Print or digital, your book’s appearance can make a huge difference. Before you send your manuscript out into the world, you have to think about how it will look to the reader.

Book design is about much more than just typesetting and making sure all the chapter headings are in the same font size (although those are pretty important too). The design of your book is about ensuring that every aspect of its appearance is consistent with the contents that you’ve worked so hard on.

Book Design Process

1 - 3 weeks

Design Concepts

As with any creative design project, we start with the concept. This is when we sit down together (face to face or virtually) and discuss your requirements, your target readers, and all the other important factors we’ll weave into the design process.

You may be crystal-clear on what you want or maybe you want to explore a number of options, in which case, we’ll prepare more than one concept design so you can see how the same set of requirements can be met in different ways.

The concept stage is where you immediately see the benefits of dealing with a professional designer. We’ll come up with options and choices that you otherwise wouldn’t consider. This is the foundation of your book’s design; everything else flows from here.

1 - 3 weeks

2 weeks

Typography and Font Pairing

Typography and fonts are all about the visual appearance of your words. Fundamentally, lettering has to be legible and comfortable to read, but there are also aesthetic considerations to making choices that fit your overall design concept. The key issues that we take into account are:

Size of the book
Your target market (e.g. age makes a big difference to how people read).
Print or digital media (fonts don’t behave the same on-screen as in print).
Cultural background of your target audience.

At Soul Space Design, we understand how a book’s typeface can affect the way it communicates with the reader.

It’s a rare book that has the same font all the way through: chapter headings, captions, subtitles, they’re all usually in a different font to the rest of the text. But not all fonts work well together and mixing them is something of an art. This is where we come in. We know from experience what works and what doesn’t. And more than that, we care about making sure your book has beautiful fonts that work together.

2 weeks

4 - 8 weeks

Layout & Typesetting

The layout stage is all about taking the agreed elements of your design and putting them together on the page. The typography, illustrations, photos, charts and tables are all put into a grid system.

By combining design practices (including kerning and leading, hyphenation and justification and weeding out ‘widows’ and ‘orphans’) once you approve the design concept, we’ll craft the structure of each and every page: margins, flow-lines, spatial zones, markers, modules and columns, resulting in a consistent, clear and readable book.

4 - 8 weeks

Ongoing until approval

Design Revisions

It’s incredibly important to us that you love your finished book, and a natural part of the design process is making revisions based on your feedback.

Ongoing until approval

3 - 5 days

Pre-press files for commercial print or to your preferred digital supplier.

At this stage, you are completely happy with the design and layout of your book.

We are now ready to prepare your digital files for commercial print or supply you with PDFs for third party suppliers.

3 - 5 days

Book Design in Noosa, Sunshine Coast and Australia-wide

I’m not sure if she knows this, but I call this incredibly talented and intelligent woman My Boss: Taty Hindes from Soul Space Design: Logos, Branded Websites and Graphic Design has been helping me with my business since 2009 when I opened my gift store Lamington in Noosa and has now designed and assisted me with every step of publishing our newly-released cookbook Cook Noosa.

I spent many years living and working in Miami, the Latino capital of the world, and as Taty hails from El Salvador I felt an instant affinity with her.

Taty lives with her equally intelligent Mama and husband, Paul, of Soul Space Building Design. One day while working together on Cook Noosa, I was greeted by Taty’s Mama and a bowl of her homemade Sopa de Frijoles and from that day on I knew my connection and friendship with Taty and her family was sealed forever. Muchas Gracias Taty”