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Subject:Re: Who's Job is it to Layout a Book? From:David Knopf <david -at- KNOPF -dot- COM> Date:Thu, 15 Jul 1999 14:07:54 -0700
David Hickey asked about who should do what in terms of designing the layout
for a book.
I can tell from some of the responses I've seen that my perspective will rub
some people the wrong way. I think there's only one way to ensure the best
possible results: recognize that book design is a collaborative effort. It
involves the writer, a book designer, and a production specialist. Yes it's
possible that one person can cover all three bases, but in 20 years in the
business, I've never yet met one person who could cover all three of these
bases well.
In my opinion, these are the proper roles:
1. The writer identifies what elements need to be included the book. That
is, how many levels of headings, how many levels in the index, what kind of
information needs to be shown in the headers and footers, what types of
lists will be used (numbered, bulleted, definition), and so forth. The
writer creates a sample document that includes some of all of these elements
and supplies that sample document to a book designer.
2. The book designer creates a design based on the input from the writer.
(Notice I am not using the term "graphic designer." Lots of graphic
designers have no clue how to design a book; a book designer is a graphic
designer with specific book design experience). The book design, typically
created in Quark XPress or Illustrator, shows what the book will look like
when finished. The writer and the book designer normally have to go back and
forth on this a bit until the information needs defined by the writer are
fully met in the design created by the designer. Once the design is pretty
much approved, the designer gives it to a production person.
3. The production person then creates appropriate templates (hopefully in
FrameMaker, a tool which is actually designed for producing books) that
implement the book design. Very few writers have enough depth of experience
in template design to create high-quality, reusable templates; those who do
invariably work at rates far higher than those commanded by production
specialists. Sometimes, there needs to be some back and forth between the
production person and the designer. It is possible to design things that
make the production process much more difficult; the book designer can
almost always modify the design slightly to make the production task run
more smoothly. Having implemented the designer's layout as a set of
templates in a suitable tool (again usually FrameMaker for us), the
templates go back to the writer, who uses them to create books.
This process allows each team member to do what he or she does best. Our
approach allows writers to write, designers to design, and production
specialists to handle production. Not only does this lead to better results,
it also reduces costs. It makes no sense to pay a Senior Technical Writer to
do production layout work. We ask our writers to write, our designer to
design, and our production people to handle production. We also use
illustrators and ask writers to produce only rough sketches of any
illustrations that are needed. I know that some writers wouldn't enjoy
working here because they wouldn't have the chance to apply their skills in
all these different areas. However, in my experience, our process leads to
the best possible results at a reasonable cost.
