The first thing to consider in the design of a book is its function. For example: How would a novel be designed differently from a atlas? Or a “How to” book from a children’s book? How does the function of the book affect the way it is presented? For this exercise I will be analyzing six different sorts of books, correlating design decisions with the books function and genera.

1. A classic novel

First on the list is a book containing two of Dostoievski’s short stories White Nights and The Eternal Husband. The book is in Romanian, published by Polirom in softcover form. It is a small book, not quite pocket sized but easy to hold in the hands, at 10cm x 18cm and 275 pages.

The cover design is simple and tasteful. It is predominantly white, so the titles and author are easily read from a distance. They chose to make the name of the author the main focal point of the cover by putting it on top of everything else, making it black text on white and therefore having the greatest contrast. While the titles of the stories are smaller, in a less interesting font and in red instead of black. The name of the publisher is placed close to the margin of the cover, vertically. The placing is a bit odd, but it does not distract overall because it is the same shade of red as the titles. On the bottom half of the front cover they chose to place the image of a painting by Fiodor Vasiliev, After Rain. The painting does not specifically illustrate a scene from the book, but it was painted by one of Dostoyevsky’s contemporaries and it shows a street scene that the characters could have easily found themselves a part of.

The text is large and comfortable to read and the pages are thin and tinted slightly yellow, not by age but by nature. There are no illustrations on the inside. The layout is organized and well edited, pleasant aside from the occasional overlong footnote. (Thought the footnotes do help with contextualizing certain references that the characters make to their contemporary popular culture, and with understanding things that don’t translate perfectly from Russian.)

On the back we have the red logo of the publisher, along with the “Top 10+” that marks it as part of a series of classics. Then there is a short paragraph by a famous Romanian literary critic, Emil Iordache. And right at the end there is a short bit about screenings that both stories in the book have had over the years.

The spine is exactly 1.5 cm thick and it repeats the design of the cover, except for the full painting at the top of the spine and for the “150” symbol which marks this book a s the 250th of books published as part of this series.

The binding is very secure and even, the strings cannot be seen when leaving through the book. And the main body of the book is very securely glued to the cover with a thick layer of book glue.

The function of a novel is to relax and entertain the reader. I think the design of this book does not impede this in any way. The proportions of the book make it pleasant to hold and the tint of the pages easy on the eyes. The cover design promises a classic with its simple titles and with the painting as an illustration, but the design manages to not look too boring because of use of black and red text with an interesting font and good use of white space. Overall, this is a good design for a classic couple of short stories written by a well known author.

2. A coffee-table book

This is a photo-book about Monet’s artworks in the series Masterpieces of Art from Flame Tree Publishing written by Gordon Kerr. It is 24 cm x 20 cm in size and comes with a paper jacket with identical cover design to the real cover of the book. The front and back mostly display typical examples of Monet’s work, and the title and subject of the series is subtly printed at the top of the cover, thin white text on a black strip. The name of the author is nearly invisible at the bottom right of the cover written in the same thin type. By keeping the text subtle, the focus of the cover is entirely on the painting, the subject of this book.

The Back of the cover is a little more adventurous with the font, but it is kept entirely in theme. There are no critic reviews or text on historical context or art history, the text is a short quote by Monet himself. “Colour is my joy and torment.” It is written in red, thus standing out from the mostly blue and green tones of the painting, and the font is meant to mimic text written in quill, in the idea that Monet signet the book with the quote in red ink.

The spine of the book repeats the simple black strip at the top of the cover with the addition of the publisher (Flame Tree Publishing) logo at the very bottom of it.

The book is hardcover, and its pages are fairly thick and glossy, therefore the binding is different from the Dostoyevsky novel. There is no visible glue. Instead of the book being glued straight to the spine, it is only glued to the red end pages, and the spine is left loose from the spine of the cover. This book also has a white and green headband on both ends of the spine.

The inside of the book jacket feature the text not visible on the cover of the book. On the front part of the jacket they present Monet as a nartist and a few highlights of his artistic career which are shown in the book. The back of the Jacket contains a short paragraph on the author, other titles by the publisher, credit for the artwork used on the covers and the logo of the publisher on the bottom.

The contents book is airy and clean in design. All is black, unobtrusive text on white paper in order to not distract from the main body of the book, the images. The first few pages of the book contain more text and present the live and evolution of Claude Monet, along with some of his paintings as examples. Then, most of the book contains  a single, large painting on each page and a little bit of text on the bottom with the title of the piece, materials, size and some context.

The purpose of a coffee-table book is for it to be aesthetically pleasing and easy to flip through, while also providing an interesting conversation starter for guests. The book does this excellently. It is fun to flip through, the images are large and of high quality, but there also is enough information to learn something new while flipping idly.

3. A comic book

While comic books would usually be more suited for the term “magazine” rather than “book”, this one is bound very much like any hard cover book.  Batman: The Killing Joke by Alan Moore and Brian Bolland is considered a classic in the comic book realm and has been deemed worthy of reprinting with a hard cover. It is slightly larger than the original magazine would have been at 18.5 cm x 28.5 cm.

This book also comes with a jacket. An interesting choice on the part of the designer was to use the original cover of the comic book as the design of the jacket, while keeping the cover of the book itself entirely black. It is difficult to pick up on the camera, but the black covers are not as simple as they look. The front cover is embossed with the most iconic panel of the comic book and the title of the comic at the very bottom, while the back cover has an embossed joker card.

While the image on the cover has remained the same as in the original comic book, the text has been changed from its original comic book title font into something that looks a little more like a book title. The font is simple, slightly elongated text in white to stand out against the black and darker colors of the illustration.

The spine shows the title, authors and publisher, both on the jacket and on the embossed cover. The binding is similar to the Monet book, but the spine is actually glued to the hardcover itself instead of left loose with only the covers glued. Obviously, it is bound with string like a book instead of stapled like a comic book. The pages are glossy, but they are much thicker that the pages of comic books usually are. Again, similar to the Monet book, if slightly lighter.

As this is a reprint of an old comic book, it tells the same story, with the same illustrations, but the authors also added some new things. Such as facts about the context of the book both at the beginning and the end of it, and some illustrations showing a bit of the artist’s process when illustrating the comic.

The purpose of this book was to re-print a classic comic in a hardcover form. It fulfills that well, I think. The experience is different from reading the original magazine, but not in a bad way. The story is the same as it always was, but the covers are thicker and there is more information from the creators. I personally love what the designers did with the embossed hard cover of the comic, it added something interesting or built on the comic design instead of just printing out the same thing, but on a hard cover.

4. A self-help book

High Performance Habits is written on one of the most influential self-help professionals in the world, Brendon Burchard. The book is as modern in design as it is in subject matter. Comprised of a jacket and cover, the front of the jacket is a simple grey on the front, but the title is in large type in highlighter yellow, while the catchphrase and the author’s name are in a more simple white. The back of the jacket shows a full, professional shot of the author, with the six main points of the book over imposed on the image in the same highlighter yellow as the front. The spine of the jacket is composed of a headshot of the author on top, a #1  New York Times Best-Selling Author tag under, then the title of the book in yellow and the author in white, just as on the cover. At the bottom of the spine there is the Hay House Publishing logo. The cover itself is simply the grey of the jacket with no writing whatsoever, except on the spine where the title, author and publisher are all embossed with white.

The cover is hard, and therefore the binding is similar to the binding of the Monet book again, complete with the headband and spine that isn’t glued to the cover.

The inside of the jacket on the front shows the hook of the book, and the three questions the author hopes to answer in it, and the back inside of the jacket has a quote from the author in yellow and a short bio.

The book is organized to be more like a manual that should be re-read and often referenced rather than just a book that is only read once. If I were to search for a certain section of a book, I would have no difficulty in doing so, even without the help of the table of contents. The book is split in three sections, each with three subsections (chapters) which are listed on the page with the new section’s title. Each new chapter is marked by a black page, and therefore very easy to spot, and beneath the chapter title there are the chapter’s three main points. The last chapter of the book is the Summary Guide, which lays out all the important points of the book in just four pages.

The entire book is very practical, with each chapter containing an application section at the end, and even a prompt list in a box right at the end.

The pages are light and tinted yellow, similar to the novel, therefore despite its relative thickness (3cm), it is a light book, unlike the Monet book or the comic book which are both pretty heavy despite the fact that they are thin.

The purpose of this book is to help someone who wants to be a high performer increase their productivity. And the design is precisely on-brand. The organization of the book and the way the designer used the contrast of dark pages make the main sections of the book very easy to find, and therefore easy to review upon second reading. The design helps with the clarity. And the cover design is simple, but the neon yellow of the text brings a freshness and a youthfulness to it, which is great for targeting up-and-coming high performers.

5. Drawing anatomy book

This is an enormous book of 23.5cm x 30cm and 5.5 cm in thickness. It is a book to be kept solely at the desk, since it is far to cumbersome to take anywhere. This is also a hardcover with a jacket. The design of both is similar, with the exception that the real cover has no color while the jacket does. The front cover appropriately has an illustrated head displaying the muscle groups of the face. The background is all white, and the text is all in large, blocky letters. The back cover has a few more illustrations of both human and animal anatomy and a short, two sentence blurb. The inside of the front part of the jacket has a short paragraph on the purpose of the book and its illustrations, while the back has bios of the authors.

Again, this book has been bound with thread, but the spine was not attached with glue to the spine of the cover, there is a thin white headband at each edge. The paper is pure white, but not shiny, and not thick, it is heavier than printer paper.

The book is mostly comprised of very large illustrations to use as reference, with very little text. The text is mostly used for labeling the anatomical details, except for the first page in a section, which introduces said section.

The purpose of this anatomy book is to be used as a reference for artists in regard to the human form and to certain animals. And in this it succeeds. While its size makes it very cumbersome, that is of no concern when this book is meant to be kept at the desk. The large pages allow for detailed illustrations of bones and musculature which are clear and easy to analyze.

6. A school book

Not referring to a textbook, but a book printed for an English course. In this case,  Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare. The book is thin at only 150 pages because it only contains some context information and the play itself. It is a softcover and measures 12.5cm x 19cm. Like the other softcover book on this list the book is bound with string and with the spine very securely glued to the spine of the cover.

The pages are of a thin greyish paper with little dots in it. Perhaps it is some form of recycled paper, though the book does not say.

The front cover design is less than ideal, sporting one too many rectangles and multiple uninspiring fonts, with the addition of a black and white photograph of Julius Caesar’s statue. The back of the cover is similar in nature, with the addition of a photograph of Shakespeare’s statue and a paragraph about Shakespeare and the play in question.

The first section of the book is dedicated to informing the reader (the student) on Shakespearean Drama, Shakespeare himself, historical background to the play and even some facts about London theaters and Shakespeare’s Globe and theater design. The page on theatre design even has a diagram with the theaters construction during Shakespeare’s time. The rest of the book is the play itself with multiple footnotes on every single page.

At the end of each act of the play there are homework questions for the student.

Despite its uninteresting overall design, the book fulfills its function very well. It is an introduction to Shakespeare for the young high school student. This book differs in function both from an English textbook and a regular publication of  Julius Shakespeare in that it offers the entire play instead of just snippets and in that it not only offers a play but it also offers contextual information about the author and about the historical and literary relevance of said play. The many footnotes on every page are also meant for a student specifically and would not be found in a regular book with Shakespeare plays.

Therefore the book is an excellent learning and teaching material on Shakespeare’s  Julius Caesar.

It is interesting to see how each genera of these books reflects in their design and how binding can differ from book to book. When I used to think of book design, I thought of the cover and nothing else. But book design is much more involved. One must think of the subject and the audience of the book, and then think of not only the design on the front cover, but also on the back and, of course, inside the book. One must thing of the size and proportions, the paper and its exact shade of white and its thickness. These are all things that must be considered and things I can’t wait to learn more about.