Steinbruch Verlag is launching the first in a series of field guides on Swiss rural building, starting with dry-stone walls. The interior needs a typographic system built for the outdoors: legible on a trail, precise enough for technical description, and calm enough to let the photography carry the story. This book sets the template that the next three titles will inherit.
Overview & Goals
- Build a type system anchored by a caption style, since captions carry a third of the book's words
- Design a grid that holds a full-bleed photograph facing a two-column technical description without strain
- Produce editor-ready templates so future issues in the series can be typeset without rebuilding the system
- Keep running text readable outdoors, in changing light, for a reader with the book in one hand
Budget & Timeline
Grid and type specimen are due within four weeks of kickoff, giving the editor a working system early. Full typesetting of all pages follows, delivered by the end of February to hit an autumn publication date. The system is documented as it is built, so it transfers cleanly to the next three books in the series.
Publication & print
- 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
Target Audience
Readers are hikers and outdoor enthusiasts with a genuine interest in Swiss vernacular building. They carry this book in a rucksack, read it standing in a field, and expect it to survive weather and handling.
Style
Colour
Direction chosen
Classic & established
Deep, traditional tones. Suggests something that has been around a while.
Examples of the mood, not the colours anyone has to use.
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 typographic style, set before all other decisions
- Primary type system including a typeface with true small caps for the glossary
- Master grid supporting full-bleed photography opposite two-column technical text
- Page templates for the editor covering chapter openers, plates, glossary and index
- Endpaper map integration for the regional map
- A short type and grid specimen document to carry forward into the next three titles in the series
Do's & Don'ts
Do
- Design the caption style before anything else in the system
- Build a grid that survives a technical drawing on one page and a full-bleed photograph on the facing page
- Choose a typeface with proper small caps for the glossary
- Set running text with enough air to read comfortably outdoors
Don't
- Do not choose a typeface without true small caps
- Do not set body text so tight it fails in daylight or low light
- Do not design a one-off system, everything must extend to three future titles
- Do not let the grid buckle under a mix of drawing, photograph and dense technical copy