silversand

I spent a couple of hours today trying to find the right page dimensions for Parsons’ Cove, a new tunebook project of mine. Most, perhaps all, of the printed matter between the covers is a set of stills from video I took this summer in Maine: 640 × 480 pixels. At 160 dpi, this comes out to 4 × 3 inches, or 24 × 18 picas.

The challenge is to find a harmonious set of page dimensions. I’m planning on accordion binding the book, so I’m considering equal sized spine and edge margins, as well as the traditional larger edge margins.

After consulting with my sketchpad and my copy of Robert Bringhurst’s The Elements of Typographic Style, I had a few ideas. (m = 24p0, d = 18p0)

(w = width of the page, h = height of the page, m = measure or width of the image, d = depth or height of the image, s = spine or inner margin, e = edge or outer margin, t = top margin, f = foot or bottom margin)

Two with equal spine and edge margins

1. w = 33p0, h = 22p6, s = e = d/4 = h/5, f = d/6 = m/8 = w/11, t = f/2 = s/3
   
2. w = 33p0, h = 21p0, s = e = d/4, t = f = s/3 = m/16 = w/22
   

Three with larger edge margins

1. w = 33p0, h = 22p6, s = f = d/6 = m/8 = w/11, e = 2s, t = s/2
   
2. w = 33p0, h = 21p0, s = d/6 = h/7 = m/8 = w/11, e = 2s, t = f = s/2
   
3. w = 36p0, h = 24p0, s = f = d/4 = w/6, t = s/3, e = 5t
   

What I’m looking for in each design is balance between the dimensions of the video still and the page, and balance between those two shapes and the four margins. To my eye, all of these designs work fairly well — much better, anyway, than any of the other designs I tried. By the time I’d finished making these mock-ups in InDesign, I was ready to cast out the two designs with the equal spine and edge margins. The purpose of the larger edge in traditional typography is to make room for the reader’s thumbs, and even in unbound accordion books, one’s thumbs need to go somewhere.

I had a harder time deciding between the final three designs, but I think I’m going to go with the first one. I think the smaller page size of the first two designs feels tighter than the third, and the correspondingly smaller margins keep the video still from floating away on the page. On the second design the equal top and foot margins feel a little too narrow and constraining as well as a bit too symmetrical. The first design is lively and comfortable.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 6th, 2005 at 1:43 am and is filed under Art, Typography. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.