OUG504 - Designing the Publication - Size

Once I was happy with what I wanted the publication to contain including content, page layouts, images and text I began designing the layout and dimensions of the publication.

SIZE

When starting the design process the first thing to consider was the size of the publication. The book needed to be portable and lightweight but also encourage being handled and flicked through. 

A list of books and publications I had studied in my research and at village bookstore were good examples of this so made good templates for designing a book of similar proportions. 

NOTEBOOK: 140mm x 120mm

READ THIS IF YOU WANT TO TAKE GREAT PHOTOGRAPHS: 200mm x 140mm

BADLY REPAIRED CARS: 179mm x 141mm

The first size I experimented with was that of a notebook I had studied from village bookstore at a dimension of 140 x 120 mm. This size was easier to flick through than the others and also felt like a nice size to handle, while lending itself to being easily tucked away into your bag, or lightweight enough to carry in your hand if you were zipping around trying to find the content of the book. 

I made the entire layout like this however when I did a test print and cut out the pages, folding it into a mini booklet, the size seemed much too small. What I hadn't taken into account was that on the example of the notebook there were a lot more pages than my publication contained meaning it was chunkier to hold and flick through, creating substance, yet with my publication having a quarter of the pages the design turned out to be really fiddly to hold and flick through. The notebook also had a larger thicker cover with a border that ran around the outside of the pages, making the surface area of the part you hold larger and therefore easier to read. 

I decided to go back to the drawing board and look at bigger dimensions, referring back to my research. 

The paperback book 'Read this if you want to take great photographs' by Henry Carroll has dimensions of143mm x 200mm. I showed my peers the size of the smaller print run I had done and they all agreed that it was too small saying that the images I had taken would look better in a bigger book as they are really interesting and vibrant. This made me realise that one of my initial concepts was that I didn't want it just to be a guide book, but a limited edition book that people would want to keep and look back at time and time again. For this reason a smaller book such as the first one I tried would not be appropriate for the type of book I was wanting to design. 

Therefore I changed the dimensions in my publication to 140mm x 200mm as 'Read this if you want to take great photographs' as it is still a nice portable size and easy to carry and flick through. 

It also complies with Jan Tschishold's first rule in 'The form of the book' that a book should be no larger than 250mm wide.