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MWF ‘11 Coverage: Irresistible Book Design

Nadiah Abdulrahim September 07

I spent Sunday afternoon in the company of graphic designers at Irresistible Book Design, held at the NGV. I was ready for a talk about design and production issues – you know, layout, type, cover design… But as soon as the host, Sandy Cull, introduced herself, she followed by announcing that this talk would not be about designers work practices, cover design, or anything I had expected the talk to be about. Uh oh.

Instead, the panel – featuring Meanjin’s own design collaborators Jenny Grigg and Virginia Murdoch, as well as renowned designer and Crikey blogger W.H. Chong – provided some interesting insights into the future of book design. Although I’m not a graphic designer, publisher or author, it proved to be a though-provoking session.

The discussion started with Jenny, who, by way of Umberto Eco, emphasised that ‘this is not the end of the book’. For Jenny, who works in print and has yet to work on e-books and ePub (the most prevalent digital publishing format today), design is an additional quality of a book, something that is ‘apart from the novel itself’. She provided a few examples of her work, to wit, various incarnations of Peter Carey’s oeuvre.

Jenny employs a variety of traditional methods in her design work: letterpress, woodcuts and unconventional bookbinding methods. The books she designs are beautiful objects, and Jenny did note that there certainly is a market for books with high-end production and labour. Cookbooks, for example, have become affordable pieces of art, where recipes and instructions are supplemented with beautiful photography, illustrations and design. And despite their high production costs, they have proved to be a success. She cites examples such as Peter Gilmore’s stunning book, Quay, as proof, with steady sales locally and abroad.

Virginia claims that only 30% of books published are appropriate for e-book format. The rest, like cookbooks, probably will not benefit from digitisation. Unfortunately for consumers, at the moment the reality is that even books that should easily translate electronically, do not. Virginia even goes so far to say that they are a ‘toxic by-product of print books’. The screen captures and examples of e-books presented alongside their print counterparts drew sniggers and gasps from the audience. I won’t get into technical terminology here, but suffice it to say that the issues that print designers work hard on are ignored.

How can this problem be solved? As a web designer, Virginia couldn’t stress enough that publishers need to put in equal amounts of effort into producing print books and their digital counterparts. Likewise, print designers also need to be aware of, and be willing to embrace, new developments in digital publishing. Sandy encouraged designers to make the most of training opportunities and resources, such as those provided by the Australian Publishers Association. For e-books to be truthful representations and useable products, designers and web developers need to collaborate closely.

The book certainly isn’t dead, but it is evolving. As more readers make the leap from print to digital out of convenience or accessibility (e-readers allow users to choose typefaces and font sizes, which is a great feature for vision-impaired readers), publishers and designers should strive to satisfy their market. The fundamentals haven’t changed, Chong says, but there certainly are more avenues for a designer to explore.

For those of worried about the state of e-books, it should be noted that, as Virginia pointed out, ‘ePub is not the way of the future. It’s where we’re at the moment’. We’re still in the infancy of e-books, and we’ll just have to keep that in mind. This talk was proof that designers are working on it, and translating print to web values one at a time.


 

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