The layout of a book determines how information will be received and perceived by the readers and how user-friendly it is. In some cases it is necessary to interpret the information from the manuscript, and translate it into a graphic language so that the reader will get the message the way that the author intends to present it.
I always thought that this is a very interesting process so I put together an example of a book that we’ve worked on earlier this year.

STAGE 1 | identifying what needs graphic translation

Working on the book design of Stand Taller Live Longer by Dr. Steven Weiniger, we found that at the end of each chapter he had a little section with his 7 week Exercise Program and the idea was that the readers will start doing the exercises and progress along with the reading. The program was presented as lines of text, telling the reader which exercises to do, which order to follow and how many of them. The problem was that it didn’t look different than any other part of the text, so the reader wouldn’t realize that they were in front of The Excercise Program, and just read it as another line of text. It needed something to invite the reader to move out of the chair and get onto the exercise ball.

STAGE 2 | understanding the meaning

After talking with Dr.Steven, he came with this idea of a full page at the end of each chapter: Balance, Alignment & Motion with images of the exercises and page reference, and pyramids.

STAGE 3 | The BAM pages

We went from there and came up with the BAM pages that could be pulled out from the book and had a progressive set of exercises using the pyramid as a metaphor for building a Strong Base = a Strong Posture.

Each week would incorporate new exercises, which would be highlighted; while the repetitions from the week before would get a 50% transparency, serving as a remainder.

*The beautiful ornament bird on the side of this post is from the free font Medieval Dingbats by Lord Kyl

This blog has been silent for a while but we’ve been very busy here at sorodesign with a lot of exciting projects. With spring beginning here in Buenos Aires and fall arriving in North America, we’re going to return to blogging more often. Look forward to a lot of new posts about book design, plus we’ll be talking about several of the projects we’ve completed over the last few months.

Also, we’ve just recently completed a redesign of our own web site sorodesign. com and expanded our portfolio. We redesign the site every year, so this is our 3rd redesign. If you’ve not visited us lately, then click over and wander around.