> Disclaimer: I’ve never been formally educated in design. The closest I’ve come to that is a web design course during undergraduate studies. Most of what I know comes from over a decade of programming and web design tutorials and the tutelage of co-workers. Books? I’ve thought about designing them plenty of times, but I’m a complete newbie to this.
You’d think that I would use the entry title for this, but I prefer to use the title more creatively… here is the main issue I am here to discuss. I want to design my book right now, and not just “write” it until I’m done. Is this idiotic? Isn’t the main point of writing a book the written word? **No**. Not for me, anyways. As anybody who knows me already knows, I am a picture guy. I prefer my news in pictures, video, and most especially [info graphics](http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/).
I’m kicking myself though, because I’m spending so much time worrying about how to lay out the pages, thinking about the table of contents design (someone mentioned to me that I should design the TOC as a [map of the USA](http://www.flickr.com/photos/nanderson/2979083104/in/set-72157608757295080/), and I like that idea), contemplating the placement and typography for the title of the book on Roger’s [excellently-designed drawing](http://sunflowers.staticpulse.com/2009/01/the-drawing-for-the-cover/) which is going on the cover, and other non-written aspects of the book. I’m concerned over how to design the photographs which make up the bulk of the book. I love that Anthony pushed me towards scanning every single image to keep a consistent aesthetic throughout the book, but I don’t have the skills, time, or money to get some decent color reproduction. Think about this: the pictures were taken on different cameras by (mostly) non-photographers, printed out on more than one printer on many different occasions, and then I’m going to scan each of them on a budget all-in-one printer, and then print them out again in a book. Did I mention I don’t have any desire to get into color management for this book? I’m glad that [Blurb](http://blurb.com) doesn’t offer color management for non-pro customers.
So, back to the main issue I raised earlier. Should I be worrying about these things now? I’ve so far written about the planning stages and the first 6 days of a 21-day trip. I have plans on writing appendices, as well as organizing some of the notes and comments my friends have made in yet more appendices. I’m even thinking about publishing these in separate volumes, especially considering that at the rate I’m going, I’ll be over the page limit for most do-it-yourself print outfits, which won’t print more than 500 or so pages per book (without the planned TOC, introduction, & appendices, I’m already at 150 for the planning stages + 6 days of travel).
There’s a part of me that feels I should just concentrate on the writing and leave the design for later when I actually know how much information I’m working with. Then I would just write for a while and put things together afterwards, leaving less time for me to worry about design and layout, things that I might change my mind about in the future anyways.
Design is so important in this project, though! The conclusion I’ve come to over and over again is that I should lay out my writing with pictures, and that by placing them together now I can make better decisions about the direction the book takes. And I can’t foresee myself taking any other direction with this book in the near future. So I guess this book won’t be seeing the light of day for quite a while.
Was this all just a rant?
Comments (2)
I’ve been following this for awhile now but I’m beginning to question the idea of handwriting the entire thing. Why not take the time and digitize your handwriting into a font? This way you can do the layout digitally. It doesn’t seem practical to write out multiple volumes entirely by hand. Surely your time is better spent elsewhere, like on the narrative itself. It seems to me that you’re more concerned with the look and feel rather than the content. Take your own advice “concentrate on the writing and leave the design for later.”
Your comment sent me on a quest to find out how to digitize my handwriting.
But then I started thinking about how that would look. That wouldn’t look very good at all. Plus, part of the aesthetic is that I’m writing this as if I were writing a journal at the time, and handwriting in a small journal helps me get into that mode. Paradoxically, despite the relatively small amount of writing I have to do by limiting myself to “entries” in a “travel journal,” it still takes immense effort to write just a single day’s worth of events and thoughts.
In short, I don’t think that digitizing my handwriting will make this book see the light of day any faster. It would certainly give me more freedom with the layout (you can only lay out scanned journal pages in so many ways before you lose the effect you’re going for), but the main issue I was addressing in this post was “designing as I go” vs. “writing first and designing later.”
I love to pick nits, so I will. Regarding your last sentence: I wasn’t giving “advice” to anybody. I was elaborating on my internal debate over how to go about building a book.