Category Archives: Readability

Readability is the prime virtue of book design

Skilled Workman Posted on by

I decided I needed to beat an old drum. Readability is the focus of book design typography. This was the core of curriculum in my digital publishing degree. It’s the center of my graphic design and book design efforts. Without comfortable, readable content, your book has a severe handicap. What is readability? This is all about book design typography. Here’s a little graphic to show you some of the things that influence how easily you can read a … Continue reading →

Writing and working in InDesign makes using it easy

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I was talking to a friend a couple days ago. He mentioned the primary trouble he has in using InDesign to format his books: when he gets into InDesign he can’t remember how to use it. Suddenly, it dawned on me that this is a primary reason why writing in InDesign is so effective. Not only is writing fully formatted in InDesign the best method of communicating clearly with your readers [outside of excellent content], the simple act … Continue reading →

Why does list quality matter in your ePUB?

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Yea, I know, here goes David off on another of his “professional quality” rants again…. But this one’s important! Lists are #3 in reading importance The studies I’ve seen [and please prove me wrong if you know better] show that, after picture captions and headlines, lists are third in reader importance. Many readers look for lists as they start skimming when they get bored. They assume that a list will give them a synopsis and let them … Continue reading →

The new flat UIs or the Emperor has new clothes

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We all remember the story. A king is scammed by cunning tailors to walk around naked. The new iOS7 and Mavericks [OSX.9] are clear examples of this type of thinking. The lemming designers, like the Weather Channel, are beginning to run around proclaiming the wonders of the new kingly style. As you can see below, shutterstock claims the lemmings are going wild for the new style. Hey! The emperor is naked!!! Fashion which forgets about the reader … Continue reading →

Author beware! You are responsible to make good choices

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Dave Bricker posted a long article today about the dangers of publishing without knowing the expenses and requirements of book production. You need to read the article if you are ignorant of the scams perpetrated on authors. Most publishers you run across with a quick Google search as you start your hunt for help will be vanity houses seeking to scam the author. There are countless people lusting after your production money This is where you need … Continue reading →

What we need in a font family for books

Skilled Workman Posted on by

As typographers and book designers, we need a minimum three-font family—regular, italic, and bold: Italic is necessary for periodical names and emphasis. Bold is used for proper names and headers. As you saw at the start of this paragraph I used a bold through the colon to emphasize an important point. In my books I use my Bold Sans Serif. But regardless of which font family you choose it must satisfy several basic requirements of book design. … Continue reading →

The special characters you must use in your books

Skilled Workman Posted on by

Today, in the digital arena, a font is simply a complete set of characters for a given style: In InDesign, for example, a font can be set as any size from a tenth of a point to 1296 points. Below I am showing you the font used for my books, named Contenu Book (which I designed), showing some of the 563 characters available in it. Notice the three styles of numbers (among other things). Contenu Book This … Continue reading →

Cover Design: The seduction of type effects

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Amateur covers are obvious! The number one mistake is made by adding all kinds of fancy trimmings to your type. Not only does it make the type much harder to read, but all trained designers have been strongly told that NO ONE EVER does that. As a result, there are very few professional covers with type stylized like that. If it is, the type is carefully embossed, maybe beveled. Using the minimal amount necessary to get the … Continue reading →

Formatting your books and ebooks: DIY or paid?

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Most of you have probably read one of my rants about the difficulty and absurdity of producing finished books in Word. Except for Smashwords, where this is required, you should never use Word for final output. So, what are your options? Do it yourself or pay someone else There are several factors involved here. You need to carefully look at your needs and choose what works best for you. But the bottomline is certain. Sooner or later, … Continue reading →

Caslon & Baskerville

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English Old Style: Caslon MyFonts puts it this way: “William Caslon released his first typefaces in 1722. Caslon’s types were based on seventeenth-century Dutch old style designs, which were then used extensively in England. Because of their remarkable practicality, Caslon’s designs met with instant success. Caslon’s types became popular throughout Europe and the American colonies; printer Benjamin Franklin hardly used any other typeface. “The first printings of the American Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were set … Continue reading →