OUGD504 - Design for Print - Size of Publication

Revisited Jan Tschichold's publication because his objective principles can help me make an informed decision.

'Books that are needlessly large, need- lessly wide and needlessly heavy. Books have to be handy. Books wider than the ratio 3:4 (quarto), especially square ones, are ugly and impractical; the most important good proportions for books were and are 2:3, Golden Section and 3:4. The hybrid format A5 is particularly bad, while the hybrid format A4 is at times not entirely unsuitable. The inner book, or book block, of books that are too wide - square books in particular - will drop at the face. It is not easy to shelve or otherwise store books that are wider than 25 cm; 97/8 in.'

In order to visualise Tschichol's proposition, I drew out some publications using the ratios:

The 2:3 and 3:4 ratio because are portrait profile which makes storage easier than a long landscape publication. The 2:3 ratio is typical for publications that are text based because of its narrow structure. 

The 3:4 ratio is slightly wider which will accommodate large images. The extended width also gives the publication more presence which is desired for a coffee table book.

Sagmeister's 'Things I Have Learned' publication is precisely 18x24 cm:

Smaller than A4, the publication is easy to hold making it comfortable to read. Although coffee table books are known to be oversized, this size is still appropriate for printing large high quality images and a smaller publication would make the printing costs less expensive.

After creating a mock up of the 18x24cm publication, it became apparent that I could go much larger so that the publication has more presence. I still aim to make the pages smaller than A4 so that I can print each double page on an A3 sheet which is more cost effective.

21x27cm

Contradicted my research into Tschichold by not using the ratios provided, instead I made the publication slightly wider to accomodate the large images so that they are clear and take advantage of the white space.