On Book Design

Rating:
Summary: A new classic -- a great find.
Review: This is a new breed of book design; but it is bred out of classicism. Being involved in an antiquarian artform during the dawn of computer technology poses many problems. One of them is the disappearance of really well designed books. So, in an attempt to preserve The Book's integrity, I searched for new guidance on this ancient art. This book ended my search. Rather than quibble with new design trends, resist new technology, or morosely revisit bygone eras, Hendel see these as "points of departure" and sticks to the real issue -- the design of books. The result is not a strict set of rules for book design, rather, it is a fluid and applicable philosophy of design for the many types of books we find today. "The challenge," says Hendel, "isn't to create something different or pretty or clever but to discover how best to serve the author's words." This book is informative, enlightening and filled with lovely samples from distinguished designers. A very beautiful book. Writers will enjoy learning how designers make well-thought creative decisions about the spaces that words flow into.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent
Review: Thoughtful and thorough, and offering no easy answers, this book forces one to think for herself. On a par with Hochuli's 'Design of Books'.

Rating:
Summary: Book Designers on Book Design
Review: When Henry David Thoreau made a complete list of each and every possession he had at Walden Pond, he curiously omitted one thing: He forgot the pencil that enabled him to make the list. Successful book design, says Richard Hendel, often goes as unnoticed and unappreciated as Thoreau's pencil. It is, as Beatrice Warde once said, a transparent goblet, so that (writes Hendel) "the very invisibility of its design is to its credit." Hendel should know, having worked for many years as a highly regarded book designer, most recently with the University of North Carolina Press. Thankfully, this is not a prosaic instructional manual--"it is a book about how books are designed," he cautions, "not a book about how to design books"--but a medley of honest reflections about how book designers see, think, and feel. Written by the author and eight other American and British designers, it is illustrated by 110 black and white examples, among them several pieces by Iowa-born designer Merle Armitage and the University of Nebraska's Richard Eckersley, two of the century's most inventive (yet unheralded) book designers. With surprising candor, the text asks: How do book designers get their ideas? What do they worry about? How did they approach a particular book? And what difference does it all make? After all, confides Hendel, prize-winning book designs are largely unappreciated, cost more to produce, and are rarely available in bookstores. "There isn't any correlation between what books look like and how they sell," he laments. "Design seems to make no difference." Of particular interest is a section about the design of this book, which led us to wonder how well it will sell, whether bookstores will carry it, and (hopefully, because it has much to offer) the extent to which it might inspire other, younger book designers. (Copyright by Roy R. Behrens from Ballast Quarterly Review, Vol. 14, No. 4, Summer 1999.)