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Chap.5 - Book Design and Production

This document discusses key aspects of book design and production including: - The roles of design, cover page design, text design/typography and layout, picture research, and production. - It outlines the production process from typesetting and illustration reproduction through printing, binding, and distribution. - Production departments manage prepress technologies and digital archives, with production managers overseeing purchasing, quality control, and responding to technical changes.

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Nur Aisyah Balqis
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438 views

Chap.5 - Book Design and Production

This document discusses key aspects of book design and production including: - The roles of design, cover page design, text design/typography and layout, picture research, and production. - It outlines the production process from typesetting and illustration reproduction through printing, binding, and distribution. - Production departments manage prepress technologies and digital archives, with production managers overseeing purchasing, quality control, and responding to technical changes.

Uploaded by

Nur Aisyah Balqis
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PPT, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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CHAPTER 5:

BOOK DESIGN & PRODUCTION:


- Parts of book
- Roles of design
- Cover page design
- Text design / Typography and layout
- Picture research
- Production
BOOK DESIGN & PRODUCTION:
ROLE OF DESIGN:
 Alongside the work of the editor in product development, the
contributions from the design and production departments are
equally critical.

 Good design sells book;


- whether it is the cover of a novel attracting an impulse buyer
in a shop, or
- the effective use of typography and illustrations in a school
textbook.

 Some publishers are actively design-led and their design standards

are used as marketing and sales tools internationally.

 The basis of the book designer’s job is visual planning. Their tasks
is to transform and enhance the author’s raw material, text and
illustrations.
 The printed book should have aesthetical (visual) appeal and meet
the practical needs of its users – whether for leisure, information or
education.

 The use of freelancers or agencies to design books or websites is


widespread;
- In-house staff: employed by medium to large houses,
designing covers or more complex illustrated books.
Reporting daily to the manager.
- Design manager: concerned with the deployment of in-house
and external services, budgets, scheduling and
administration.
- Senior designer: coordinate the work of junior designers.

 Few large publishers (those publishing atlases and guidebooks)


have in-house technical illustrators or cartographers. Some
publishers and packagers employ illustrators and designers on
short-term contracts.
COVER PAGE DESIGN:
 The cover’s main purpose is to sell. The design should inform as
well as attract, be true to the contents, and be tuned to the
market.

 The cover or jacket protects the books, identifies the author and
title, and carries the blurb (publicity). The ISBN and bar code
enable ordering.

 The image must be powerful enough to attract a browser to pick


the book up within a few seconds, and be clear enough to be
reproduced in catalogs of the publisher.

 Cover images are usually needed at least 6 months ahead of


publication. The designer is briefed by the commissioning editor
and generates rough visuals for approval by the editorial, marketing
and sales departments.
TEXT DESIGN/TYPOGRAPHY AND LAYOUT:
 The type specification sets out how the main text elements should
be typeset in respect of typefaces, sizes, and line lengths, and of
the positioning and spacing of the elements. The elements include:
- body text,
- headings: the hierarchy of chapter heads, subheadings, etc.,
- displayed quotations: broken off from the main text,
- tables,
- captions for illustrations,
- running heads at the top of the page, and
- page numbers.

 The page layout is a graphic representation of the printed page –


invariably of two facing pages. Layouts are based on grid – the
underlying framework within which text and illustrations are placed
on the page.
 A grid is the graphic design equivalent of a building’s foundations.
As we read from left to right and top to bottom, a grid is generally
a series of vertical and horizontal lines.
- Vertical lines: relate to the column widths,
- Horizontal lines: determined by the space that a line of type
occupies.

 Layout and typographic style considerably affect the readers’


perception of a book. Book typography has four main functions
(Mitchell and Wightman, 2005):
- Readability: the text should be comfortable to read,
- Organization: the structure of the text should be clearly
communicated,
- Navigation: information in the book should be easy to find,
and,
- Consistency: the overall effect is to create a unified whole.
PICTURE RESEARCH:
 The selection, procurement and collection of illustrations of all
kinds. The number of in-house picture researchers is very small.

 A publisher or packager may use expert freelance researchers, who


specialize in particular subjects and serve a range of media.
Otherwise, picture research for the text or cover may be just part
of
an assistant’s work in an editorial or covers department.

 The picture researcher will be briefed by the editor or designer


usually before the author has completed the manuscript, to ensure
that the pictures are ready for the design stage. The brief can
range from being very specific, less specific, to very vague.

 The researcher may read the outline or manuscript in order to


generate a list of ideas for approval by the editor and the author,
or amend the picture list supplied by the author to something more
feasible.
 The researcher cannot progress quickly with selection without
knowing where to look for an image, and without a relevant set of
contacts.

Sourcing pictures:
 The possible sources, both home and abroad, are varied and
include:
- museums,
- libraries,
- archives,
- commercial picture agencies,
- photographers,
- PR departments,
- professional and tourist organizations,
- charities, and
- private individuals.
PRODUCTION:
 The publisher’s production department is the link between editors
and designers and external suppliers. The production department
manages the electronic prepress technologies and the digital
archive of the publisher’s products for print and electronic
publication.

Organization of the production department:

- Within a production department, there are commonly 3 main levels


of job:

 Production manager or director: responsible for the purchasing


policy on sources of supply; establishing standard book sizes and
papers; controlling the flow of work and maintaining quality
standards; contributing to the preparation of the publishing
programme; and responding to major technical changes.
PRODUCTION:
 Production controller: responsible for seeing books through the
production stages from manuscript to receipt of bound copies.

 Production assistant: gives clerical or administrative support to the


department. They monitor proofs and production schedules, chase
editors and suppliers, and record production costing.
PRODUCTION PROCESS:
1. Typesetting: the core business of a typesetter is text processing.
This could mean rekeying manuscripts at very low rates or taking
the disks supplied by the authors and incorporating editorial
corrections from the marked-up hard copy.

2. Reproduction of illustrations: Illustrations may be prepared or


sourced in digital form and can be provided to the typesetter as
EPS (encapsulated PostScript) files – from a drawing program –
or as TIFFs (tagged image file format) or JPEGs (joint
photographic experts group) – for half-tones.

3. Imposition and platemaking: The printing plates on a press do not


print one page at a time. Rather each sheet of paper, printed both
sides, carries 8, 16 or 32 pages (or multiples of these), and is
subsequently folded several times and cut to make a section (or
signature) of the bound book.
PRODUCTION PROCESS:
4. Online content : content may also be originated as, or converted
into XML data.

5. Printing: most books are printed by offset lithography. Many offset


presses are sheet-fed and vary in plate size and in capabilities.

6. Binding: After printing, the sheets are folded by the printer or


possibly by a trade binder. Some hardbacks and some quality
paperbacks, have their sections sewn together.
 Types of binding generally are:

 1. Sewn binding: a strong, durable binding where inside pages are sewn
together in section.
 2. Perfect binding: a widely used soft cover book binding method. The pages
and cover are glued together at the spine with a strong yet flexible thermal
glue.
 3. Slotted: Binding head machine screws feature an undercut machine screw
head with a rounded top that tapers around the screws, in practice, are
smaller in size.
 4. Notch: the fastening of sets of single leaves (as books or magazines) with
a series of glue-filled grooves at the backbone edge rather than by sewing.
 5. Burst: is done by taking out a piece from the spine of the text during the
folding stage and then the spine is not milled of at the binding stage
therefore there is no allowance made at the spine.
7. Packing and distribution: The printer/binder
packs quantities of the book by shrink wrapping,
parcelling or in cartons and delivers them on
pallets to the publisher’s specified warehouse.
THANK YOU…

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