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A Few Notes on Book Design
Some fifteen or so years ago I started developing code for typesetting documents that would make it easy for designers to get the appearance they had in mind.
While doing this I read a lot about book design and have tried my hand at printing a variety of books and ephemera using hand set lead type and a hand operated Chandler & Price 1904 Old Style 8 by 12 platen press, pretty much as Gutenberg did some five and a half centuries ago.
These notes are partly based on my own amateur experience and feelings but the majority have been culled from the professionals.
These notes briefly cover some aspects of book design and typography, independently of the means of typesetting. Among the several books on the subject listed in the Bibliography I prefer Bringhurst’s The Elements of Typographic Style (Bringhurst 1999).
The notes originally formed the first part of a user manual for the memoir class for use with the LaTeX typesetting system developed by Leslie Lamport (Lamport 1994) based on Donald Knuth’s TeX system (Knuth 1984). The manual was first published in 2001 and as the notes have grown in size and memoir’s capabilities have been extended the manual also grew to approaching 700 pages (P. Wilson 2009). At that point seemed advantageous to separate the design notes from the technicalities, hence this document.
PETER WILSON
Seattle, WA
July 2009
While doing this I read a lot about book design and have tried my hand at printing a variety of books and ephemera using hand set lead type and a hand operated Chandler & Price 1904 Old Style 8 by 12 platen press, pretty much as Gutenberg did some five and a half centuries ago.
These notes are partly based on my own amateur experience and feelings but the majority have been culled from the professionals.
These notes briefly cover some aspects of book design and typography, independently of the means of typesetting. Among the several books on the subject listed in the Bibliography I prefer Bringhurst’s The Elements of Typographic Style (Bringhurst 1999).
The notes originally formed the first part of a user manual for the memoir class for use with the LaTeX typesetting system developed by Leslie Lamport (Lamport 1994) based on Donald Knuth’s TeX system (Knuth 1984). The manual was first published in 2001 and as the notes have grown in size and memoir’s capabilities have been extended the manual also grew to approaching 700 pages (P. Wilson 2009). At that point seemed advantageous to separate the design notes from the technicalities, hence this document.
PETER WILSON
Seattle, WA
July 2009
119 pages, Unknown Binding
First published August 1, 2009
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March 2, 2014
I have the PDF version of this book. I found this self-published tome to be of immense help in understanding how and why certain book design elements work and so many don't. It gave me the confidence to create new editions of old typewritten memoirs written by some of my relatives. The results were much better than my first fumbling attempts before reading it.
I highly recommend it to anyone interested in understanding this topic.
I highly recommend it to anyone interested in understanding this topic.
Displaying 1 of 1 review