Maybe you can't judge a book by its cover, but in a bookstore we judge most of them first by their spines. With most new books-- not the ones lying out on tables or prominently displayed with their covers out, but the ones lining the shelves -- the spine is all we see. The beautiful, dramatic cover, upon which great effort and sometimes even expense may have been lavished, never gets seen if a browsing book buyer doesn't reach out and pull the book off the shelf.

Given this cruel dynamic of the marketplace, you might expect that book publishers and the designers they hire would devote a lot of attention to what the spine looks like. But it seems to be the rare designer who gives the question much thought at all.

Standing up and Standing Out
As a book designer who is also a book buyer and reader, I've thought about this a lot -- and in the course of my professional life I've been able to put some of my thoughts into action. I know that when I scan the shelves of my favorite bookstores, it's the simplest, most dramatic, most legible book spines that stand out.

Obviously, since most books are shelved vertically, the ideal direction for the type on the spine is horizontal, so that the words are the right way up when viewed by the browser's eye. And if the book is fat, the spine is wider and there's more space for the designer to work with. Sometimes the designer can use some of that space to frame the title and the author's name.

The spine of this comprehensive Italian dictionary from 1949 is striking and easy to read.

But few books are thick enough to allow this kind of spacious display. In most cases, the type is turned at right angles to the viewer's eye, in order to run along the vertical spine. In North America, the normal direction is from top to bottom; in Europe, it's usually bottom to top. (This means that in North America, in a pile of books stacked face up, all the titles are easy to read; in Europe, it's the pile of books stacked face down, with no front covers visible at all, where the titles on the spines are easy to read. The biggest practical effect is that readers browsing the shelves in a European bookstore crick their necks to the left, while those in North America crick theirs to the right.)

Since the type is not aligned with the way we see, it has to be even clearer than it would otherwise. Crowded, cramped type gets lost in the clutter. No matter what the front cover looks like, capital letters make the best use of the narrow spine (no ascenders or descenders to extrude into the limited space). A little extra space between the letters -- even more than you'd give them in a horizontal line -- helps them stand out and be read.

Crisp letterforms (in this case, Big Caslon caps), if they're not too cramped, can stand out even when they fill the space on the spine.

Clarity in Complexity
Most of what I'm going to show is my own work, since this is the easiest approach and perhaps the most honest. But one example I'd like to include is the spine of a trade paperback edition of "Virtual Unrealities," a collection of short stories by science-fiction writer Alfred Bester (published by Vintage Books). The designer, Evan Gaffney, uses the space in a unique way. The intrusions of amorphous blue photographic details in strict rectangles, and the swirling clock-face image, reflect the design of the front cover (and the back); they also tie this book in with others in the uniform series of Bester reprints, each of which features a different dominant color. The complexity of this spine draws a browser's eye in; the well-spaced type of the author's name and the title make it clear what this is. (Even the letterspacing of the subtitle, in caps and small caps -- which would normally not be a good idea -- works here, given the size and the vertical nature of the spine.)

Clear typography within a complex composition is hard to pull off, but it works in this Vintage paperback.

Clarity and simplicity tend to stand out and also to please the eye. But which element is most important? Which should be emphasized? You have to think about what will catch the browser's attention -- the title, the name of the author, the publisher's logo, or something else entirely. In the case of the Alfred Bester book, it's Bester's name that will sell the book; he's known as one of the classic writers of science fiction. In the case of a book I designed for the University of Washington Press, "Answering Chief Seattle," by Albert Furtwangler, the author's name was not well known, but the subject -- Chief Seattle -- is famous in the Pacific Northwest, and a title like "Answering Chief Seattle" ought to pique the intended reader's interest. So, in my design, the title is what stands out.

If the title is what will catch readers' interest, emphasize it.