What Text Design Characterizes Book Genres?
Daichi Haraguchi Brian Kenji Iwana Seiichi Uchida
This study analyzes the relationship between non-verbal information (e.g.,
genres) and text design (e.g., font style, character color, etc.) through the
classification of book genres using text design on book covers. Text images
have both semantic information about the word itself and other information
(non-semantic information or visual design), such as font style, character
color, etc. When we read a word printed on some materials, we receive
impressions or other information from both the word itself and the visual
design. Basically, we can understand verbal information only from semantic
information, i.e., the words themselves; however, we can consider that text
design is helpful for understanding other additional information (i.e.,
non-verbal information), such as impressions, genre, etc. To investigate the
effect of text design, we analyze text design using words printed on book
covers and their genres in two scenarios. First, we attempted to understand the
importance of visual design for determining the genre (i.e., non-verbal
information) of books by analyzing the differences in the relationship between
semantic information/visual design and genres. In the experiment, we found that
semantic information is sufficient to determine the genre; however, text design
is helpful in adding more discriminative features for book genres. Second, we
investigated the effect of each text design on book genres. As a result, we
found that each text design characterizes some book genres. For example, font
style is useful to add more discriminative features for genres of ``Mystery,
Thriller \& Suspense'' and ``Christian books \& Bibles.''