The Anatomy of a Book

PART 1 - Collect, Categorise, Communicate

Leaves - Individual sheets wtihin a bound book
Pages - Leaves have a front and back, each referred to as a page
Page spreads - When bound together, the right (recto) and the left (verso) page are centered on a gutter where they are bound together at the spine
Perfect bound - Where pages have an equal aspect ratio and size

When designing a book, you need to think how individual pages with with one another.

Imposition - Precise arrangement of multiple pages on a large sheet of paper. When the print is folded, bound and guillotined, each element of the document is correctly positioned
Pagination - Dividing and numbering documents into pages. They can include other attributes such as columns, margins, headers and footers.

Types of binding include:

Perfect, coil, plastic, multi-binding, velo and thesis, some of which are illustrated below:

The aspect ratio of a page determines whether it will be portrait or landscape. Portrait has an aspect ratio of 1:2 (width to height) whereas landscape is the opposite. The ratio is the proportion of measurements.

For economic and efficiency reasons, a large sheet will be used to print multiple pages. For example, an A2 sheet will fit 32 pages at around A5 (though this will be reduced once guillotined and bounded etc).

As you can see, the numbers seem to be in a spontaneous order but when folded, cut and bound, they will produce a book where the pages are sequential.

PART 2 - Content, Layout, Format


How do you engage with a consumer/recipient/user/visitor

Statistical visualisation
- Building comparisons
- Information delivery
- How do you control what information is received
- Use of colour is vital
- Fact, infomation and context

There is an endless possibility of formats - not just through binding but materials, structure, size etc. In some way, the book may drive the idea and not the other way around.