Book design is fun.
This is an in-house project, but the writing inside this book was a commissioned column I wrote. When it was the start of 2024, and I had a blank slate to start a fresh series, I decided to approach it anew. Which meant, designing it.
That starts exactly as with any other design gig.
I asked myself what I would any other client: Who is it for? What’s the message? What will be the tone, the way you put it together, and how will you express your main ideas?
Things I might have also done, if I had been really deep and thorough: What would a wildly successful outcome look like, for you?
Reflecting, I think, personally, my answer for my project was: I wanted to connect. With some of the people back in the place where this magazine is distributed, and share the general day-to-day every encounters and style of living I was experiencing in Southeast Asia. Sharing. The exact goal of Kismuth Books. Visually how I could I do that, when it came time to present everything in an eBook form?
Book design: so much more than ‘make it pretty’
I know. I am esoteric a lot on these blogs, and in real life, too, when I meet people and tell them to come to my events like ‘N‘, or ‘The Cojournal’, or, goodness, ‘Rooftop Philosophy in Phnom Penh.’ I realize this has a (very) small audience, and it might be very well why I only invite people to those now who have, well, already been to them, before. So we don’t have to get all lost in the abstract.
OBJECTIVES. So, what about Kismuth & The Way II? The second time around, as in, not the first series, which I’d already published, Kismuth & The Way. How about round two, then? What was going to be the point of it, this time?
With some early sketching and outlining, I could design it. The 12-issue series of monthly pieces that, together, narrates a particular idea. A point of view: hyperlocal, introspective. The column, Kismuth & The Way, which I’ve now been sharing (see link below) as an eBook in PDF form through my writing site, Kismuth.com, explores pockets of quiet in the context of a very loud city. The city is the one that I am writing from, right now, and have been for the duration of this year: Phnom Penh.
FRAMING. Reflecting, I suppose it’s probably not the norm include this, in a design portfolio. But the power of design is in the heavy lifting work of thinking it out, I feel. Thinking out what you want a column to be, and how you want to shape it, is, very much, design.
So here it is. I have to give credit to the editor of the magazine whom I’ve interviewed in this podcast (just below), for also being a big part of the work to design the arc of this story. In this short conversation, we talk about the energy it takes to keep a magazine project like his going, through the years…
It was through helpful back-and-forth comments that are so crucial for a writer to gain clarity, get perspective, and constructive feedback.
That is as much a part of the design process as any final output, I feel, if not the bulk of it. The design process is a tool for great dialogue to generate something that, I feel, speaks for itself. At least, that’s my opinion. But, I approached my monthly column this year in the very same way I would a client gig. As a piece of communication.
Editorial design: giving shape to a concept through words, composition, narrative
This is Kismuth & The Way, a set of essays that I shared in a monthly column for a US magazine. Book design is the occasional project for me, but mostly, for in-house books that I know the aim of, because they’re my own. If you’re curious about this collection of essays, I’ve got them in one PDF. Check it out. Kismuth & The Way.
It’s at: https://kismuth.com/new-book-kismuth-the-way/
