Book Design, Digital Imaging and Photography

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LEONARDO DIGITAL REVIEWS
August 2001

Digital Book Design and Publishing by Douglas Holleley.

Dozens of books are currently advertised as handbooks for publication designers. In many cases, these are not only unhelpful, they are confusing, largely because they attempt to appeal to all people for all purposes. Full of enticing technical tricks, the overall result is not a primer but a hodgepodge.

Refreshingly, this book is not one of those, but is instead a legitimate handbook that identifies, demonstrates, and explains with unusual clarity the quintessential aspects of typography, page layout, illustration, image scanning, paper selection, printing, book binding, and copyright. For artists and illustrators, there is an especially valuable part on "Alternative Methods of Acquiring Images."

The author is an Australian-born photographer and book artist, many of whose "artist's books" are reproduced here as examples. While his chief interest is in printed "digital books," the title is somewhat misleading because his attitude and the information presented are applicable to a far wider range of printed forms. Any digital artist or graphic designer, at any level, could gain from this book, in part because it itself is exemplary of the worthy
things it recommends.

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AFTERIMAGE
Sept 2001
v29 i2 p15

Digital Book Design and Publishing by Douglas Holleley
(Review) Are Flagan.
Full Text: COPYRIGHT 2001 Visual Studies Workshop

As computers went from wooden housing to plastic casing and eventually acquired a place on the desktop, they extended a promise that individual publishing had made a giant leap from cut and paste on the kitchen table to a more professional production environment. Anyone with aspirations of authorship and a relatively modest budget could acquire the tools necessary to effectively put their thoughts between covers, but titles without ISBN markings have not increased proportionally with the number of computers sold. Digital Book Design and Publishing by Douglas Holleley does provide an indication of sorts as to why externally hosted home pages have proliferated above and beyond personal libraries.

Over a period of two years Holleley exclusively wrote, illustrated and designed this book using the very software and methods it covers, and his undertaking provides a wonderful merger of idea and expression to speak of a labor over narrative that contrasts with the instant pre-programmed aesthetic usually promoted by the digital.

Conceived as a practical guide within a conceptual framework, Digital Book Design and Publishing outlines a process of bookmaking that extends over 12 clearly defined chapters. Starting with the very nature of the book and proceeding to address the process of design and typography before setting up the first pages, this book on books then turns to cover the use of applications such as QuarkXPress and Adobe Photoshop before the final chapters bring text and images together in printing and binding. Unlike generic software manuals that are usually focused on the capabilities of the application, this publication approaches each tool with a stated intent, and the workflow from maquette to bound volume is not significantly diverted by the many distractions of the bit-stream. With a specific task at hand and in mind, Holleley maintains his focus throughout by concentrating on what the computer can do instead of getting lost in what it does. As such, Digital Book Design and Publishing will not bore you with the intricacies of novelty features buried deep in submenus or hidden behind obscure shortcuts, but provide enough information to make you conversant in the principal functions that remain productive for their bookmaking purpose.

Overall, however, there is a bittersweet irony to this title. Digital has exchanged letters for bytes and the usual hardcovers are now replicated in various models of e-book hardware, each gadget battling for its own proprietary format to display texts. Combined with the growing use of PDF in the information flow, our reduced demand for pulp fictions and facts should really have saved dwindling rainforests a long time ago. On one printed page, the traditional book is set to proliferate through desktop publishing, and on the other, lifted from the screen, it appears destined to be replaced by these technologies. Digital Book Design and Publishing carefully circumscribes this threat of erasure in an emerging moment by placing the process of bookmaking in a wider context. Like a literal palimpsest on the digital literati it offers a conventional philosophy of the book on pages displaying new thoughts on writing.

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ABC
The Australian Book Collector, November 2001
Reviewed by Jadwiga Jarvis

One fears that a book with such a title heralds yet more electronic dross on the already overburdened sentiments of the constant reader. Isn't this production just another desktop coffin nail into the heart of whatever quality book publishing we have left?

Absolutely not, in this case. Unlike most "how-to" guides that express small ambitions for their subject and even smaller understanding of its limitations, Holleley takes great pains to ensure that the putative book maker should begin at the beginning - or at least from a time before the ubiquitous silicon chip.

"Learning and applying [these] computer programs is but one part of the process. To make a book one adopts a series of roles, that in the not too distant past, were whole fields of specialized study." Photographer, typographer, author, editor, graphic designer, platemaker, printer, bookbinder and publisher - all these traditional roles and their part in the overall production are emphasised over and over again. "Now we select fonts from a list on our computer screen and within an instant our document changes character and emphasis. This simple action should be treated as a responsibility, one that demands an appreciation of hundreds of years of human history and effort that lies behind that simple phrase, desktop publishing." Holleley includes these remarks as "both a caution to the beginner and as a homage to those who in the past kept the tradition of the book alive as it grew and evolved to the point where it is today."

Holleley's arts background and obvious love of the book as object have ensured that his detailed examples of the technical process are tendered with the proviso that the computer is strictly an adjunct to the idea. "As with traditional private press, digital book production offers the author/artist/publisher freedom from editors and marketing experts whose goals are invariably commercial". That is not to say that the author is unaware of the traps inherent in total freedom, given the most beguiling presence of the digitised image on the screen. But he emphasises the all too little realised fact that machines cannot create or think and however impressive the technology it can never substitute for the fundamentals of visual sagacity. In this regard he recalls an incident of the misuse of mouse nous: ' l remember once receiving a memo from a colleague who had just attended a computer course. The memo looked so slick, and so much like a commercial brochure, that I did not even realise it was an inter-office communication, and I threw it in the trash without even reading it. Fortunately I was not the only one to make this error. I remember myself, and other colleagues, scrambling to find the "junk" mail before the re-cyclers came through the offices in the evening."

The first three (of twelve) chapters are devoted to the history of the book and of the people who made the book a reality. A credit to the author's sensibility is his mention of the fact that names of type fonts such as Baskerville and Garamond were actually the original creators of those types, who, with quill and paper (and probably by candlelight) laboriously drew each letter to be engraved and individually cast in lead so that we may now summon them up from cyberspace at the touch of a button. His thesis being that, whatever the method and whenever the period, there has always been a duty of care in the presentation of knowledge so as to ensure its-continuation down through time.

There is a poignancy about this kind of sentiment, the more so because of its juxtaposition with the technology most readily associated with the soulless exigencies of number crunching.

Over the last ten years, there have been more that 250 books dealing with the general subject and countless trade magazine articles and guides purporting to give the reader a strategic advantage in the business of desktop publishing and design. If only ten percent of these had attempted the task with the insight and experience that Douglas Holleley has brought to bear, we would not have to contend with the conglomeration of dismal schlock from the graduates of pick-and-click that the vast majority of previous publications have encouraged.

As an instruction manual Digital Book Design need do no more than offer itself as an example of the kind of controlled freedom advocated by the author. Well designed, sumptuously illustrated, persuasive, authoritative and witty, this book will remain the definitive text for a long time to come. Using QuarkXPress and Photoshop as primary examples, Holleley takes the reader, in chronological order, through every aspect of book production. Notably, there are clear, crisp, graphics showing a variety of binding styles, easily achievable by the novice. Of particular advantage is the author's use of menu and dialogue boxes to clarify particular directions, especially when dealing with the complexities of scanning and correcting images through Photoshop.

One of the many personal and endearing touches exhibited by the author is his stressing of the values of courtesy - the need to acknowledge sources or help received and above al, the respect for copyright. In these postmodern times of ,'sampling' from other people's effort, the good manners practiced by the author are as rare today as well produced books.

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THE CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION
Wednesday, February 13, 2002

Cornell Professor Offers a Guide to
Producing Handsome Books on Home Computers

By SCOTT CARLSON

Douglas Holleley, an educator and photographer, is the author of Digital Book Design and Publishing, recently released by the Cary Graphic Arts Press of the Rochester Institute of Technology and Mr. Holleley's own press, Clarellen. Mr. Holleley's manual details the ways that modern technologies and software can help aspiring authors or artists produce their own books at home, taking the power that has belonged to publishers for centuries and putting it instead in the hands of the people. Mr. Holleley is currently a visiting professor of art at Cornell University.

Q. One of the subjects that you discuss in your book is that
digital technology has made the task of producing books
easier. What sort of effect do you think this has had on
publishing in general?

A. It gives the author the ability to follow their thoughts
through from conception to bound book on the printed page.
This obviously has quite big implications for the publishing
practice. At one time, you would have to meet with a bevy of
editors, publishers, literary agents -- there is a whole
structure of the publishing industry that can now be bypassed.
The sticking block is of course the one of distribution. Even
then, that is less of an issue than it was years ago in that
you can publicize your work on the Web. Now, you're never
going to compete with a book chain and it's never going to
replace the browsing in a bookstore. But it does mean that a
greater number of books can be published without that sort of
editorial control.

Q. But the Web is a free-for-all publishing environment, and
90 percent of that is rubbish. Did the expense and difficulty
of publishing of yesterday cull the weak ideas and the
garbage?

A. It's still a very time-intensive, laborious task. Unlike
the Web, there is still a capital investment. Because we're
still developing a tangible, booklike object, there is a
reality check. ... When you start printing it out on paper, it
very quickly either looks good or looks bad in a way that
Web-based information doesn't. There is a whole history of
standards always hovering in the background that can really
severely criticize you if you do something naive or
inappropriate.

Q. So the book format lends some seriousness to it.

A. I think so. There are plenty of self-published books that
aren't well designed or produced, but there are plenty of
commercial books that aren't well designed, either. A lot of
them are computer textbooks. ... When we invented computers,
paradoxically the first thing we had to do is create books to
explain to people how to use these computers. And the books
that were created were a bit of a departure; they emphasized
technique and means rather than address the quality and
potential of the media.

Q. Aesthetically, what can digital technology do for
bookmaking that couldn't be done before?

A. Well, I'll tell you what it can't do: What none of these
things can do is substitute for a knowledge of type settings
or styles, a knowledge of how these have been used in the
past, an appreciation of the history of this, and how these
can be used on the page. In the book, I tried to remind people
that this might be a new way of doing things and one that
offers many advantages, but there is nothing intrinsic in the
medium that gives you the knowledge about how to apply these
things in such a way as to make them look aesthetically
pleasant or consistent with hundreds of years of typographical
progress and practice. Same with the images: It can't make the
pictures for you.

Q. Do you have any fear that some of the old skills and
technologies might be lost -- like metal typesetting, for
example?

A. The short answer is, yes. There are different levels of
worry. The obvious worry is the disappearance of hot-metal
type. But it was disappearing long before we had computers --
offset printing did that. If anything, I think that computers
have the ability to make up for some of the losses when
photosetting replaced hot-metal typesetting, which is kind of
cool. Phototypesetting was mechanical, and unless you were
very rich, you had a fairly restricted set of fonts to choose
from. The computer allows a typographical diversity that is
quite astonishing.

Q. So what's the future of the book in a digital age?

A. You will never replace the convenience, the access, the
beauty, the tactility, the freedom from ha ving to plug
something in and turn it on. Everyone thought that when the
computer came along this would replace paper, but in fact the
opposite has occurred. There has been an explosion of paper.
So one of the things that you quickly learn about the computer
is that it is a medium that invited speculation because it
appears to have so many possibilities. But almost always these
speculations prove to be so perversely opposite of what you
expect; we can only sit, watch, wonder, and keep our fingers
crossed. That's one of the delightful things about it.

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DIGITAL BOOK DESIGN AND PUBLISHING,
A PAGE IN HISTORY
A Review by Fred Showker, Editor
The Design Bookshelf

Revolutions happen quickly, and revolutions happen slowly. I'll never forget the look on people's faces when presented with their first print on a laser printer. Until then, they were all quite content with their desktop computers and ribbon-based, strike on impact prints and that was that. But when they saw beautifully scaled and smoothed type, and highly detailed drawings and art they were swept away with the possibilities. None thought about a revolution. None thought about turning a page in history. It was simply a fabulous new gizmo for those who could afford it and that was that.

It took Johannes Gutenberg's revolution several hundred years to happen. But in 1982, John Warnock and Chuck Geschke started their revolution and put it into overdrive. They were so frustrated with the current state of technology, they formed their own business which would, introduce a computer language that would describe to the electronic printer how to image fine photography, how to render and scale the finest nuances of typography. Postscript fulfilled the promise and Adobe delivered it to thousands then hundreds of thousands - then millions of anxious participants.

Douglas Holleley noticed this revolution -- and like so many others, became enthralled in the new capabilities and processes that the digital revolution made possible. However he was one of those who did not turn his back on history, tradition, and the importance of the printed word. Holleley's new book Digital Book Design & Publishing is a masterful vision that brings together all the elements of the new digital technologies into a resource for photographers, artists, authors, historians, teachers and anyone who would like to see their information made into a single document.

Each phase of developing, producing and assembling a book using currently available technology -- to move beyond the manuscript to the printed page. You'll be well exposed to Photoshop and Quark XPress and well as the plethora of elements from printing to bookbinding. You'll start with an understanding of the nature of the book and the process of design. You'll venture through typography and page layout. You'll acquire images, scan them, correct them and ultimately deploy them. Then you'll travel over the drums and through the rollers of the printing presses, into the bindery and ultimately to a finished product. The step-by-step guide even includes orientation and background on computers, copyright and publishing law.

Whether your book becomes a mass produced best seller, or a hand-made, one-of-a-kind art treasure Holleley's Digital Book will help you make it happen. I recommend the book to anyone with an appreciation for the published word. I also feel strongly it is an important book for educators. College and University level graphic design, printing, publishing and even journalism curricula planners should seriously consider integrating this book into their plan. As a university instructor myself, I can see this as an important part of any visual art and literary foundation program. It will arm those freshmen with a superior breadth of understanding in preparation for the higher level courses.

We give Douglas an enthusiastic thumbs up not only for the masterful handling of the subject matter, but for the wonderful array of visuals, photographs and illustrations in this superbly designed, typeset and printed work. You will not be disappointed.

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PARENTHESIS 7
November 2002.
The Journal of the Fine Press Book Association
Reviewed by Gerald Lange

These remarks are included both as a caution to the beginner and as a homage to those who in the past kept the tradition of the book alive as it grew and evolved to the point where it is today. As you sit at your desk and work through this volume, think of the medieval monks patiently illuminating their
manuscripts, the Chinese calligraphers writing their scrolls, the Victorian typesetters composing a page one lead character at a time, and all the other figures in the history of bookmaking, a medium whose fundamental purpose is to ensure that knowledge will persist through time.

With his Digital Book Design and Publishing, Douglas Holleley has taken the common definition of a digital book, "an electronic book viewed on a screen", and used it for his own purposes. He sets out to describe a kind of book produced entirely through digital means of production; but in this case the end
product is real, physical. Given the accumulated tools of digital technology, Holleley suggests that they be used for creating books, and proceeds to tell the reader how to do it. In a sense, the laser and inkjet printer have become the handpress of today. Holleley has simply accepted this and made the leap of faith.

[More] than any other forum for viewing images and text, modern computer bookmaking offers a possibility for devising structures and creating solutions that circumvent the traditional structures of word/image relationships. The computer's ability to acquire and then recombine many different forms of information employing a single digital code has opened up the creative process to whole new vistas and ideas which could not exist with past technology.

Generally, the author discusses the unique possibilities the computer provides for intertwining text and image, and his examples are drawn from the artist's book. But this technology has also been used by others to produce catalogs and the like, as well as to explore its potential for trade publishing. The
advantage of doing it yourself is that you have complete control over the final form of the product. The technology is at a state where the quality control is so exacting that it is almost foolish to send camera-ready for a smallish project to the offset printer and then be stuck with the less than desirable
results. The exciting thing about this book is that Holleley tells you exactly how to do the work professionally, in a simple, kindly voice that clearly reveals his years of teaching experience. His empathetic advice to the novice is always informed rather than pedantic.

Do not always search for the 'ideal' solution. Instead view the resources available to you as a source of participation, if not inspiration, rather than a limitation.

Holleley is a careful and concerned writer. He invites his readers in and patiently guides them through the various processes of design, production, and publication. His book is the first attempt to gather together all the pertinent information necessary to complete a digital book project. Holleley has an
affinity for the book form. Even though he is dealing with the digital book, he never forgets traditional precedents and uses them well in providing a continuum. He rarely provides more information than is necessary, and thus avoids confusion and disturbance of flow. This book is a godsend for anyone
confused about computer practices. Holleley's simple and practicable illustrations are extremely useful, especially for those weak in one area or another: for example, he provides clear and precise showings of elementary bookbinding structures. His little tidbits of advice are useful to both amateur
and professional. As a seasoned photographer, he includes superb photographs and reveals his many, many examples of bookwork, both historical and contemporary, in their best light.

[The] book has a particular quality of intimacy. Unlike the public space of the exhibition and the movies..., the book is a quiet, solitary and, indeed, intimate experience. It can be held in one's hands. This direct, tactile connection, so different from the signs in the gallery that admonish one to not
touch the work, creates a different environment for appreciating content and message. The experience of holding a book in one's hands has the potential to suggest an almost direct link between the author and the reader. The space created is intimate and implies trust and connection. The gentle, quiet act of
turning the pages is a subtle yet powerful signifier of intimacy and participation. The book is the fundamental precursor of that most post-modern notion, interactivity.

I use Digital Book Design and Publishing in a course I teach to photography students with no prior experience in book typography. One of my students commented on the book, "I see the required text as a guide... a map of the entire process for the production of a book and the marriage of all the
elements of bookmaking." Here are the chapter headings of this "map": The Nature of the Book; The Process of Design; Typography; Setting Up; The Page Layout Program; Scanning; Correcting Images; Assembling the Document Digitally; Alternative Methods of Acquiring Images; Printing the Book; Printing Substrates and Materials; Binding the Book; Computers, Copyright and the Law; Bibliography (Artist's Book History and Theory; Bookbinding; Design and Typography;
Photography and Digital Imaging; Printing; Periodicals; URL's; Books, Artist's Books, and Portfolios by the Author); Glossary; Index (includes illustrations).The biggest book of all is, of course, the world. Like any book, it is full of messages and signs, admonitions and exhortations, promises and threats. You have only to open your eyes and read.

This first thing I did when I received the Holleley book was to read the introduction and the introductory chapter, "The Nature of the Book." Inviting and inspirational. Then I checked the section on typography. Concise, explanatory (without being overwhelming), instructive, and accurate. I checked his sections on copyright and the page layout program. Quite similar. Then I
read his sections regarding inkjet and laser printers, scanners, digital cameras ? areas in which I am less knowledgeable. Very informative, and not confusing in any way. I learned, and I trusted the information given. Then I read the introductory chapter again. He sold me.

Digital Book Design and Publishing is clearly a book for lovers of books and bookmaking, well-written by one who himself loves books and bookmaking, the first such book in a very long time. It is also a handsome production, designed by Holleley (at his own Clarellen), with stunning photographic reproductions and finely rendered illustrative matter. This is the first book released in a new publishing program at Cary Graphic Arts Press, the co-publisher. If you are involved with the book form in any way you need to have this reference source. Period.
________________________________________________________________________
Gerald Lange is a teacher and typographer, and proprietor of the Bieler Press
in San Marina del Rey, California.

DESIGN RESEARCH NEWS
January 6, 2003.
http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/wa.exe?A2=ind0301&L=design-research&P=R2&I=-1
Reviewed by Ken Friedman

From the clay tokens of the Neolithic era (Schmandt-Besserat 1978) on to the cuneiform tablets of Sumeria and the first codex books of the early Christian era (Hobart and Schiffman 1998: 91), books and their predecessors have played a central role in human culture. Each shift in book technology was embedded in and helped to bring about a vast series of social and intellectual developments. The birth of the printing press in the fifteenth century "left no field of human enterprise untouched" (Eisenstein 1979: 11)

The advent of digital media meant a revolution in book production and book publishing. halfway through the last century, electromechanical typesetting systems began to change the book production process. In the late 1980s, personal computers and digital typesetting pushed developments farther.
Electronic publishing has now become a central feature of the information age, transferring the content of paper media to such electronic media as CD-ROM, DVD, and the World Wide Web. What the digital media have not done is bring an end to the book as a communications medium, an information artifact, and an art form.

When scholars and futurists began predicting the death of the book, they failed to reckon with the convenience and congeniality of the book as a reading medium. In the 1990s, many believed that the World Wide Web would render books obsolete. Instead, the Web has increased the market for new
books and extended the circulation of used books. Access to richer information sources brings more books to the attention of more readers, while book sales and book reading have grown through the impact of on-line booksellers and web sites (Friedman 1996). Rather than replacing books, digital media supplement them. Beyond this, however, digital media now contribute to the growth and
continued health of the book as a physical artifact. This is where Douglas Holleley's Digital Book Design and Publishing begins.

Holleley has produced two books in one. First, an explicit, comprehensive textbook covers every aspect of digital book production from concept to binding. Second, a visual tour de force illustrates the book production process with beautiful examples of books from recent artist books to historical printed artifacts.The crisp structure of the text makes this an excellent manual. It is suitable for classroom use in book design and production classes. It is also a helpful personal guide.After an opening chapter on the nature of the book, ten chapters systematically chart the steps in making a book. Chapter 2 on the process of design covers conceptualization, development, and the general printing process. Chapter 3 covers typography, giving a nice overview of basic issues and a selection of important details. Chapter 4 covers the physical set-up of the book, including a discussion of folding and stitching. Chapter 5 discusses page layout programs. While the chapter is written for Quark-Xpress, it can be used will all major programs. Chapters 6, 7, and 8 discuss images - scanning them, correcting them, and acquiring them in other ways. Chapter 9 covers printing, with special attention to the relationship between digital media and final print production. Chapter 10 discusses the printing surface and materials, while chapter 11 covers binding. Chapter 12 is a discussion of the copyright and legal issues that have become increasingly important in an era of computer technology. The book includes a useful bibliography covering artist's books, bookbinding, design and typography, photography and digital imaging, printing, and periodicals. This is followed by a useful glossary of terms and a thorough index.

If I were to suggest modest improvements to a new edition of this fine work, it would involve covering two gaps. The first would be a chapter that offers a broader and more general vision of the book in today's digital world. While this book is written from the perspective of artist's books, it is such a fine book that it will find a far wider audience and larger uses. That makes a slightly more general perspective helpful in conceptual terms. This can be covered in a single chapter.

The other improvements would be to the bibliography. Two important topics are absent. The first topic involves the history of the book as a communication medium and cultural artifact. A selection of half a dozen titles would cover this admirably. The second topic involves a selection of titles on general book making, book production and publishing. Those who use this book to develop project for commercial publishers will want to know more about large-scale book production and publishing.

"Of making many books, there is no end" writes the weary author of Ecclesiastes 12:12. Douglas Holleley's beautiful text is more optimistic. Holleley gives reason to hope that books will be made for centuries to come. This practical and entertaining guide to book production meets today's needs and suggests new avenues for book production in the future.

References
Eisenstein, Elizabeth L. 1979. The Printing Press as an Agent of Change.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Friedman, Ken. 1996. Books in the Age of On-Line Information: Will We Read
More or Fewer Books? Statistical Summary and Preliminary Conclusions.
Saertrykk No. 40, 1996. Sandvika, Norway: Norwegian School of Management.
Hobart, Michael E., and Zachary S. Schiffman. 1998. Information Ages.
Literacy, Numeracy, and the Computer Revolution. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins
University Press.
Schmandt-Besserat, Denise. "The Earliest Precursor of Writing," Scientific
American, 238, vi (June 1978), 50-59.

CHOICE re VERONICA

July 2007
J. Natal, Columbia College Chicago

In this era of digital images and digital book production, one might expect the traditions of book publishing to change. Veronica exemplifies both technological possibilities and a continuing, necessary dependence on aesthetic vision. It is printed on demand, meaning that copies are printed and bound as needed; the quality of the production is impeccable. Aesthetically, there is a concomitant joining of new and old. A collection of color
photographs taken of rock platforms on beaches in New South Wales, Australia, the images printed here are wonderfully abstract and curiously evocative of the real. Author/photographer Holleley asks the reader to consider whether the accidental action of the sea, sand, and wind can construct images that are both lovely and representational. The title derives from the Biblical story of St. Veronica, who wiped the face of Christ on the Cross, leaving an imprint of his image on the cloth. Holleley digitally records images

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