Some conventions are there for a reason...

I stumbled across this architecture book Forty-Six Square Metres of Land Doesn't Normally Become a House.

The cover is textured, and the narrow lettering of the title gets somewhat lost because of this. Despite this, I can see what this typeface was trying to achieve - it looks squashed, playing with the book's focus on restricted spaces.

The most shocking thing about this book is that when you open it, here's what the end-paper/first page looks like:

That's right - gasp - the book starts on the endpaper. There's no title page, no imprint page, and no table of contents - it's not at the back of the book either - and the book continues right up onto the last bit of end-paper. Maybe it's to reinforce the impression of 'squashed-ness'? Each page-spread certainly feels very squashed, with extremely narrow margins. The designer also seems to be very keen on showing off their grid, which does allow a great deal of flexibility in layout, but the narrow margins mean every single page feels uncomfortably constrained.

Eventually, I closed the book and spotted this:

Turning to the orange centre of the book, I found the missing imprint page, half-title page, title page, and table of contents. I guess the designer made them orange so they'd be easier to find. But you know what would have made them even easier to find? Yup, putting them at the beginning where everyone expects them to be. I see no reason for breaking this convention in this instance.

Updated 7 July:

The table of contents, although pretty, gives too much weight to the page numbers and not enough to the section headings (the actual information the reader is looking for).

Also, why on earth have a half-title page if it's going to be in the middle of the book and after the title page?

Comic book typefaces

Today I got distracted by the glorious array of typefaces used in comics. I’m new to the world of comics, so I’m only just learning some of the conventions.

The three comics all the examples are from are A Sickness in the Family by Denise Muso (published 2010), Book 10 of Y the Last Man by Brian K. Vaughan, Pia Guerra and Jose Marzan, Jr. (published 2008), Volume 6 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer by Joss Whedon, Jane Espenson and Georges Jeanty (published 2010).

For starters, the first convention I noticed is that all text is in CAPITALS IN A SANS SERIF FONT THAT LOOKS SUSPICIOUSLY LIKE COMIC SANS (well, that’s presumably the reason it’s called comic sans). I imagine this is because text is presented in small snippets usually less than two sentences long. Serif fonts are easier to read for long pieces of running text, but sans serif is great for a less cluttered look.

The next thing I noticed is that words that the characters are speaking aloud go in round speech bubbles, whereas thoughts go in square text boxes:

pictures on the left from A Sickness in the Family, pictures on the right from Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Square text boxes also seem to be used to show a change of scene, or give information to the reader about a new place or character.

Bolding combined with italics seems to be used for emphasis, the same as in non comics. Even so, I find it hard to tell when emphasis is being used:

By far my favourite font aspect of the comics is the fonts used to depict sounds. 

Top row from A Sickness in the Family, middle row from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, bottom row from Y the Last Man

I particularly like this bit of ‘sound type’ in the picture below from A Sickness in the Family. The letters are distorted like a rising tendril of smoke, evoking a high pitched hissing noise.