Using Space
In one of my early book designs, a sequence of poetic prose by Sam Hamill about following in the footsteps of the haiku master Basho (published by Broken Moon Press), my cover design was bold and simple, but on the spine I was timid, and I hadn't thought enough about what a book spine had to do. I chose very small type, and set it within the empty space of the spine. The type got lost there, rather than standing out against its ground.

The small type on this spine easily gets lost.

Years later, in a volume of collected poems for White Pine Press, I got to give Sam Hamill a much more inviting spine to his book. I knew that some readers of poetry would seek out books by Hamill, so his name had to stand out; but I also wanted to attract others, so the most striking emphasis (white type on a dark blue background) was given over to the intriguing title, "Destination Zero."

Larger type for Hamill's "Destination Zero" amends my earlier timidity.

Sometimes neither the author's name nor the book's title is a guaranteed reader magnet. Poet Arthur Sze is well respected among certain circles of poetry readers, but he's hardly a household name. And the title of this book for Copper Canyon Press, "The Redshifting Web," is a particularly awkward combination of words to do anything with on a book cover or spine. But I had an attractive piece of artwork that lent itself to being wrapped around from the front cover onto the spine, giving a natural division to the area of the spine. So instead of running a simple author/title line down a blank spine, I chose to blow up Sze's single-syllable last name large enough to dominate the top section. Then I reduced the title until it fit within the artwork. The point was to be intriguing enough to make browsers stop and pull the book off the shelf.

This design emphasized the poet's last name but used a wrapped-around illustration to help catch browsers' eyes.

Too Colorful?
Color is an important factor in book spines, but contrast is even more important. The most "typographic" colors are black and white, and I usually try to stick to these for type. The best second color is one that's light enough not to drown out black type, but dark enough that you can reverse out white type and still read it.

Sometimes using a color combination from the front cover, or even from the artwork, is effective. It's easy to get carried away, though. On the spine of Jane Miller's "Memory at These Speeds" (Copper Canyon), I made the mistake of using a blue for the author's name against a dark orangey-red, with a light yellowish orange for the title. The title stands out, but the blue and red fight each other, in an electric effect, and Miller's name is hard to read.

The choice of type color could have been better with this design for Jane Miller's "Memory at These Speeds."

Spine Space, the Final Frontier
Capital letters aren't the only possibility for a book spine. And italics can sometimes be very effective, even though they slant down from top to bottom on a North American spine, farther from the browser's horizontal orientation. For Eleanor Wilner's collection "Reversing the Spell" (Copper Canyon), I thought the title itself would draw the most attention, so I made it prominent. The spine was wide enough that I could give the author's name horizontally, in contrast to the title.

The title warranted the focus in this design, but the different orientation of the author's name helps it remain easily readable."

The same technique of combining vertical and horizontal type worked on the spine of the first complete edition of Thomas McGrath's book-length poem, "Letter to an Imaginary Friend" (Copper Canyon). I probably played down McGrath's name too much (I should have used a contrasting or complementary typeface that was stronger, for his name), but the title stands out (the small caps are not faked; the typeface actually has "small caps" that are nearly as tall as the capital letters) and the spine was wide enough that I could use a cropped version of the very personal, inviting photo of the author. You don't often get to use a person's face on a book spine.

This design also emphasizes the title, but the width of the binding allowed the flexibility to add the author's photograph.

The opposite problem comes when you've got a very narrow spine, for a very thin book. Heather Allen's "Leaving a Shadow" was one of the shortest books I've ever designed, an almost archetypal "slim volume of poems" (again, for Copper Canyon Press). The cover was a duotone, in black and silver, of a photograph with type against it. On the spine, there was no room for anything fancy; I simply used all the space, and all the variations at my disposal, setting the author's name in black and the title in white, both in letterspaced caps in a crisp typeface, against a pure silver background.

Books with thin spines can be especially challenging.

Details, Details
Why spend so much time thinking about a subject that almost no one, including book designers, gives much thought to? Because this, like so many neglected details of design, actually has a big impact on which items in the marketplace get noticed -- and bought. The spines of books ought to be pleasing, so that book buyers will enjoy having them on their shelves once they've read them; but the first thing a book's spine has to do, in the real world, is attract the reader.

Read more by John D. Berry.