The Importance of Good Book Design
I’ve had a few discussions recently with bookmakers, designers, and typesetters about the “importance of good book design.” There is a particular philosophical position that goes something like this: good book design is to some degree hidden. When you pick up a book and flip through it, well-wieghted fonts, pleasing margins, nice paper stock, balanced spacing, etc etc. all contribute to a positive interaction with a book. On the other hand, something sloppily designed will come across as sloppy, and you’ll have a negative experience, even if it’s unconscious.
I agree with all of the above, that there is something immensely pleasing about a well-designed book; something off-putting about a badly-designed book.
What about eBooks?
The strange thing though is that this conversation tends to veer off when discussing eBooks. I get the sense from some designers (and some readers), that since eBooks can’t be controlled in the same way as print and paper books, somehow they are inferior – and that people just won’t be attached to them, drawn into them in the same way as they are with “real” books.
To which my reaction is: eBooks, and digital devices are a different medium, they call for a whole new design approach. The constraints are different, the reader’s needs different, and so how you’ll design a text is going to be different. I was shocked that with the iPod, the small screen actually seems to me an *advantage* over the paper book in some ways. And so where Kindle & Sony Reader have tried to reinvent the book in electronic form, using the same kinds of design principles, the ereaders on the iPhone/iPod have instead tried to build a new kind of design/interaction standard into existing constraints of devices people already have. I find the second approach more compelling because it’s adding real value where before there was none. That is: I no longer have to carry a book around, because I have 75 of them sitting on my iPod – which I’m carrying anyway. The Kindle & Sony Reader both say: please carry me around the way you used to carry your book. There’s nothing wrong with that, but in some sense it’s a conservative approach to eBooks.
Design and Constraint
There’s an old story about how true freedom and true art come only from constraints, not lack of constraint. And so designing books for digital means that we need to not just accept but to embrace these constraints, and build a new design aesthetic out of them. It took a decade before we started getting it right with web sites; eBooks need similar attention.
Scroll: Essays on the Design of Electronic Text
Al that to say: I’m very happy to see: Scroll: Essays on the Design of Electronic Text by the Grad students at the iSchool, University of Toronto:
The class of FIS 2309, Design of Electronic Text, at Faculty of Information at the University of Toronto was challenged to create an open-access electronic journal to publish their major papers for the course. The goal of the project was to provide the students with the opportunity to gain knowledge of electronic text: its design principles, uses and methods for evaluating usability. Content comes from the students themselves, as they submit original papers on topics revolving around the issues and challenges of creating electronic text. [more...]
I’ve not yet delved into the papers in the journal, but I am looking forward to it.
11 Comments
I agree totally, but would go further. What has made eBooks work for me are some surprising things: ubiquity and radical portability – so portable that I don’t even need to think about carrying it with me. After these advantages the preservation of the design of the book comes very far behind. And what is left is what we always loved about books all along – the text.
People used to expect PDF to be the eBook format of the future, because it preserved the designers vision. But the only person’s vision that the book should preserve is that of the author – the designer should only be an invisible facilitator in the relationship between author and reader. If he or she can be discarded – like the scribes of the past – then all the better for the readers, however much of a pity it might seem now. I think of it as being the difference between a Flash website and an HTML one. You can do a lot more with a Flash site, it can be more ‘designed’ – but who does not feel their heart plummet when you have to use a Flash site?
And I seriously wonder whether that small ipod screen, the small amount of text, isn’t *better* for reading than a full book page. At least, it’s much better for reading on the bus, in line at the bank etc., but even in relaxed reading it’s pretty compelling to me. The trade paperback page size is just an accident of physical requirements.
I wish that the mobile NYT for ipod/iphone would deliver their text into stanza or something like it – that would be great.
I try not to get this pedantic every time I see someone talking about how the Kindle’s bigger screen makes it better than the iPhone, and that the other devices with even bigger screens will be even better, but since you’ve touched on this!
The fact is, a bigger “page” will slow down reading. It’s well documented that reading long lines of text is more difficult (for one thing, it’s harder to relocate yourself at the beginning of the next line). The optimum line length is about 10-12 words. This is one of the first things design students are taught: a responsible designer keeps readability always in mind. So if screens get bigger than about 7 or 9 inches, a well-designed text for that screen will have wider margins to compensate. The extra screen space becomes a big waste, at a point.
I also find, as you have Hugh (and so many others report the same things we’ve noted before), that the smaller bite of text at a time, overall, keeps me more focused on it. As does the act of turning the page more often than with a print book.
But with all of that said, I think the optimum size probably is about 7″ — both to accomplish just the right line length and to make it easier to hold onto when lying in bed with it propped up. My wrist does sometimes get a little annoyed holding onto the little bugger, truth be told.
@hugh & @karen Agree – Aldus Manutius discovered the same thing in the 1500s when he brought out pocket sized editions of classics (inventing the italic type style to help him squeeze more onto every line) Tiny books compared to what was being produced elsewhere, but they changed the world, introducing the works of antiquity to everyman.
BTW – I have tinkered with Stanza’s defaults a lot to get what I want, and get quite frustrated with the sensitivity of the sliders. This is what I have ended up with:
http://gallery.me.com/christopherhughes#100026&view=grid&bgcolor=black&sel=0
Also – a key benefit of Stanza over trade paperbacks: cheap books snap shut when you let go of them. I have some where you have to jam your thumb into the spine to keep it open enough to read it. Stanza allows you to read with one hand! Leaving the other free to pour wine into your parched throat.
One thing I would like – a graphical equivalent of the bookmark poking out of the top of the book, telling you how far you have to go.
Hello Hugh. This is SO true. I recently created an eBook version of my novel, BIRTHDAY GIRL. I started by using the Amazon DTP conversion tool to create a book for the Kindle. That left so much to be desired in terms of aesthetics that I took matters into my own hands. Now, after a bit of effort (borne of 12+ years designing for the web, believe it or not) I now have a very attractive and readable eBook. My readers seem pleased. It wasn’t easy but I couldn’t be more happy that now BIRTHDAY GIRL can be read wherever, whenever and still retain the “book experience” that I intended.
I say eReaders and digital books — now that they’re becoming available on devices people already own — will breathe new life into publishing.
ePub, Kindle, & PDF versions of BIRTHDAY GIRL are here: http://tinyurl.com/getbirthdaygirl
@karen: I agree with the sore wrist in bed problem – seems strange that such a little device would be uncomfortable there, but there you are. It’s ideal for reading while standing; not ideal for reading while reclining.
@chris: Here are some features I’d like to see in an ereader on a device:
1. +/- for fonts – i agree chris that the sliders are TERRIBLE at getting the font right on stanza
2. a way to stick a bookmark/dogear at a given spot in a text … ideally also allowing me to jot some notes/annotations. even more ideally, this gloss should be easily exportable.
3. a way to highlight certain text for later, i guess in congress with the above
4. stanza gives you a great indication of where you are in the chap (p 14/32) … but I would like same for the entire book.
@diane: glad to see authors really experimenting with this tech, and Birthday Girl looks great. But if all goes well, the tech makers will do a better job of it soon, and authors can (mostly, I hope) stick to writing. Oh, and making a living too … ;-)
Is there a dictionary link on Stanza? I use Ereader software to read books on my iPod Touch and love being able to just press a word to bring up the meaning in Webster’s 3rd International Dictionary. It’s superior to any vocabulary-building course and encourages me to verify the meanings of familiar words and learn the definitions of new words without interrupting the reading flow.
I appreciate and agree with all your comments. As one who began e-reading three years ago after a 20+-year hiatus from p-reading, I am reading like crazy to make up for lost time. My Touch is with me every minute of every day and most of my reading is done during spare moments although I sometimes wake up in the middle of the night and grab the Touch off my night table to read without disturbing my spouse (if he’s not awake reading on his Touch!).
No dictionary links w Stanza …the brilliance w/ stanza, i think, is they’ve started with the bare bones, and got the core function right. they can now (i hope) build on that success …
eReader does the stuff you guys are asking about — dogearing, bookmarking, highlighting, notes, and most important to me, the progress bar. Lexcycle is making a lot of great moves with Stanza but I can’t stand to read in it. I’m apparently more OCD than I realized, but I take constant note of where I am in a book, and in Stanza there’s no way to know. I find it completely disorienting.
I’ve always been timid about dogearing and marginalia and stuff, but now I’m a total slut about it. Plus I use it to do stuff like this:
http://kt.posterous.com/favorite-passages-from-the-boo
So it’s eReader for me at least until Stanza can provide those sorts of functionality.
@hugh: thanks for responding to my dictionary question. I can’t imagine reading without it. Regarding Stanza’s sliders, it would be nice if they also offered a choice of fixed fonts — like eReader does — for people who don’t want infinite control.
@karen: I agree with you about eReader. It does everything I want and more. Is there any other feature that would be desirable?
Your readers might be interested in this different way to experience Obama’s Inaugural Address…as a flow:
http://www.textflows.com/ObamaInaugurationFlow
It runs longer than the speech itself (by half!), but you see the whole thing (the text) newly.