The lecturers made a mistake.

They asked us to take a word and illustrate it so in had a relationship to the meaning of that word. If you have the world “cold” you had to add snow or make it look like ice. “Fire” was, well, on fire.

Most students make the obvious joke – “Boring” would look like a group of design students making silly visual puns.

It’s often forgotten about within a couple of lessons and never mentioned again.

That’s the mistake. The good lecturers, I’m sure, get the point, they have to, it’s kind of obvious once you’ve practiced design for any length of time. But we all know that few lecturers are genuinely good.

The opportunity lost? To state and make clear in the minds of the students that this is one of the most important lessons in design they will ever have.

It isn’t about making something look pretty, that’s just the surface. It’s about the idea. An idea which is simple yet often forgotten:

How something is designed should be decided by what something says.

What if you were a student who really, really, really loved drawing flames? And what if you draw the best flames anyone has ever seen? They’re so good the paper starts to singe.

What if you got the word “cold”?

* * *


“Every piece of typography that originals in a preconceived idea of form, of whatever kind, is wrong.”
– Jan Tschichold, The New Typography

The design developed for a message should be born of that message, of the content.

The content tells you if it should have a one, two, or three column grid. It tells you if photos are needed, it tells you what colours are needed, if they are to be used at all.

Not always directly. Sometimes once reading the copy it’s important to learn who it is written by and for whom. Who is the audience? What is the language they usually speak? Visually and literally? How do they tell their stories?

How does a piece of content tell you such things? Let’s start with the grid.

What’s the content like? Is it filled with a lot of short words, or is it long medical ones? So long that they might break in a three column grid? Maybe they’d work best in two columns? Or one? Are the words short? Then a narrower column could work well, maybe that’s the way to go.

Wait. Wait, wait, wait, before we go down that path, who is the audience? They’re elderly? Ok, a bigger typeface is needed then. And it should probably be something with serifs. Alright, so now that there are serifs, leading should probably be adjusted, but the typeface takes up more room so a long measure is needed, better make it two columns instead of three. Let’s be safe, let’s make it one column, but with generous margins, and some ballsy leading.

One of my favourite things to design are catalogues for artists or exhibitions. They’re pretty easy but the results can be huge – just get out of the way. Let the artwork do all the lifting. My job is to just clear the decks so it can do exactly that.

When I first started to design these things they were often portrait, with a two or three column grid. Why not? It’s a classic way to start a page.

But it’s a classic way to start a page of text.

These books were filled with photos. Often landscape. Often 4:3.

The better thing to do is to setup a grid in which several 4:3 landscape images can sit comfortably on a page, rather than trying to cram into columns built for text. Hell, the books themselves should be 4:3! Why on earth wouldn’t a book filled with 4:3 images not be 4:3 itself?

* * *

But it isn’t just physical form that should be suggested by the content.

Emotion is a big part of design – we use it to get attention, to deliver punch to a call to action.

We must use the right typeface, one which is historically accurate, as well as stylistically, to the audience and the message.

The right colours, too, ones harmonious not just with the content but with the context in which the design will be used. A book on gardening would often do best if the greens used were soft and gentle, and the browns were rich and earthy. It isn’t a formula that must be followed everytime, but it should be a starting point.

There’s something in a Bob Gill book that I think about constantly.

If you were to design a sign that said “Cure Cancer for Free” what would you do with it? I like Gill’s suggestion of almost nothing. Bold, black, big text. As big as possible. Align it to the left. Let’s not get crazy.

If someone has a cure for cancer, then there is no way a preconceived notion of what its design should look like, one often developed before the content is known, hell, before the client is known, should be used.

* * *

We draw thumbnails and draw a little person where the photo should go. We put a few lines next to it for the text.

We have an idea of what the photo should look like, because it has to fit between a couple pieces of text that we’ve already decided must go here, in this exact spot.

This is a great practice, and there’s only so granular you can get.

But think about the photo. Why do we use photos and illustration? Why do we look at such things first, before text? Why do they excite us? Sadden us?

Because they’re powerful.

But the habit we often find ourselves in is to consider them as after-thoughts. We know photos work well, so lets use a photo! What photo? Eh, we’ll figure that out after the design is established.


What if we picked the photo first? Before we typeset anything? Before any layout was established? What if we let the thing that does all the heavy lifting actually do all the heavy lifting?

What if we then let the text sit where the photo suggests it should? In alignment with an eye, perhaps? Or being pointed at with a finger? Or maybe there’s more? Maybe we can do a lot more than that? Maybe the text should be a slave to the photo in the same way we are?

* * *

One thing that amazes me about book cover designers is that they read the entire manuscript.

We think the life of a designer being about design, but for these designers, often incredibly talented and clever, it’s about reading. They spend most of their time reading.

Sounds heavenly, doesn’t it? But what of the design? And why do they do such a thing?

Because a book simply shrugs at whatever “preconceived idea of form” a designer may have in mind. The content demands something special, and the audience will deride any ill-fitting clothing its dressed in.