Steinbruch Verlag is producing the first title in a planned series on Swiss rural building: a field guide to dry-stone walls meant to be carried in a rucksack and read outdoors. The interior design must balance a classic, bookish authority with the neutral legibility a working manual demands, built around a grid that treats photography, technical drawing and caption text as equal citizens on the page.
Overview & Goals
- Design a caption system first, since a third of the book's words live in captions
- Build a grid that holds a full-bleed photograph facing a two-column technical description without strain
- Establish a type system with proper small caps for the glossary and a text weight that stays readable outdoors
- Deliver editable templates so the editor can lay out future chapters and future books in the series
Budget & Timeline
Grid and type specimen are due within four weeks of kickoff, giving the editor early templates to test against real content. Full typesetting follows and is delivered by the end of February, ahead of an autumn publication date, with the system documented clearly enough to carry into the next three titles in the series.
Publication & print
- Logo files
- Vector file (SVG, AI, EPS or PDF)
- Format & extent
- 170 x 240 mm, 240 pages, plus endpapers with a regional map.
- Binding
- Perfect bound
- Content
- Text and images ready
- Print run & paper
- 3,000 copies, offset, on a matte coated 115gsm that can take the photography without going glossy. Flexible cover with flaps, so it survives a rucksack.
- One-off or series
- Template for future issues
- Handover
- Print-ready PDF for our printer
- Manuscript
- Word, about 60,000 words. Around 180 photographs, 40 technical drawings, a glossary and no footnotes.
- Editions
- Print only
- Print colors
- Not defined yet
Target Audience
Readers who take this book into the field rather than leave it on a shelf: hikers, walkers and craftspeople learning to read dry-stone walls as they encounter them.
Style
Typography
Chosen
- Steinbruch VerlagClassic & bookish · Old-style serifExample typeface: EB Garamond. A starting point, not a requirement.
- Steinbruch VerlagNeutral & functional · GrotesqueExample typeface: Inter. A starting point, not a requirement.
Colour
New color direction
Classic & established
Deep, traditional tones. Suggests something that has been around a while.
Examples of the mood. The final colors are part of the job.
For print
The new palette has to be defined for print as well: CMYK values for four-color process, and Pantone or HKS for any color that must match exactly.
In the client's own words
We are publishing a field guide to Swiss dry-stone walls: how they are built, how to read one, and where the regional differences are. Around 240 pages, roughly half of it photographs and technical drawings, the rest running text with a lot of captions and a glossary. The manuscript is finished and the photography is commissioned and delivered. What we need is the interior: a type system, a grid that can hold a full-page photograph next to a two-column technical description, and templates our editor can work in. It is meant to be carried in a rucksack.
Scope & Deliverables
- Caption style and hierarchy, designed before the rest of the system
- Master grid accommodating full-bleed photography, two-column technical text and drawings on facing pages
- Type specimen covering running text, captions, glossary small caps and headings
- Editable templates for the editor to lay out remaining chapters
- Endpaper map treatment consistent with the interior system
- Print-ready PDF prepared for the printer
- Documentation for the system's reuse across the next three books in the series
Do's & Don'ts
Do
- Design the caption style before anything else
- Build a grid that survives a technical drawing and a full-bleed photograph on facing pages
- Choose a typeface with proper small caps for the glossary
- Keep running text loose enough to read outdoors
Don't
- Do not use a typeface without proper small caps
- Do not set the running text so tight that it fails outdoors
- Do not design a one-off system: it must extend to three more books
- Do not let photography or drawings compromise the two-column technical text