The Art of Book Design

Even those of us who've purchased e-readers miss certain aspects of the print book. Perhaps it's the paper: its color, texture, or ragged edge. Perhaps it's the elegance of the font, or design of the headers. As we pay homage this month to the print book, I wanted to take a look at the unsung hero of book beauty and reading comfort: the book designer. Assisting me is Glen Burris, of Baltimore, MD, an award-winning book designer who has worked for Johns Hopkins University Press for more than twenty years.

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Kathryn: What exactly does a book designer do? Who do they collaborate with, and how does their work fit into the production of a book?

Glen: A book designer takes an edited manuscript and, using his or her expertise, determines the appearance of the printed book. This involves determining the page layout (page margins and type area), type specifications (sizes and appearance of the text, titles and subheads), sizes and positions of any art, and layout of display pages (such as the title page and the table of contents). These details are usually given to a compositor who creates the actual pages; sometimes, however, the designer also sets type and lays out each page. The designer selects the papers, boards, and cloths used to print and bind a book. The designer designs the covers or dustjacket of the book and creates the materials required for their printing. The designer supervises all of the work required by these processes to ensure that the final product matches their specifications.

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Kathryn: What kind of backgrounds do book designers have, and how do they contribute to the process?

Glen: Book designers come from all walks of life but most commonly have a graphic design background. They will have been taught the art and science of type (typography); its principles and rules are essential in the creation of beautiful, readable books.

Book designers know the processes by which books are printed and bound. Book designers know something about the processes used to reproduce photography.

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Kathryn: I tried three times to read A Tale of Two Cities, even though I'd previously loved Dickens. Plus, it’s a classic—shame alone should have pulled me through it. I finally picked up a different version from the library and had no trouble. I concluded it must have been the book design that kept me from being able to read it. Why is book design so important, and how does it support the reading experience? 

Glen: The best book design is, paradoxically, invisible: the reader encounters the text without any interference and reads effortlessly. This involves selecting the right size type, setting it on the right line width, and spacing the lines correctly. Different types of reading require different type settings: a novel is different from a dictionary entry, which is different from a technical or scholarly work.

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Kathryn: A huge loss for me, in e-books, is in the design. Every book looks the same on an e-reader. Do you fear book design is a dying art?

Glen: The current e-readers, in order to make the page layout more flexible, actually violate some important rules regarding wordspacing, hyphenation, and line length—making the texts harder to read. I expect e-readers will become more sophisticated in time. More books and more kinds of books will be read on them. But book design will not die: people will still want beautiful books, whether paper or digital.

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Kathryn: What was your favorite project to have worked on, and why?

Glen: What I like about my job is the variety. I've designed poetry, short story collections, science reference works, fine art photography books, as well as many scholarly and technical books. I'm currently working on a field guide to fishes. My favorite projects have all been with writers, photographers, and artists who were passionate about their work and wanted the physical book to reflect that passion.

Glen designed all three covers pictured here for books recently published by The Johns Hopkins University Press.

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Kathryn Craft is a developmental editor at Writing-Partner.com, an independent manuscript evaluation and line editing service. Her women's fiction and memoir are represented by Katie Shea at the Donald Maass Literary Agency. The first chapter of her memoir, Standoff at Ronnie's Place, modified as a stand-alone essay, was published online by Mason's Road, the online journal of Fairfield University's MFA program. She blogs about Healing through Writing.

Glen Burris is an award-winning book designer with over twenty years of experience at The Johns Hopkins University Press.