While I was on the phone today, on hold for a half hour waiting to speak with a health insurance agent, I had plenty of time to look at the walls and ceiling. My gaze also fell on a collection of print book on a shelf, and more precisely on their spines.
I thought about the design of a book spine and about how important this is. In fact, in many cases, people decide whether to pick up and read a print book based on the design and content of that small strip of paper. (Sometimes that’s all they see, if the books are all on a shelf.)
I thought further, noting that both magazines and catalogs (those with spines) fell into the same category as print books and required the same attention to spine design.
I thought about which of the twelve books on this particular shelf appealed to me and why. I think I can break this down into a few concepts that you might find useful in your own book spine design, keeping in mind that you may only have a few seconds to interest your reader.
Even in choosing the color and typeface for the spine of a textbook, we’re still ultimately talking about marketing. No one will read your book unless you can pique their interest.
Choosing the Color of the Spine
Of the twelve books on my shelf, four had white spines, five had blue spines, one was black, one was completely red (burgundy), and one was half burgundy and half blue.
The white print books were the lightest (in value), and they stood out the most. Of course, the widest of the white spine books stood out more than all the others. Ironically, even though the 1.5” (approximately) spine was the most visible, the type was light and thin, all capital letters, and printed in black ink (in Roman type, not bold). The type was also letterspaced.
The author’s name was at the top of the spine reversed out of a horizontal black bar. It was more readable than anything else on the spine. Ultimately, I think the author’s name was less important than the title, which was much harder to read, particularly at a 90 degree angle to the reader (i.e., rotated to fit on the spine).
The burgundy books both had orange type knocked out of the burgundy. They also had reverse type (white on the red), which was much easier to read than the orange on red.
The blue books were the easiest to read, probably because they all included spine type that was white (reversed),
What You Can Learn from This Case Study
Color matters: not just the color of the background, but also the color of the type; or, rather, the interaction between the color of the background and the color of the type.
Fewer colors, and contrast between the background color and the text color, make for good readability. Simplicity also makes for good legibility. And legibility trumps aesthetics when you’re trying to interest a potential reader.
Selecting the Typeface(s) for the Book Spine
The most readable spine type was a simple sans serif type set with normal letterspacing (not spread out) in uppercase and lowercase letters. For added flair, the designer had changed the “of” in the title from roman to italic type.
As noted above, the letterspaced, all-capitals treatment of the title of the print book with the white spine (particularly given the lower contrast of background to type), made for tougher reading. Had the book title been set in a bold typeface, the contrast would have been a little more dramatic, and this would have increased the readability of the title.
Another book, also with a white background, had an all-capitals treatment of the title in a tall, narrow, modern typeface. It was gorgeous, sophisticated, and not particularly readable. Squeezing the type (too narrow for its height) lessened readability, as did the dramatic contrast between the thick and thin strokes of the modern, serif typeface.
A book with a black spine from which the title had been knocked out and printed in gold, worked well for a textbook on finance. The gold seemed relevant. The subhead was in white, in a narrow sans serif (gothic) typeface. It was squeezed up a bit, but it had been set in capital and lowercase letters. Even the title set in gold in all capital letters was readable because the words were actually in small caps. (That is, only the initial letter of each word “read” as being uppercase. You could recognize each word because it had a distinctive “shape.”
What You Can Learn from This Case Study
Type selection and (lack of) manipulation matter as much as color. Upper and lowercase letters are easier to read than all uppercase letters. Failing that, “caps and small caps” are easier to read than all-caps. The shape of a word created by the uppercase letters and lowercase letters, by the ascenders and descenders, allows the reader to recognize the word without having to read it letter by letter.
That said, making type narrower than its design warrants, or spreading it out more than expected with increased letterspacing, slows the reader down, even if the type looks elegant and sophisticated. Readability is more important than aesthetics.
Finally, when you need to turn type on its side to fit it on the spine of a book, it becomes even more important than usual to make the words easy to read.
If you lose your reader’s attention, or if you make reading unpleasant, you’ve lost your only opportunity to capture your reader’s interest.
Parting Thoughts
In design, nothing works like a physical sample. It lets you see exactly what to expect of the final printed piece. So consider creating a mock-up of the cover and spine of your print book using an inkjet printer. Paste these onto an actual book, and put it up on the bookshelf with a number of other books. If it stands out and the title is readable, I think you’ve got a winner. It’s easy to do, but if the samples on my shelf are any indication, not everyone does this.
This entry was posted
on Saturday, February 28th, 2015 at 5:23 pm and is filed under Book Printing, Catalog Printing, Magazine Printing.
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