OMFG I Wrote a Book!
Design for Hackers: Reverse-Engineering Beauty (Wiley & Sons, September 2011) will help you see like a designer does.
Sign up for updates now »I was first introduced to this method in Jan Tschichold’s The Form of the Book: Essays on the Morality of Good Design.
- Starting with a two-page spread, draw diagonal lines from one corner of the spread to the other (A1, A2).
- Draw diagonal lines from the top-center of the spread to either bottom corner (B1, B2).
- Draw a box with the same aspect ratio as your full page (C1), and place it so that B1 intersects the top-right and bottom-left corners of the box, and A1 intersects the top-left corner of the box. A good way to acheive this is to first draw a box the same size as your page, group it, and then scale it proportionally.
- Once you have achieved margins that are to your liking, copy your box, and position the copy on your opposite page so that it satisfies the critera from step 3 (C2).
- C1 and C2 are your live text areas.
A variety of margin-to-whitespace ratios can be achieved with this method, from the economical to the luxurious. You now have beautiful margins. Best of luck with filling in the rest.
Joe Avella said,
September 22, 2004 @ 9:12 am
Hey Dave,
I just relized something. Your last name kind of sounds like the word ‘cavity’. Have you ever noticed that?
Kadavy: Kah-duh-vee
Cavity: Cah-vuh-tee
Wow! If I ever put together a campain to get kids to take better care of their teeth, I’ll use live action super heros, like ‘Captian Toothbrush’ and ‘Dental Floss Man’, and they will fight Kadavy, the Evil Cavity! Oh man! you could duke it out with a big bottle of mouth wash! Awesome.
butt... said,
September 22, 2004 @ 9:57 am
^new friend David?
What about gutters? Does this assume the pages are flat and lose nothing to margins, or does that the gutter is lost completely and does not impact the visual composition at all.
kadavy said,
September 23, 2004 @ 7:38 pm
but…, this method is theoretical in that it assumes that you have a flat spread. It would be a good idea to compensate for the central gutter, especially if it is a thick hardbound publication.