Book design for everyone.

Who are your instructors, and how did they become book designers?

A short introduction to Book Design through the pedagogy and curriculum of the CBD Workshop.

Explore the contemporary definition of the book and how it informs the work of a book designer in the 21st century.

Neither fine art, graphic design, UI/UX design, or bookmaking, what is it that makes the contemporary book designer tick?

Learn the ins and outs of the industry-standard publishing and design software.

Rehash the “Capital D Design” principles that dictate the work of the contemporary book designer’s work.

Type is the foundational form of the written language, and therefore book design. Learn the basics here.

Understanding typography from a bird’s eye (aka “reader’s”) perspective is a paramount skill to designing and setting typography for books and other long-form content.

The style, efficiency, and overall feeling of type often comes down to the tiny details. Learn about the mysteries of typographic detail from type designers and book designers in conversation.

Bringing your own practice to book design and seeing the larger whole in this fundamental lesson on book design philosophy.

The written language is 6000 years old, but where do books fit into that history? This lesson overviews the technologies that made books possible, the book design renaissance of the 15th century, and bookmaking practices up to the present day.

The history of meaning making and bookmaking is inextricably linked to the history of language. Here: a cursory overview.

Pre-medieval print design spans the globe along with other printing and meaning-making technologies like papyrus, moveable type, and more.

The intercontinental technological foundation of the book as we know it today.

How monastic scribes set the stage for a the coming of the age of printing in Europe and beyond.

From the Gutenberg Bible to Jenson’s Roman, the 15th century unlocked the key technologies that would drive the book through the Renaissance and into the present.

Discover the period of blossoming literacy and an explosion of type, printing, and binding techniques for the common reader.

Following the 15th century explosion of bookmaking and publishing, the world continues to globalize, and read all about it.

With growing industrial technologies come new, efficient ways to read books, while literacy and general readership fall precipitously.

The transition to the 20th century marks a decided shift in attitudes towards books, literacy, and almost everything else.

Books and book designers played dramatic, and often essential, roles in the World Wars and the dynamic years in between.

Paul Rand, Alvin Lustig, Jan Tschichold, Elaine Lustig, and the infusion of the “modern” in book design.

In the twilight of the pre-digital age, technologies continued pushing book design forward in new and inventive ways, with designers adapting to apply techniques of increasing efficiency to their workflows.

The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: Apple Computer, Quark Express, Microsoft, and Adobe Systems.

Book design in the social media age.

What does the workday look like for a professional book designer working today?

Learn about the specific jargon related to the manufacture and design of books.

Discover the many philosophies behind establishing trim size and margins for any content.

Learn about the many exceptions to the rules of grids, margins, and layout.

Picking a typeface for a project is arguably the most difficult and fundamental choice—here are tips and tricks behind that essential decision.

Harder even than choosing type is pairing type—the act of choosing typefaces that either stylistically or thematically speak to one another in some way.

Learn to speak the specific language of Book Design and why it matters to your success as a member of the publishing community.

Move beyond the basics of Adobe InDesign to discover the hidden layer of tools, preferences, and panels specific to the book designer’s workflow.

Our specific set of typesetting rules have changed the workflows of hundreds of designers for their replicability and use to build workhorse files for every kind of book.

Learn the difference between coded and uncoded manuscripts and what to expect when working with different kinds of files from clients, authors, and publishers.

Processing a manuscript into Adobe InDesign is tricky. We’ll show you how to do it without too much fuss.

The first step to any book project is preserving italics and other editorial formatting. Follow along for a guide to this essential step.

The scaffolding of much great book design is a well-considered, invisible-to-the-reader, baseline grid.

Learn to use the most powerful panels in InDesign and control your text with dexterity.

Learn to build templated pages and spreads for easier formatting of book contents.

The essential skill that separates well-made books from boilerplate ones is the elimination of widows, orphans, runts, rivers, bad hyphenation, and dozens of other typesetting errata that can only be controlled by a deft compositor’s hand.

Cover design: where books become commercial.

Though relatively shorter than the history of the book, the history of book cover and jacket design is nonetheless rich with excellence and drama.

“Don’t judge a book by its cover” has never applied to book design, ironically.

The drivers behind the look of a book are often outside of the designer’s control, and are dictated by marketing and sales needs of the end-product, i.e., the book on the bookstore’s bookshelf.

Learn about some of the most reputable, distinguished, notorious, and downright ridiculous cover designers of the 20th and 21st centuries and how their covers made history.

Learn to work within InDesign to build book covers that are typographic and feature imagery within frames.

See how Photoshop quickly transforms from image manipulation software to a powerful cover design tool in the hands of a skilled book designer.

Learn how professional book designers use Adobe Illustrator, Wacom Tablet and the iPad to build award-winning illustrative book covers.

Paint, calligraphy, scanned type, film photography, and more. Learn how professional cover designers use analog techniques to add a handmade look to cover designs.

A thorough review of one of the most powerful tools in InDesign.