Farah Khan <█████████████████████ >
To: Lauren Wetmore <████████████████████████████████ >
Cc: mark <████████████████████ >, Josh Schwebel <privatejosh@gmail.com>, Louis Dollé <█████████████████████ >, Miranda Bambace <███████████████████████ >
Hey Josh and Lauren,
Thank you so much for your patience while we worked through the edits. We’re so happy with the results and hope you will be too.
Here is the updated design: https://www.dropbox.com/
Based on your last comments, here’s what we changed:
We dropped the body font size to 11 pts
Because of that decrease, we had to make everything else a little smaller to keep the contrast on the page
We changed the way endnotes are marked in the body copy. They relate more directly to the notes themselves. The grey mono also adds a nice bit of detail and texture.
We finally designed the pull quotes :)
We removed the all caps from the email on the title pages
We added an optional grey highlight to proper nouns, applied in the example to the first time the names appear. We could also use this convention to draw attention to other words (not necessarily names).
What we didn’t do:
We didn’t make the font lighter. We feel strongly that medium is important. The overall texture of the page. Because we removed so much detailing for the text-heavy pages, making the typeface lighter disconnected the design of these pages from the rest of the book pages (which were already approved). Making it lighter would mean having to redesign all those pages and none of us want to go there. Because we made it smaller, though, we feel that the readability is improved, which was your central concern.
We added another design element, which you’ll see halfway through the presentation: we thought about adding a black bar to the pages to reference the website (scroll bars) and progress (length of article). We love how the texture looks on the pages and also on the sides of the book. We have two concepts:
The bar height is proportional to the number of pages each essay takes up. In this design, the bar stays in the same place on the same essay. The shapes on the edges of the book are more graph-like.
The bar is a consistent height and “scrolls” down within each essay. In this version, the edges of the book are more textured.
Note that there’s a central black bar where the website screenshots appear against a black background.
We really like both options and we think the better option will be informed by the full layout.
Principal and Creative Director
House9 Design