What is the content of book design? Cover, typesetting, binding and printing, a whole set of processes of book design. The magic of book design is not only at the plane design level, but also two-dimensional to three-dimensional three-dimensional design. Today we will introduce the steps of book binding design.

A complete process of book design

　　 Erik Spiekermann, a book designer, said that book design is not an "attractive cover" composed of bright colors and exaggerated fonts, but an overall design to accurately attract target readers.

When buying a book, many factors will affect whether readers are willing to buy it. The design of the cover, the layout of the text, and the binding of the whole book will attract readers to varying degrees. Even if the content of the book reaches the peak level, if the wrong font, font size and spacing are used, the reading experience will be minimized, and the book will become an abandoned book.

Nowadays, the diversity of media makes e-books have unique advantages in price transmission. However, the physical book with optimized cover, text and binding can be regarded not only as a book, but also as a work of art. When the value of a book is not only in its rich content, but also in the presence of designers, the value of this physical book is truly reflected. This is also incomparable to e-books.

Design magic of cover

　　 A cover is the window of a book, which is the first impression of all people when they see the book. According to the impression of the cover, the impression of the book will be determined. So when designing the cover, designers need to consider not only the content of the book, but also the readers of the book.

In addition to visually expressing the title of the cover, the combination of color matching and font should also fit the atmosphere given by the book.

For example, the novel Liar tells about themes such as memory and mental illness. On the cover, the hero stands at the position of the letter "i", while a burned hole is placed on the hero's head. This is a metaphor for his memory, which indicates that his memory is slowly disintegrating.

Although this simple cover does not have highly saturated colors and does not spend too much experience on font changes, this simple style is still impressive.

George Orwell's 1984 uses the apostrophe to replace the word 9, which also represents the eye of Big Brother in the book. On the other hand, the once popular Biography of Jobs directly uses Jobs' head as its cover. Although there is no amazing design, people who have seen this book immediately remember the cover of this book, which can be said to be a very successful cover.

In fact, the design of the cover really fits the graphic design. The cover design of most books, CDs and other media is part of the graphic design. However, the biggest difference between the physical media and the electronic version is that it can be realized by using various materials, and ultimately turn the design into a three-dimensional design.

Cover of "Transverse"

The cover of the book "Transverse" is cut by five layers of different shapes, which leads the word "Transverse" to the visual center. In "You are my kaleidoscope" (you are my kaleidoscope), you use colored lines to express your memory, and then use paper to overlay it into a three-dimensional medium to show the concept of kaleidoscope.

Serene Ng's manual:

《You are my kaleidoscope》

The Design Magic of Book Content

In addition to the cover, whether a book is worth buying is also a question to be considered. Of course, the magic I'm talking about here doesn't mean how beautiful the story is or how shocking the writing is. It is about the reading experience for readers.

　　 The font, font size, font spacing, line spacing, and page spacing of each character will have different effects on reading. Like in Chinese fonts, regular script will be more robust and suitable for poetry; There are some baby round fonts, which are suitable for easy and pleasant reading experience, such as children's picture books and comics.

The emission of images will also have an impact on the page. A picture that is completely close to the edge will make people feel visual impact, and a picture with a white edge will give people a sense of breath. Cross page pictures cannot be stuck in the gaps between pages. It can be said that the composition of the content is also very much in need of in-depth knowledge.

Beppe Conti's magazine layout works

Binding&the magic of printing

In binding and printing, it is also a promising part of book design. In binding design, thread binding, glue binding, binding, folding, respectively, correspond to different page turning effects, paper thickness that can be withstood, and so on.

for example Combined line assembly It is to bind single thread bound pamphlets together again, which is suitable for binding thick books and can be spread out completely for easy reading. This kind of binding method is more suitable for photography, album, atlas, design yearbook, etc.

Wired binding generally refers to thread locking+glue binding, which is the way most of our books use now. First, the inside pages of the book are assembled in a combined thread binding way, and finally, glue the spine of the book to be bound to glue the cover and the inside pages together. This binding mode combines the characteristics of thread bound books and glue bound books, that is, it is firm and not easy to take off the page, even if the glue ages for a long time. Books are not easy to loose pages because of the lock thread.

★★★★★

In terms of printing, it will also produce visual effects for the book as a whole. Specifically Gold stamping, silver stamping, indentation and other printing processes , and The use of rice paper, translucent paper, laser paper, gold foil and other materials.

In addition, some printing methods are also used in different occasions. For example, the current screen printing and RISO printing methods will have different effects on printing.

The project of Fuman Studio: Touchy Freely, designed a series of touchable printing effects, such as laser material+indentation, gold stamping, silver stamping and other effects.

Whether you want to be a book designer for cover, content, binding or printing, you are striving for book art.

　　 Rhode Island School of Design （RISD） Students will have the opportunity to try traditional book making in graphic design. Maryland Institute of the Arts (MICA) In my sophomore year, I arranged two matching courses in typesetting and graphic design.

For students who only want to learn book art, such as American Philadelphia University of the Arts (UArts) And correspondingly set up Book Arts&Printing (MFA).

BOOK

Whether interested in graphic design or book art or printing art, you can constantly explore on the road of design. For the collection of books, students of natural light also made good achievements:

Works of natural light student Du

The art of books is not only on the plane design level, but also on the three-dimensional design from two-dimensional to three-dimensional. As a medium of communication, each book expresses different colors, atmosphere and emotions. The value of a book is shaped by the author of the content and the overall designer. Such value is irreplaceable by electronic media.

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