and most of the information which would typically be found on it is either not there or in other places. For example, there is no statement of copyright; the name and location of the publisher and author appear only on the title page, while the printer appears on the final page of the book.

Interestingly, the design is still very readable and looks good to modern sensibilities. The typography has worked hard to reflect its content: the typeface, which resembles that of a typewriter, is reminiscent of the content in that the poems are supposedly typed by a cockroach (the reason why no capitals or punctuation marks occur: the cockroach cannot hold down the shift key at the same time as it hits a letter. The simple design also reflects these humble origins! ( read more )

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Michael Haag. Cadogan Guide to Egypt. London: Cadogan Books, 1993. Illustrations by Sophie Morrish. Design by Animage. Cover illustration by Povl Webb, cover design by Ralph King. Collected 28 July

Floppy cover, very thin stock but laminated stock - this is a guidebook densely crammed with information and designed to be lugged round with minimum effort and maximum efficiency. Design-wise, where to start with this book? Like Soon I Will Be Invincible, the Cadogan Guide to Egypt is characterised by a holistic design sensibility. Unfortunately - especially since the book itself is great and, I am assured, useful - this design is not so good! I seized on it the moment Elaine brought it out for indexing practice.

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Vikas Swarup. Q and A. Doubleday, 2005. Cover design by Claire Ward. Illustration by Nicky Dupays. Collected 14 May 2010

Jacket

Matte laminated card with spot gloss on typography and on illustration.

This cover design is clearly going for minimalism, which in book design aims to get people to pick up a book just because it’s beautiful – not because they know what’s going on between the covers.Unfortunately in my opinion it is not a successful cover, perhaps because it fails to completely commit to the minimalism. The illustration on the cover, of a television, obstructs the book’s minimalism, but nor does it give much of an idea of what happens in the book, so the cover fails on both counts. Instead it becomes a cover that is neither beautifully simple nor informatively detailed. ( read more )

things happen, and are wrapped in newspaper

Entries tagged with front and back matter: contents page

Lucky Last: Wolf Hall

New Zealand Play Series Presents

Knitting Rules!

Making Stuff

Proud to Nurse

Astronomy: Cambridge Illustrated History

The Vegetarian Adventure

Archy & Mehitabel, by Don Marquis

Cadogan Guide to Egypt

Q and A

Profile

Wrapped in Newspaper

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