That said, and taking ebooks out of the equation, too many self-publishers want the benefit of cutting out a third party as publisher and at the same time want readers to pay for the privilege of owning, essentially, do-it-yourself projects done for nickels and dimes. For the life of me, I do not understand why it is so hard to understand that readers must be given something for his or her hard-earned cash that looks like a book they want to own.

That’s where professional book design enters the frame. Throwing words together artlessly, either on the page or on a screen, misses the opportunity to make a book that is an object of art befitting the writing that makes up the content of that book. And that, like it or not, suggests the writing isn’t worth the investment of time and money to make it look like an object of art.

This came up in a fairly uncomplicated way. The client—a small, independent publisher—made it clear from when we first spoke that, although her company is of modest means, she definitely believes in paying freelancers fairly for the work they do. So she proposed paying in monthly installments, starting when we signed our agreement to work together.

It takes a bit of getting used to, receiving checks without doing any real work yet. But it is also very nice to have a regular income. Up until the other day I had hoped the textfiles would be ready and in my possession sooner rather than later. I found out, however, that is could be September or so before editing was completed.

I was told just over the weekend that I am free to begin work with the complete, though yet-to-be-edited textfiles right now if I choose. The expectation is that any editing will not result in large additions or deletions of copy. So there should not be major shifting of text.

On the one hand, I am as leery of working with files that are not final as I have always been. Despite that, I remain eager to plunge into this one, a combination travel book/cookbook. The design was approved some time ago. It’s bright and straightforward.

I cannot wait to start. And since I already receive payment, I may take the early plunge.

The Archive shows some powerful and effective pieces. They demonstrate some very well-known examples of brand in the twentieth century.

As book design is my area, this category is the first one I viewed a something of an outsider. Even film graphics were something I felt common ground with, as I once wrote film criticism for a couple of arts papers and remain a real movie buff. But from “outside” this category I still see a number of impressive examples of typography and graphics working together.

All the pieces, including ones I have not displayed here, can serve to stimulate both students and practicing graphic artists. And inspiration is almost always worth the price of admission. Even—or perhaps especially—when the identity established is a horror, there is something to be learned about how visuals can move us.

Film graphics often find their way onto movie posters, in addition to titles and credits. And this category is about the graphics themselves. It has the smallest number of examples in the categories reviewed to this point.

While not immediately intuitive, the connection I see between film graphics and book design is along the lines of the inspiration many graphic artist get from “found type,” letterforms found out “in the wild,” in real life. The relations between type and the space around it are displayed in a number of ways under this category.

Type as graphics are particularly useful for book covers and title pages. The Archive inspires in yet another way.

Leading, as indicated by the dotted horizontal lines in the example above, is measured from baseline to baseline. After type size, leading is perhaps the simplest way to exert control over the color of the page—i.e., how dense (light or dark) the page looks.

Rule of thumb says 120% of the type size is a usual leading. So if the type size is 10 point, rule of thumb calls for 12 point leading.

Too little leading—the term originates from strips of lead placed between lines of type when type was set by hand, in metal, during the pre-digital age—and the page will be crowded with type and have a dark look.

Notice how the above example appears blacker than the one above it, which looks grayish in comparison.

Too much leading, on the other hand, distracts the reader’s eye. Such text looks disjointed, and the lines no longer appear to be joined into paragraphs. The page looks lighter still than the previous lighter page.

My sense over the last few years has been to use more and more leading, pulling up way short from too much, but definitely stretching beyond 120% of type size. With the ITC New Baskerville type I’ve used for all my examples, I was able to stretch the leading to 16 point, over 131%. And yet I think it clearly is not too much.

Stretching limits, but not rupturing them, I believe, is a good way to create page designs that are attractive and original, but do not distract readers from the books they read.

By including the first cover, an example of the Insel-Bücherei (Island Library) collection, Phaidon has done students the service of demonstrating the beauty of a firm but

Similarly (in theory, anyway), the sampling of Penguin Book covers (pre-Tschichold), while not as spectacular to look at as the Insel-Bücherei, reveal how even a simple but uniform cover layout can go a long way toward establishing a publisher’s identity.

These are brilliant building blocks of design knowledge to draw from when a designer starts a new cover design.

As with so many of the categories in this boxed—and, indeed, with so much of contemporary graphic design, the constructivist and Bauhaus influences show up repeatedly.

Then there’s this one from 1936, for the cover to an exhibition titled “Cubism and Abstract Art.”

 While not strictly a book, but rather a catalogue, cover, the “Cubism and Abstract Art” piece demonstrates the beauty of art that does not require pure drawing/painting skills. I relate—hell, I rejoice—in this sentiment.

The Phaidon Archive of Graphic Design again gets my enthusiastic thumbs up for its value as a foundation work in the graphic design student’s library, as well as a reference for the experienced designer.

But, of course, the truth is somewhat different. And The Phaidon Archive of Graphic Design shows that first book, Buljo Jikji Simche Yojeol, “a collection of essential Zen Buddhist texts” published in South Korea about 80 years before Gutenberg’s Bible.

Without a formal design education, I studied and trained on my own, learning about book design initially as a proofreader, copy editor, and, eventually, just looking at books and then making them. The books in Phaidon’s collection form a great foundation, starting as they do with the first pieces above and including some great examples of books that push the boundaries of book design.

The Bauhaus, Swiss, and Russian influences are, I think, the ones that I find most affecting. Not that I want to make books just like those, but they are the ones that seem so different from what I learned a book to be from my childhood on up to the days I began designing books.

So much typography and book design are displayed in the pieces that are part of the Book section! They provide a virtual survey of book design, and one that it sounds like Phaidon will add to over time. What I can imagine using this particular section of The Phaidon Archive of Graphic Design for is to jump start one’s vision for book creation. The idea, of course, is not to steal whole designs, but to use these pieces to stimulate new designs of one’s own.

I recommend the Archive to students and practicing book designers.

So I waited uncomfortably for the first advertising piece to turn up, as I worked my way through the Archive. Oddly, I was well into the box—viewing/reading through in chronological order—before the first such piece turned up. From the very first one, for Pelikan Ink by El Lissitzky, Phaidon blew my prejudice out of the water. Some examples …

In reading Jan Tschichold’s The New Typography and about Tschichold himself, again and again I read about the Bauhaus, Constructivism, and (among other designers and artists) El Lissitzky. The first and last of these were easy for me to comprehend in the simplest way: the Bauhaus was a school and El Lissitzky was a Russian artist and designer. Constructivism—a concept, a style of art—was tougher to grasp. By now I know what constructivism is. But for a student, or perhaps just a dabbler reading art history, the Pelikan Ink piece ably demonstrates, quickly, that constructivism is a style of art based on fairly strict organization of elements—and the accompanying text explains it a bit.

One of the beauties of The Phaidon Archive of Graphic Design is how a single piece can bring home such a concept with such ease.

More of the Russian/German modernism of the early twentieth century came into focus with the work of the English designer Ashley Havinden for the American automaker Chrysler. Again underlining the value of the Archive as a learning tool, the piece has art deco leanings. It actually reminded me of the art deco architecture of New York’s Chrysler Building. The common thread of art deco style is instructive as to how a theme may be made to run through various expressions of a brand.

Another Bauhaus veteran—though he left the school for advertising and eventually emigrated to the U.S.—was Herbert Bayer. Interestingly, his ad for Adrianol Emulsion, a hay fever remedy, does not scream Bauhaus.

Rather it takes the Archive on a bit of a fantastical turn and actually reminds me of something Dali might create. But this is part of the task of being, it seems to me, a survey of graphic design. And, really, the wider the survey, the more useful it can be to the designer poking around for inspiration. Not to steal, or even borrow, as Picasso famously quipped, but to light a fire under one’s imagination.

Entering 2012 my optimism was on the wane. It simply seemed to me that I could not expect it to be as financially rewarding as 2011. Of course, I always worry about self-fulfilling prophecies and giving myself excuses for failing. But 2011 had been head and shoulders financially better than any other year I had ever worked as a freelance book designer/layout artist. The way the rest of the American economy suffered, I could not imagine that freelancing in the publishing arts would continue to fare so much better.

This was also the year in which my promotional skills took a step forward. I don’t pretend to know any more or any different than people who, for instance, make social media their main field of play, but I have finally coordinated my Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and blog presences. The result is that I have been contacted through each of those venues by prospective clients. This last quarter of the year has seen a number of exciting propositions materialize.

First, I managed to line up three new books to begin in January. And second, I have opened a new avenue  to promote my services, beginning to review big, new books on design on my blog. The first appeared about a month ago and was about Stephen Coles’ The Anatomy of Type. The second is being done as a series, the first of which appeared just a couple of days ago, on Phaidon’s boxed set, The Archive of Graphic Design. (The latter will resume next time I post to the blog after the instant piece.)

And so it goes. I am set up for the biggest start to a new year that I have ever had!

Entering 2012 my optimism was on the wane. It simply seemed to me that I could not expect it to be as financially rewarding as 2011. Of course, I always worry about self-fulfilling prophecies and giving myself excuses for failing. But 2011 had been head and shoulders financially better than any other year I had ever worked as a freelance book designer/layout artist. The way the rest of the American economy suffered, I could not imagine that freelancing in the publishing arts would continue to fare so much better.

This was also the year in which my promotional skills took a step forward. I don’t pretend to know any more or any different than people who, for instance, make social media their main field of play, but I have finally coordinated my Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and blog presences. I have been contacted through each of those venues by prospective clients. This last quarter of the year has seen a number of exciting propositions materialize.

First, I managed to line up three new books to begin in January. And second, I have opened a new avenue  to promote my services, beginning to review big, new books on design on my blog. The first appeared about a month ago and was about Stephen Coles’ The Anatomy of Type. The second is being done as a series, the first of which appeared just a couple of days ago, on Phaidon’s boxed set, The Archive of Graphic Design. (The latter ill resume next time I post to the blog after the instant piece.)

And so it goes. I am set up for the biggest start to a new year that I have ever had!