Big Bad Book Blog » design & production

Being Green Isn’t So Hard

By Alan Grimes

Conservation is humanity caring for the future.
–Nancy Newhall, US photography critic

According to some estimates, 20 to 30 million trees are harvested each year for paper and paper products, and the US publishing industry is one of the biggest culprits. On average, only about 5% of the paper used by US book publishers comes from recycled paper or paper managed in an environmentally friendly way. What’s wrong with this picture?

Fortunately, some publishers are trying to do better than the average. For example, Simon & Schuster recently announced a new environmental initiative and paper policy with a 2012 goal of deriving 10% of the company’s purchased paper from forests certified by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC)–an international organization headquartered in Bonn, Germany that sets standards worldwide for responsible forest management. If paper is FSC certified, it came from forests that are managed in a socially and environmentally responsible way.

Random House set the bar even higher with its goal of raising the proportion of recycled paper it uses to 30% by 2010. It used 3% recycled paper in 2006. And according to paperrecycles.org, the US paper industry has set an industry goal of recovering 55% of all the paper consumed in the United States by 2012.

But it’s not enough, especially when you compare those numbers to the new figures showing that the European Union (EU) paper recycling rate reached 63.4 percent in 2006 (according to statistics released by the European Recovered Paper Council, or ERCP).

There’s much more that can be done in the United States. Don’t believe those tired old arguments about higher costs and customer indifference. A 2005 survey conducted by Book Business magazine showed that “17% of publishers using at least 30% post-consumer recycled fiber were able to achieve cost parity.” And a 2005 study co-sponsored by BookTech magazine, Co-Op America, and Green Press Initiative found that “80% of consumers who had purchased a book or magazine in the past six months would be willing to pay more for a book or magazine printed on recycled paper.” More than 42% of respondents were also willing to pay an additional $1 to purchase a book printed on recycled paper. And what about the future costs of not doing much of anything?

And it’s not just readers who are concerned about the environment—authors such as J.K. Rowling, Alice Walker, and Margaret Atwood are joining their voices in the call for conservation. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, which boasted a record-breaking print run, was produced with great environmental care. Six new types of paper were developed specifically for the book, and Markets Initiative, a Canadian environmental group, presented the Order of the Forest award to Rowling for saving trees and encouraging other publishers to do the same.

This holiday season, why not give the gift of trees to your readers?

Other resources:

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Type in Motion: Writing Out Loud

By Matt Patin

Fact: Helvetica turned 50 this year. Yeah, people celebrated and everything. Okay, that may be an overstatement, but when there’s actually a feature film named after and about a font, there must be something interesting going on, right?

And there is. But it doesn’t really have to do with Helvetica—or even fonts, per se. No, it’s the entire study of and love affair with typography. And it’s nothing new: technology has effectively democratized the use and development of powerful, elegant, strange, and creative word design, but professional manipulators of text—each imbued with a vehement passion for how language is communicated—have existed since long before the computer and long before Gutenberg.

What can we learn from designers about writing and about communication? This: Visionary typographers understand one thing above all else—one thing that transcends the technicalities of kern, x-heights, serifs, and baselines. They understand that typography is writing out loud.

So when you’re writing, evaluate what you’ve developed, and imagine it in type. That is, imagine what it would look like if it were alive and animated. This may help you to choose better words, create better sentences, and establish better flow. Here’s an elementary example. Try to imagine how different both sentences would look.

She walked slowly. vs. She crept.

Can you see the difference? No? Still don’t know what I mean? It’s hard to explain. Check out these videos instead to get a better idea and to hopefully get inspired. And after the videos, there’s a list of great typography resources to visit.

A simple little introduction to typography:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ki6rcXvUWP0

Some animated text from Pulp Fiction dialogue. Warning: It’s Samuel L. Jackson, which means there’s cursing. A lot if it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3IJ6b3E5HYE

A classic Abbott and Costello moment:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejweI0EQpX8

Lowell Fulson’s “Tramp”:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3vaxlJ86vk

Trainspotting dialogue:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8X9BtNmSig

Have a better idea yet? As promised, some further resources:

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Permission Denied: Can You Use That Image?

By Sheila Parr

If you’ve found a specific image that you’d like to use in your book, make sure it’s usable before you get too attached. Keep the following things in mind for clear (and legal) images:

Size and Resolution: Is your image big enough? At 100%, your image should be at least 300 DPI (dots per inch). If it’s much smaller than this, your designer will probably lob it back to you, asking for a “high-res” version. If you pulled your image off the web, (we’ll talk about that momentarily) you may not have one. And I know, I know, Photoshop can do great things. All you have to do is type “300″ in the Image Size dialogue and voilà: it’s high-res, right? No. Not right. Don’t do that. Seriously.

Permissions: Do you have permission to use this image? If you didn’t create the image yourself, you might not. If you purchased the image from a stock photography bureau like Veer or Getty, review the license for any restrictions. Royalty-free images can be used for just about anything, but be sure to read the fine print for rights-managed imagery. For older, iconic images, check to see if they’re in the public domain before republishing them.

If you obtained your image by right-clicking and downloading it from the web, you probably can’t use it. (It’s low-res and it’s not yours.) Contact the owner of the image and find out about permissions and the availability of a print-quality version. It’s best to research this information early so that if you need to replace your image because of permissions or size, you have ample time to find a new one that’s just as perfect.

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Thoughts on Creativity

By Sheila Parr

Being a “creative” is hard. I cringe at the label. I’m the first to admit that maintaining the level of inspiration needed to constantly churn out good—no, great—ideas and execute them well is really tough. So I thought I’d share some thoughts on my creative process.

Sometimes it feels like the planets are aligned and projects go super crazy well.

Everyone likes it when that happens. But there are so many factors that go into a great idea that projects often start more like this:

For me, creativity requires a fluid state of mind, a positive attitude, confidence in my talents, and the ability to let bright ideas come as they may. On a practical level, being well-rested, happy, fed, caffeinated, and hydrated is key.

I recently had the privilege of attending the HOW Design Conference in Atlanta, for which the theme “refresh” was perfectly suited. I was totally inspired by the speakers, and reassured that other designers (probably all of the 3,000 attendees) struggle with the balance of creativity–which is often on its own timeline–and reasonable workloads and schedules. For me the most destructive thing I can do during my creative process is stare at a blank screen/canvas/sketchpad and tell myself, “Think of an idea. Think of an idea. Think of an idea. Now. C’mon. IDEA.” (This soon degenerates into “WHAT’S WRONG WITH ME? THINK OF SOMETHING NOW!”)

I like this quote by Nobel Prize winner Linus Pauling: “The best way to have a good idea is to have lots of ideas.” It’s sort of what artist and author Danny Gregory talked about at HOW. For a designer, if you only do one drawing, it better be really good. That’s quite a bit of pressure if you’re not a super master illustrator. But if you draw every day, just draw anything, you suddenly have this well of ideas to choose from, and some of them are probably great. So I do a lot of image research and make tons of word lists, even of seemingly irrelevant things so I hopefully never feel discouraged.

Everyone’s favorite part of the creative process is THAT MOMENT.

It usually happens a few times for any given project (since the goal is several great ideas, not just one). When it does, I know I’ve done my job and the project will be the best it can be. I design books, but whether it’s writing, drawing, cooking, painting, or any other creative field, don’t forget that your ideas are in there. You just have to find them. And when that happens everyone’s happy.

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The Deckle Edge: Affectation or Style?

By Lisa Woods

I recently ran across this post on one of Amazon’s Customer Discussions forums:

DemonsDanceAlone writes: “Both my mother and I received [Hannibal Rising by Thomas Harris] as a Christmas gift, and I was quite disappointed to find that the edge of the book was not smooth, but an uneven zigzag shape. When I went to return it, hoping for a better copy, I found that all the books at my local Target and Barnes and Noble had the same uneven edges. Is this a flaw in the book’s production, is it just a bad batch, or is this a new style that this publisher is using for some stupid reason?”

This post brought two questions to my mind: One, who in the heck gives Hannibal Rising as a Christmas gift?! (Cannibalism and candy canes—hmmm.) And two, what is up with those cool irregular edges?

After a bit of Googling, I discovered that rough, untrimmed page edges are called “deckle edges” or just simply “rough trimmed.” A deckle is a wood frame resting on or hinged to the edges of the mold that defines the edges of the sheet in handmade paper process. According to history.com, the rough edges are created by the fibrous pulp flowing between the frame and the deckle of the mold. When books were predominantly composed of handmade paper, deckle edges were considered a defect and were trimmed off. In the late 1800s, however, rough trimmed pages became fashionable. During this time, many books were left untrimmed on one or three sides for purely aesthetic reasons.

The industrialization of printing and the commercial manufacture of paper has sidelined naturally deckled handmade paper to the hobbyist, artist, and neo-Luddite. Modern sheets are machine made, mass-produced, and precisely trimmed (”cut solid”) to pre-determined sizes for letters, magazines, forms, catalogs, laser printer, copying machine output, and, yes, books.

Like the pre-faded and frayed jeans on display at Diesel; the faux crackle, hiss, and skipping of vinyl records on hip hop tracks; or the peeling dingy white paint of shabby chic furniture—it seems what’s old is new again. Today’s deckle edges are artificially created to give a book a more historical or sophisticated look. Examples include the aforementioned Hannibal Rising, as well as Nelly Rosario’s Song of the Water Saints, John Le Carre’s The Tailor of Panama, and Lemony Snicket’s The Hostile Hospital.

Affectation? DemonsDanceAlone thinks so, but I don’t. Rough trimmed pages are just another way to let a book’s packaging communicate a mood and hopefully entice—not confound—readers.

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Playing Dress-up: Is Your Book Ready for its Big Date?

By Sheila Parr

Sending a book to press is a lot like putting together the perfect outfit for a big event. Every piece of the ensemble must work together and complement each other nicely, and it’s the little details that make it really dynamite. If you want to be the hottest, baddest lady in the room, er, book on the shelf, think about these final touches before you head out to strut your stuff.

Headbands (those little strips of fabric at the top and bottom of the spine): I’ve been accused of being a purist, and it’s true that I often prefer my headbands to be solid, neutral colors and to do what they are meant to–cover the glue that holds the binding together. But sometimes it’s appropriate–or just plain fun–to jazz up the headbands with stripes or an accent color.

TIP: Fancy headbands rarely cost more than white or black ones, so feel free to be adventurous.

Case Covering (paper or cloth that covers the cardboard front and back covers and spine): Neutral colors are usually best for the case covering. Black, white, creme, and blue are safe bets. Consider the colors on the cover and determine whether you want the case to match or to contrast with the jacket’s dominant color.

TIP: If you plan to match the case cover with the jacket, remember to choose the case cover color first. Color options are more limited for case covers than they are for jackets, so it’s easier to match a jacket to case cover than vice versa.

Endsheets (inside front cover and facing page, and the inside back cover and facing page): A paper other than white or creme for endsheets can really make a book look finished. Black endsheets immediately add gravitas, bright accent colors from the cover ensure design continuity, and embossing endsheets with texture can create a polished look. Sometimes the best option is to use the same paper for the endsheets as for the case. Printed endsheets are great if you want to match a specific color or present a unique pattern or image. Of course–here’s the purist again–there are times when the perfect endsheet is white or creme—the same color as your pages.

TIP: Don’t forget to consider how the jacket flaps will contrast with the endsheets.

Spine Stamp (foil stamp on the spine of the case): The spine stamp is usually the last decision a designer makes before sending a project to press. It’s the extra blot of lip gloss, the last swipe of bronzer on the cheeks. Choose a foil that will contrast nicely with the chosen case covering. (My favorite case so far is white with bright magenta foil on the spine. Not appropriate for your general business book, but for girly relationship handbooks it’s perfect!)

TIP: Small type that can be printed perfectly on the jacket may bleed when it’s presented in a foil stamp on a textured case. If you’re not sure, ask your printer.

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Color Matters

By Lisa Woods

“Hot pink is the navy blue of India.”
–Diana Vreeland

Color is beautiful, but she is much more than mere decoration. Color communicates. If you treat her right, she can support and add impact to your book’s message. Treat her wrong, and she will undermine your message and confound your audience. Do not make the mistake of choosing a color scheme solely on personal preferences–color can profoundly influence the impression your book makes on potential buyers.

Color Wheels are Useless

Most of us learned a little color theory in school. Wavelength, primary and secondary, cool and warm, saturated or subdued. These terms are specific and informative, sure, but I’d guess they did little good when it came time to choose a wall color for your first home. Don’t let color theory convince you that there are absolutes and rules to which you must adhere. In the field of graphic design, confounding expectation is the best form of innovation. Color doesn’t fit purely in the realm of science or completely in the realm of art: She lives in the mysterious cultural territory between the two. To understand whether a color “works” or not, you must understand the emotion it evokes, its symbolism, and–most importantly–its context.

How Color Makes you Feel

Color affects us on a subconscious and emotional level. Certain colors have the ability to raise blood pressure, speed up breathing, and increase pulse rate and adrenaline. Our visceral reaction to various shades can even be measured by Galvanic skin response. Reds, oranges, and yellows have been shown to promote appetite, since they tend to be positively associated with food. Not coincidentally, most chain restaurants use these colors for their logos, signage, and décor. Greens have a calming effect, which is why concert halls and theaters have “green rooms” to relax performers before showtime. For a fun, animated look at mood and color, check out this site by graphic designer Maria Claudia Cortes.

More Than Meets the Eye

Colors also have symbolic meaning. Culturally-rooted color associations can vary widely from country to country, or even region to region. In American culture, white signifies the concepts of peace and purity. In China, however, white plays a very different role as the traditional color of mourning. We often don’t realize the deep messages basic colors communicate to us on a daily basis, and how much certain connections have been ingrained in us. Diana Vreeland, fashion columnist and longtime editor-in-chief of Vogue, is famous for noting that even the neutrality of colors is a cultural construct. And there are many distinct cultures–youth culture, corporate culture, gender culture, professional culture–each of which abides by its own constructed color symbolism. This table from Grantastic Designs illustrates the concepts colors convey in company websites and is a good example of how context can drastically alter a color’s meaning. (Not a lot of positive color associations in the medical field…)

Color	Finance	Engineering	Medical
Red	Loss	Hot, danger	Danger, emergency OR healthy, oxygenated
Yellow	Important, substantial	Caution, warning	Jaundice
Blue	Reliable, corporate	Water, cold, cool	Death, poison
Green	Profit	Safe, environmental	Infection
Cyan	Cool, subdued	Steam	Poison, lack of oxygen

So… What Color Should My Book Be?

When choosing a color scheme, you and your designer must consider the target audience of your book, the mood you want to evoke, and the symbols that best connect to your book’s content. Then capitalize on the power of color to send your audience cues about how perfect this book is for them. The covers below show how color, paired with compatible symbolism, serve as emotional triggers and help support a book’s primary message.

The Power of Nice by Linda Kaplan Thaler and Robin Koval

Target Audience: general business readers
Mood: happy
Symbolism: the happy face
Predominant Color Scheme: canary yellow

Dying Was the Best Thing That Ever Happened to Me by William Hablitzel

Target Audience: self-help/inspirational, gender neutral
Mood: hopeful, peaceful, introspective, tranquil, spiritual
Symbolism: cycle of life, death and rebirth
Predominant Color Scheme: pale green and yellow

The Memory Keeper’s Daughter by Kim Edwards

Target Audience: general fiction readers, predominantly female, parents of children with Down syndrome, book club members
Mood: somber, nostalgic, distant, detached
Symbolism: x-ray imagery, memory, regret
Predominant Color Scheme: black with ghostly blues

Fish! by Stephen C. Lundin

Target Audience: corporate managers, gender neutral
Mood: upbeat, fun, child-like, playful
Symbolism: childhood, simplicity, water
Predominant Color Scheme: white with bright orange, yellow, and blue

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Pantone: Red Hot Color for 2007

By Sheila Parr

The color experts at Pantone, the company that defines and provides exact colors to the world of visual art, just named Pantone 19-1557, Chili Pepper, as the Color of the Year for 2007—according to Leatrice Eiseman, executive director of the Pantone Color Institute, “Whether expressing danger, celebration, love, or passion, red will not be ignored.” Now that’s the kind of attitude I like to see in a color.

How do Pantone’s experts choose the perfect shades for the coming season? They scope out the hottest designs at Fashion Week, of course. To find out what the color trends for 2007 will be, check out Pantone’s Fashion Color Report (I’m truly in love with 12-1206 Silver Peony, and I think I NEED a tote in 19-2924 Hollyhock). Is it just me, or do the colors from Fall 2006 already look so six months ago?

The reason Pantone gets to forecast color trends is that its matching system is vital to designers, printers, and coloristas worldwide. The Pantone Matching System (PMS) ensures that the colors we choose for printed pieces are the same colors that come off press. Pantone has been the color authority for decades, and recently the matching system has moved off the page.

I’m talking about Pantone Paints and Interiors, a partnership between Pantone and Fine Paints of Europe. Now you can paint your bedroom in your favorite Pantone color. Their Pantone Universe signature is specifically for consumer products not related to the graphics or printing industries, like notebooks and handbags.

Pantone just keeps getting more fun. What does your birthday color say about you? Find out at www.colorstrology.com. (Personally, I’m an artist, communicator, and storyteller—you know, all that good stuff.)

Maybe it’s because I do this for a living. Maybe it’s because I want things in real life to look as bright and vibrant as they do in my head. Maybe I just love color. But whatever the reason, I’m sold. For 2007, color me PMS 19-1557.

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Talking the Talk

By Alan Grimes

“It’s all pounds, shillings, and pence to me, darling.” —Absolutely Fabulous

Just like most industries, book publishing has its own peculiar jargon—a language that may be confusing to first-time authors. To minimize confusion and miscommunication during your book’s production, here’s a list of some of the more common terms you might come across:

General Terms

Back matter: The text that occurs after the last chapter in the book (or the main body of text). Back matter often comprises such parts as the index, endnotes, author biography, bibliography, etc. The pages are numbered with Arabic numerals.
CIP: Cataloging in Publication information is the bibliographic information supplied by the Library of Congress and printed on the copyright page. Librarians use this information when adding new titles to their collections.
Galley/ARC: Often used interchangeably, these two terms refer to advance printed copies of a book that are used for review and publicity purposes before publication. (ARC stands for “Advance Readers’ Copy.”) These advance editions typically come out four months before the publication date.
Front matter: The text that occurs before the first chapter in the book (or the main body of text). Front matter often comprises such parts as the dedication, acknowledgments, table of contents, etc. The pages are numbered with Roman numerals.
Imprint: The company name under which your book is being published (e.g., Greenleaf Book Group Press, Penguin Classics, etc.).
ISBN: The International Standard Book Number is a unique thirteen-digit number assigned to every book and obtained from the R. R. Bowker company. This is the number most often used to order a book or keep track of it in the supply chain.
LCCN: The Library of Congress Control Number is the Library of Congress’s system of uniquely numbering books. Librarians use this information to access the book’s correct cataloging data.
Trim: This is the physical dimension (measured in width and length) of your book after the printer has cut it to the desired size. Common trim sizes include 8.5 x 11, 5.5 x 8.5, and 6 x 9—in the United States, they’re always measured in inches.

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Images to Print: A Guide

By Lisa Woods and Lari Bishop

Images can add a lot to a book, or any printed material. But if you want to jazz up your pages with graphics (figures, drawings, cartoons, illustrations, etc.) and you’re printing professionally, you’ll need these tips.

Resolution
All images destined for print must be high resolution, which is to say 300 pixels per inch (ppi, sometimes also called dpi) or greater. Sometimes people try to fake the size of an image—an image is not high resolution if it was originally low resolution and then resized to force the resolution to 300 ppi, or if the resolution was simply changed. Using either technique does not improve the quality of the image and may make it worse. If you print a low-resolution image, the difference will show.

File Formats
The most widely accepted kinds of digital image files are:

.psd (Adobe Photoshop native file)
.tif
.eps
.jpg
.pdf (Adobe Acrobat file)
.ai (Adobe Illustrator native file)

Finding Images
Here are some popular stock image sources:

www.shutterstock.com (a subscription stock house)
www.gettyimages.com (also sells news, sports, and historical photos)
www.veer.com (also has hip and interesting illustrations)

Obtaining Image Rights
Images are copyrighted, just like any other form of intellectual property. You can’t use an image unless you get permission. Make sure you have the proper permission and the image will look right when it’s printed with the following guidelines.

Don’t use images downloaded from websites. Not only will they probably be low-res, you don’t have the right to use them. If you have found the perfect image online, try to contact the owner and get permission to use it. (Your lawyer and publisher will probably require that the release be in writing!) Also, don’t forget to ask for the high-resolution version.
Don’t scan images from other publications without getting the rights to use the images from the copyright holders. This can cause big headaches.
If an image is in the public domain (such as images from government publications), you can use the image without getting permission, but you must credit the original source of the image in a source line.
Once you purchase a “royalty free” photo, you can pretty much do whatever you want with it. “Rights managed” photos are another animal. Not only are they significantly more expensive to purchase, they often come with strict usage rules and restrictions. Make sure to notice which category your candidates belong to while you are shopping. Falling in love with a $2,000 image can leave you brokenhearted, or just broke.
Provide your publisher with all the information you received regarding use of the photo when you obtained permission.
If you own images that only exist in hardcopy and are scanning them before submission, it is critical that the images be scanned in at 1200 dpi. If you are unsure of your scanning capabilities, submit the original hard copy to your publisher and they will scan it in.

Creating Original Images
If you are creating original images (vector or raster images) using imaging software, it is important that you provide:

the original native editable file (fonts NOT outlined, layers NOT flattened)

all supporting files, including fonts and linked or embedded images
a high-resolution flattened version of the image with fonts outlined (for example, an .eps or .tiff file)
a printout of each image submitted with your manuscript
a document that explains the format of the images provided, the software and version used to create the images, and the operating system.

Image Credits and Source Lines

It is important that any image you obtain the right to use is appropriately credited or sourced in the book. One way to do this is to include a credits section at the back of the book listing the images by page and the corresponding credit information. Another possible method is including a source line for each image near the presentation of the image in the text (for example, a line just below a graph). When you obtain the rights to use an image, the rights holder will tell you how to credit the image.

With these guidelines, you’ll end up with beautiful printed images—and a printer and publisher that love you. Happy hunting!

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