by Steve Renick
Judging a Book Show is both a privilege and a considerable task. To help with the task, the 1996 planning committee instituted the role of jury mentor. They asked me to prepare some basic guidelines for the jury and to be available during the week of judging for general advice.
Interior Design
My instructions to the jury were based upon long recognized basic design judging standards, focusing on the need for readability and ease of use of the book by the reader. My motivation was to direct the judges' attention to detail in all areas, with typography being the most essential. I asked the jurists to look at the most basic component, the text typeface, to make sure that its individual fonts were truly readable. This is the primary requirement for all books, regardless of other design elements: a beautiful layout is useless if the text cannot be read.
I next discussed design complexity, again asking that the jurors put themselves in the place of the reader. I am of the school that holds that less on the page is truly more, that is, if an element of design is not essential to the editorial purpose it shouldn't be used. Because of this deeply rooted belief, I stressed the need for jurists to search for simplicity and clarity in all cases and in all categories. It is easy to design editorially less complicated books, but the more complicated a manuscript, the more a designer must strive to use as few elements as possible in order to avoid the jumbled and confused pages so often seen in today's publishing.
Overly complex page designs have especially plagued the Book Show's Instructional/Education categories for years. I am disturbed that in recent Book Shows textbooks have received fewer and fewer awards compared to books in other categories. I urged the jury to look very hard at entries in the Instructional/Education category with specific attention to the level of readership and the use of illustrations and color as real tools for learning, not as splashy decorative elements because this is after all a book design show, not an exhibition of decoration or marketing techniques. I reminded the jury that books remain books and, as such, are not necessarily tied visually to other forms of media. Books are basically reflective, not interactive, information sources, which should be judged on their own independent design and production merits.
Cover and Jacket Design
Unlike interior design, covers and jackets are specifically marketing tools, with a very different set of guidelines and influences. The jury's instructions were thus different for jackets and covers. While the best total book design fully integrates the cover or jacket with the interior (a criterion for this Book Show), many titles do not have to meet this requirement. The design, of course, must be well thought out and carefully executed, but this aspect of a book must focus the immediate attention of a buyer or adopter. A jacket or cover design must compress the essence of the entire book into or onto a limited surface which must vie for attention in bookstores and at convention exhibits. Jacket and cover design is package design rather than editorial design.