Dear Gunnar, Carlos and Verdian,
I'm trying to use design to address a problem of anti-competitiveness of
American commercial globalisation.
The practical design problem is retypesetting a book (B5) to reduce its
weight by 50gms (2oz). This requires losing 14-15 pages. It's a text book so
the most obvious way is to go to two columns. While this is happening it
seems useful to use best practice from research and evidence to add to
conventional design to improve readability.
And the problem of anti-competitiveness of American commercial
globalisation? I knew you were going to ask.
In this case, the problem is of losses for small specialist publishers
outside America selling through Amazon at numbers too low to use a US
distributor.
When books from overseas are sold through Amazon.com to a customer in the
US, Amazon allows publishers only $3.99 postage. Real postage cost from
Australia for book over 500gms is $29.70. This makes specialist mid-cost
text books from publishers overseas uncompetitive to sell in the US.
However, the under 500 gms postage is $14.10, which, although the overseas
publisher is losing $11.11 per book, makes sales possible. Hence the
re-typesetting.
Amazon could simply arrange that all postage is at cost from anywhere in the
world. It could use the same web software for this that publishers use. In
fact, Amazon does this for books sold outside the US. For books sold inside
the US, however, Amazon chooses to have a fixed price for postage.
This means American publishers benefit at the expense of overseas
publishers.
The resulting design outcome of Amazon's position is globally
anti-competitive. It acts as a protectionist policy in favour of US
specialist publishers and against similar overseas publishers.
The above Amazon protectionism is also supported by the general US design
of processes for anti-terrorism security that cost overseas publishers
significantly in time and effort compared to publishers within the US.
You could regard the above as examples of political design. In depth, the
issue might make an interesting design case study. There are two reasons:
the political global anti-competitive dimension;, and the idea of using
design activity in one realm (in this case publishing) to respond to
oppressive pressures brought to bear via design of processes in another
realm (in this case book distribution and sales).
From here, however, redesigning to reduce book weight is easier than
changing American or Amazon globalisation policies!
My interest is in whether there is formal research analysis and evidence
offering particular design guidance over and above the conventions of
typesetting design practices. I'd be particularly interested in research
analyses relating to ratios (margins, gutters, font size, x-height, leading,
inter-paragraph spacing etc) in double column layouts for maximising
readability.
Best wishes,
Terry
---
Dr Terence Love
PhD(UWA), BA(Hons) Engin. PGCEd, FDRS, AMIMechE, MISI
Director,
Love Services Pty Ltd
PO Box 226, Quinns Rocks
Western Australia 6030
Tel: +61 (0)4 3497 5848
Fax:+61 (0)8 9305 7629
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--
-----Original Message-----
From: [log in to unmask]
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Gunnar Swanson
Sent: Thursday, 27 November 2014 11:35 PM
To: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and related
research in Design
Subject: Re: Request - resources on double column setting of books
On Nov 27, 2014, at 9:25 AM, Terence Love <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> I'm looking for good info on setting books in double column.
>
> I know many of the usual multi-column conventions (min 35-40
> characters, column width in picas > point size etc)
>
> I'm having difficulty finding any good research on readability and the
> like of double column setting for books (other than bibles) .
Terry,
What question do you have about two-column layouts in books that you hope
someone has answered?
I can't think of any specific references but I'm suspicious of typographic
rules (as opposed to typographic rules of thumb) anyway. There are a lot of
variables and they are interconnected enough that studying any single aspect
is much more difficult than most researchers on type and reading seem to
want to admit.
The sort of material and reading affects page size. The sort of audience and
assumed reading conditions affect type size. The choice of typeface affects
type size and set width. The set width affects optimal column width. Optimal
column width and page size affect the number of columns. . .
Reader (and publisher) expectations affect choices. Books that tend to be
larger and more complex (cookbooks, textbooks, etc.) commonly have multiple
columns. Smaller books (novels, etc.) tend not to. The size of book is
affected by the size of press sheets and presses, the budget, etc. but also
by assumptions about how the book will be used. (Novels tend to be held
fairly closely, cookbooks tend to be looked at from a distance when
preparing food, travel guides need to be carried around, etc.) A reader of a
novel might find a two column layout to be odd this disconcerting but I
suspect that would wear off after a couple of pages of reading.
Even the nature of the the writing affects choices. Shorter sentences and
quicker reading seem to work well with shorter measures. The narrow columns
of a newspaper would be distracting for writing that has longer sentences.
Longer words would also mean that narrower columns would be difficult to
justify. In the case of flush left settings, narrower columns combined with
longer words make distractingly irregular rags. (Choices about hyphenation
also affect such decisions.)
That adds up to many books having a wider column than is optimal for the
type size. The standard fix for that is additional leading since the
discomfort of reading long line length is the chance of skipping or doubling
lines; because the eye has to skip back a greater horizontal distance,
adding a greater vertical element makes getting lost less likely. (I don't
know that I've seen research confirming that and typographic wisdom is chock
full of specious folklore but I'll stand by that one.) Since more leading
means more pages for the same text, that solution often gets rejected along
with the wider margins that would have given a smaller measure, visual
relief, and a good place to grab the book.
Even if you follow a bunch of rules, trying variations and testing them by
having them read by representatives of the target audience under realistic
conditions will be worthwhile. A lot of people have tried to systematize
knowledge to avoid trial-and-error and subjectivity but, at least so far,
they have failed.
But now I am curious: What question do you have about two-column layouts in
books that you hope someone has answered?
Gunnar
Gunnar Swanson
East Carolina University
graphic design program
http://www.ecu.edu/cs-cfac/soad/graphic/index.cfm
[log in to unmask]
Gunnar Swanson Design Office
1901 East 6th Street
Greenville NC 27858
USA
http://www.gunnarswanson.com
[log in to unmask]
+1 252 258-7006
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