Case Study: Serving Compassionate Conservatives
About the Client
Bill DeArmond is a college professor and self-published author. His prize-winning short fiction and poetry has been published in well-known magazines and collected into two books: Visions of Shadow and Light and Hail, Freedonia! and Other Tales.
Serving Compassionate Conservatives: a Cookbook is Bill’s third book to be self-published via Lulu.com and designed by Zenscope Studio. You can read a sample of the book and order your own copy from Lulu’s website.
The Challenge
The main cover image: designed to attract attention (click to enlarge)
In this book, the author argues that the regime currently controlling the Republican party may have risen to power on the promise of “compassionate conservatism,” but are actually dangerous religious totalitarians with striking similarities to the Islamic Taliban of Afghanistan. Bill addresses his subject with a mixture of serious analysis and humor, and the foreword was written by a GOP Committeeman that shares Bill’s concerns. Nevertheless, this book was destined to polarize readers. Like most political books that make strong claims, Serving Compassionate Conservatives had two potential audiences: people who already agree with the author, and people who vehemently disagree.
Unfortunately for Bill, America’s strongly divided political environment has already given rise to hundreds of such books. The question, then, was how to make his book stand out among the crowd.
The Solution
Cover Design: Attracting the Audience
In a December 2005 article for the London Times, Helen Rumbelow wrote about how readers in bookstores react to book covers, and how those reactions affect their purchasing habits. Rumbelow interviewed marketers, agents, and designers working in the publishing industry. She learned that research and market testing conclusively show how a book’s cover can have a profound affect on its sales. Nobody at the publishing houses was eager to talk specifically about what makes for a “good” book cover—possibly for fear of giving their competitors ideas. Fortunately for Bill, I already had some ideas of my own.
The front cover of Serving Compassionate Conservatives (click to enlarge)
To attract members of both of the book’s main audiences—those who already agree and those who already disagree—I knew that the front cover would need to convey all the important facts about the book in one glance: its subject matter, its viewpoint, and its sense of humor. It’s reasonable to assume that readers interested in American politics are already familiar with American political symbolism, so I used traditional symbols of patriotism and party affiliation as a shorthand method to communicate with potential readers.
The red, white, and blue stripes say that this is a book about America, possibly the American political system. The elephant’s head—served on a platter and garnished with vegetables—gives an indication of the book’s viewpoint (the elephant is the symbol of the Republican Party). The surrealism of the image also hints at the book’s sometimes-humorous approach. I chose to make this image photorealistic rather than illustrative because I wanted people to be taken by surprise and do a double-take to confirm what they were seeing. I’ve since witnessed this effect on several people I’ve shown the book to, so it must have worked.
The full wrap-around cover, showing both sides and the spine (click to enlarge)
Having drawn the potential reader in, the text on the front cover gives the remaining crucial details: title, author, and general premise. The back cover continues to sell the book with a brief teaser blurb, quoted excerpt from the foreword, and an author bio with photo. The author bio and photo are also somewhat tongue-in-cheek, reinforcing that the book doesn’t take itself too seriously.
Interior Book Design: Communicating with Clarity
The Serving Compassionate Conservatives title page (click to enlarge)
The foremost goal of any typographical design—such as that for the interior of a book—is to compliment the content without getting in the way. The typography should harmonize with the message and tone of the text. It should never draw too much attention to itself unless the style of the presentation is an important part of the message (e.g. a design textbook, certain advertisements or marketing collateral).
With that in mind, I made some careful choices about the typefaces and presentation for the pages of Serving Compassionate Conservatives. These decisions were made before work even started on the cover, so that the type choices seen on the outside of the book are actually a reflection of the choices that were made when designing the text itself.
Footnote references (click to enlarge)
Chapter headings are set in all-caps Myriad Pro Bold. This typeface has an assertive and authoritative character, but isn’t abrasive or intimidating. It seemed an appropriate choice for a book that makes bold claims in an effort to stand up for what’s right. Sub-headings use mixed-case Myriad Pro Regular, and are a bit smaller than chapter headings. Almost all other text is set in the astoundingly versatile Adobe Garamond Premiere Pro type family. This collection includes multiple font variations that are specially tuned for use as headings, sub-headings, captions, tabular data, and more.
Tabular data (click to enlarge)
The result of careful type choices and skillful layout is a printed work whose appearance harmonizes with its content, and which is easy and pleasant to either read or skim. You can see some samples from the pages of Serving Compassionate Conservatives: a Cookbook in this section’s images.
Project Summary
- Project Description
- A self-published political opinion book by Bill DeArmond
- Completion Date
- September 01, 2006
- Services
- Graphic design (cover art, using Photoshop CS2 & Corel Draw)
- Copywriting (back cover teaser blurb)
- Book design (layout and typography of interior pages)