I've recently been inspired by book art after seeing "Maze of Books" in South Bank this summer. This was a part of the London 2012 Festival. This consisted of a maze of 250,000 books in a room.
I've also been considering the importance of the book spine. The book's spine is normally the first element of the book that the book browser in a shop (or in a library) sees. Of course, people do "judge a book by its cover", and that makes the spine all the more important. According to Sinclair (2), the book spine is often neglected by designers.
What elements make up a book design? The designer has to consider text direction, font size, and colour.
Berry (1), a book designer, gives a few pointers on text direction for book spines. The most readable book spines would be thick enough to list the title and author on the spine without the user tilting their head. However, most books are not thick enough to allow this, so the words must be written down the size. According to Berrry (1), viewers in North America read the spine from top to bottom; in Europe, they read from bottom to top.
Berry also states arguments for the book title or the author to be in larger font with the rule: If the author is well-known, it is best to have the author's name in larger font (1).
Fixabook is a consultancy that looks at book designs and gives guidance based on the spines (amongst other book-cover-related elements) (2).
Readability of the font and the correct use of typography is the best indicator about a book and also determines if the book will stand out on the shelf. I have included some examples of good book spine designs.
Coralie Bickford-Smith has had several awards for her book covers for Penguin Books. I have included a selection of her work below, but more of her work can be viewed on her website at: http://www.cb-smith.com
Jessica Hische is another designer who has worked on Penguin books, and she uses bold typefaces.
More of her work can be found on her website at: http://jessicahische.is
An artist uses books and book spines to create artwork:
Mike Stikley creates paintings on the fronts and spines of books. Many of the pieces use stacks of books created with the three-dimensional artwork, and some of them are floor to ceiling. Most of the paintings feature human or human-like figures, and they are Tim Burton-esque in appearance. More of his work can be discovered on his website here: http://www.mikestilkey.com/
1) Berry, John. D. Putting some spine into design. http://www.creativepro.com/article/dot-font-putting-some-spine-in-design [July 26, 2001].
2) Sinclair, Mark. Look after your spines, book designers. http://creativereview.co.uk/cr-blog/2011/february/book-spine-design-fixabook
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