Looking at a short extract from entitled Every Book Starts With An Idea by Armand Mevis, from the book The Form of the Book Book by Sara De Bondt & Fraser Muggeridge, many interesting points were made about the relationship between a designer and a book, and the process of book making.
Learn by doing, as mistakes are inherent to the job of making books through trial and error.
This is perhaps one of the most important lessons a publication designer could learn. The process of producing and printing books is relatively lengthy and throughout a career one might only produce a limit selection of publications - Mevis himself muses on the fact that over his 20 year career he has produced around 120 books. Over this time, every mistake is vital to the learning process and to the outcome of the next publication, in order to ensure continued success.
Sometimes there is too much content and not enough design, or the other way round; you need to find the right balance.
The balance between content and design is a concept that is most easily overlooked. If a book lacks design the content becomes un-engaging and flat, but an overly designed book can make the content seem insignificant, so this balance is crucial to the success of the publication.
Ideally, all books start with a question. The clearer the question, the more precise the answer.
This is a crucial statement that every designer must acknowledge at the beginning of each publication project. In order for the content of a book to be coherent and connected from beginning to end, the designer must first pose a question and then figure out the clearest way to answer that question through both the content and design of the book. The more defined this question is the clearer the information and the design will be, and therefore the more successful the publication.
Sometimes the conditions are ideal.
Sometimes, the conditions for making a book are hugely ideal - the concept is there, the content is there, and the design flows easily. But sometimes the conditions are far from perfect. Sometimes the people you work with don't give you enough content, or any content. They don't have a clear concept or a concise idea. They might want you to create everything and then complain when it's not what they wanted. Sometimes you just have to work with what you've got, but if, as a designer, you can create a book that is functional and appropriate to the audience and pleasing in print, that's the best job you could have done.
To know how to be solve things you need to be open, and to reinvent, to rethink what a book can be.
There is a huge temptation to stick to the norms when it comes to producing designs for publication. However, the best publications can be the ones that take the furthest steps away from simply printing words on paper - books can made out of any materials, they can be any size or shape, or they can have sections that fold or bend or tear out. The definition of a book today is so broad and the most interesting publications might be the ones that don't resemble a book at all.
All books start from their content
The content is arguable one of the most important aspects of a book. When designing a book, trusting the content is key. A good designer should be able to use the content to it maximum advantage, to use words and images to create a coherent narrative and to organise the information in such a way as to guide a reader seamlessly from cover to cover.
If you were able to link the content to your concept, and the concept to a form, you will have succeeded.
Keeping everything connected will hold a book together. A strong concept will ensure the content flows coherently and a strong form will display both the concept and the content and provide a unique visual experience for every reader. These links provide the foundations to a solid and successful publication.
Make the best of restrictions
Restrictions have the potential to lead to new and unexpected outcomes. Working within a small budget or with limit materials and resources could produce a totally unique product, so restrictions might not always seems like restrictions at all and should be embraced at every opportunity.
All of these insights into publication design can be applied to my project. Mevis closes with the line 'no matter what you do, all books look like books, they don't look like buildings or cars...no two books will look the same'. This feels particularly poignant when faced with the sea of publications that come from every design studio all over the world, but no matter what kind of book you are creating, you are still creating a book that will be unlike anything anyone has ever created before.