ATHFIELD ARCHITECTS, Julia Gatley

Books about design bear the greatest expectations when it comes to their own design – it’s hard to sell a reader on your subject if you fail to live up to it yourself (and you are a book). Athfield Architects ably lives up to the challenge. This solid coffee-table book has slick design inside and out, with plenty of well-presented images and attention to detail.

The front cover

The black-and-white photograph on the cover gives the reader an indication of the timeframe of the subject, while also illustrating an example of the architects’ work in situ. The matt image provides a contrasting background for the vividly coloured, spot-glossed title.

Several of the design elements introduced on the cover jacket are repeated throughout the exterior and interior. This repetition of elements ties the book together.

First, the text. The hierarachy between title and author name is established by the use of spot-gloss on black, rather than colour, for the author’s name, as well as the comparative size of the two elements. This format, without the spot gloss, is repeated in the part title pages in the interior of the book, with part titles large and orange, and subtitles below them, smaller and in black.

A part title spread. Note the similarity of the text treatment
to the jacket front cover, and the use of colour

The half title page. The title mimics that of the title on the jacket
front cover, but the whole spread is in monochrome

The title page. The title and author name are depicted as on the
jacket front cover. The publisher logo is inserted in the lower
right corner of the recto. Visually, this title page is an amped-up
version of the half title: note the use of colour and the placement
of a large photo on the verso, where the half title verso was
solid black

Second, the colours. Excluding colour photographs, which are mainly used in the later sections of Athfield Architects, the main colours used in the book’s design throughout are bright shades of yellow and orange. Even the decorative headband is a vivid orange that matches the colour used on the jacket.

Note the colour of the headband against the colour of the case:
the same two colours as used for the title on the jacket

Third, the use of diagonal lines. Both the road and the text on the jacket cover are presented at an angle. This recurs throughout the interior of the book in the part title pages and on the case (a brilliant yellow-orange), which features a black-line drawing of buildings along a sloped hill.

The full case beneath with the jacket removed. Just as architecture
involves attention to both the visible and hidden design of buildings,
so this book has attention to detail in both the immediately visible
and hidden parts of its construction

Images are included generously throughout the book. A variety of grids are used for their presentation, including full-page, just-over-half-a-page, a spread combining those two, half a text-column, and a three-by-two grid of narrow portrait images. This variety keeps the layout from becoming too static and repetitive, and enables different images to be presented suitably.

Examples of the different ways images are placed in the book

The glossy, coated paper stock used for the interior of the book made photographing the pages a bit of a mission, but is perfect for an image-heavy book (compare this to the stock used for Radical Skubic Jewelry). It is light enough that the pages drape well when the book is open, but dense enough that there is no ink show-through. The glossy coating holds the ink well and makes the images and colours pop.

The body text is arranged in a two-column grid, with ragged-right justification. The short measure of the columns makes the text easier to read, as does the frequent use of images to break up pages and text.

A spread featuring images and the two-column text grid. Note
how images and headings are used to break up the text. Also
note how the width of the margin opens up the page but also
provides room for extra information in a side-box

Part titles have whole spreads to themselves and are designed to resemble the cover in colour and text layout. This use of whole, full-colour spreads for part titles clearly delineates the book’s different sections, and makes it easy to flick through and find a particular part.

The first paragraph of each new section begins with a four-line drop cap. This makes it easy to tell when a page is the first in a new part of the book, or carries on from a previous page.

Subheadings within sections are capped in a bold sans-serif typeface with plenty of space between them and the body text. ­This both makes them easy to see, and breaks up the text well.

Detail of text from the spread above. Note the use of a grey
drop-cap at the top paragraph - the first in this section following
a part title spread - and the spacing around the heading below it

The index is laid out across full spreads, beginning on a verso page. While I prefer new chapters to begin on a recto page, beginning an index on the verso allows the reader to scan a larger amount of information at a time without turning the page.

At the beginning of the index, a short note in a separate text box informs the reader that due to Ian Athfield being mentioned on almost every page of the book, references to him have not been included in the index. This is useful information to have, and well-presented distinct from the main body of the index text.

Following the note, the index is arranged alphabetically in three columns per page. Major references are indicated by bolding the number of the page on which they appear. All in all it is comprehensive, clear and easy to use, which really is all any reader wants from an index.

Samples collected: 14 June 2012