Book Interior Layout and Design – Open Heart Designs

Create Visual Balance with Optical Margin Alignment

admin — Mon, 10 Oct 2022 16:58:44 +0000

When you want your page to have visually clean, crisp lines, using hanging punctuation can help! Hanging punctuation was first used in the Gutenberg bible where hyphens and other text features were slightly bumped into the right and left margins to create visual uniformity on the page. It was a very tedious job in those days and usually there was one person dedicated solely to that task.

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What goes on your Title Page?

admin — Sat, 05 Feb 2022 11:05:00 +0000

Did you know that your book can contain two title pages? The first appears as the very first page when you open the cover and is called a half title page. The only thing on this page is the title of your book, usually small and understated. A half title page is not a requirement, and is mostly a leftover tradition from back-in-the-day when it is said to have been used as protective measure during…

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What goes in the front matter of your book

admin — Sat, 01 Jan 2022 12:35:48 +0000

Do you wonder what kind of content should go in your front matter? Front matter is all of the pages before your first chapter or part and contains information about your book, provides a way to navigate the book, and introduces it to your reader. These pages are numbered with lowercase roman numerals (i, ii, iii, iv, v, etc.) and, although they shouldn't be printed on the title page through the…

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Preparing Your Manuscript for the Book Designer

admin — Sat, 09 Oct 2021 15:32:37 +0000

So you've finished writing your book and are ready for the layout and design stage. Before you send it off to your formatter there's a bit of "house cleaning" to do first to ensure that they can clearly see and understand the formatting needs of your book. Remember, the designer is not as familiar with your content as you are, so preparing a clean document to send to them saves time (and cost) and…

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Designing Poetry Books

admin — Sat, 03 Apr 2021 09:00:56 +0000

As a designer I enjoy when I get to work on projects that allow me to stretch and flex my creative muscles. One such type of project is poetry book design! Poetry has experienced an upsurge in popularity during this time of pandemic and I've had the opportunity to work on a few poetry books recently. So, I thought I'd discuss the unique creative challenges that come with creating a book of poetry.

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A Look at Imprints

admin — Fri, 26 Jun 2020 17:46:11 +0000

As a self publishing author, your books are published under your publishing company name. This is also called your publishing imprint and is what is recorded in book industry databases used by retailers, book wholesalers, and book distributors, it's on your copyright page and is assigned to your ISBN numbers. You can also have multiple imprints that fall under your publishing company. For example…

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The Chapter Opening Page in Book Design

admin — Fri, 22 May 2020 00:05:43 +0000

The first page of each chapter is one of my favorite things to design. This is one place where the tone of your book and its subject matter can be visually communicated. The design of these pages can range from very simple to more elaborate design choices that spread across two pages. The Chicago Manual of Style says that each chapter normally starts on a new page, and can sit on a verso (left) or…

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Paragraph Separators in Book Page Design

admin — Tue, 05 May 2020 16:41:19 +0000

When you need to indicate a pause, a passage of time, or a scene change within a chapter of your book use a paragraph separator. This is a visual cue to your reader that something has changed. A paragraph separator can be as simple as an extra line space between two paragraphs, a series of three or four asterisks (*) separated by an em or en space, or they can be a little more graphic with the use…

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The Change Code Book

admin — Fri, 03 Jan 2020 17:41:58 +0000

This book has it all! A custom designed cover, call outs, pull quotes, tables, charts, custom designed graphics, an appendix and bibliography. It was so fun and challenging to design this book. After our initial consultation meeting, learning about the content and purpose of the book, the author sent me her design vision for the cover. The book is about Spiral Dynamics and and she wanted a very…

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What is your resolution?

admin — Wed, 18 Dec 2019 17:28:03 +0000

With the holiday season upon us and the new year quickly approaching, many people spend time thinking about resolutions that they want to fold into their life. When I, your book designer, think about resolutions I am hopeful for only the best! That is to say – at least 300 dpi. What on earth could that mean? Why, image quality of course! To help ensure beautiful, crisp, printed results…

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