Having gotten back out of the various pits I’d fallen back into, I reviewed where I was up to. Looking again, with fresh eyes, I was able to see the file names Mike had given all his InDesign documents. The shorthand title in which the book was referred to by staff and the contributors. The project was known as WOW. No more. No less.
On a visual communication course that embraces simplicity, it seemed we had an answer. And if we could isolate WOW from the title within the cover design we’d have the added bonus of being able to show the pride we have for the contents within.
Thus began a process of typographic exploration: layout, sizing, leading, kerning. Two font families had been selected by Mike for the book’s design: Akkurat and Circular. In order to align with the rest of the design we felt one of those two would ideally needed to be used. When setting the type WORDS OF WISDOM on three lines, the WOW was created but immediately caused other typesetting issues. The W, O and W were not of a consistent width, so when left aligned the O was too short. Centreing the three letters was not an option either as the O then looked misaligned. This led us to an unusual member of the typographic family, the monospaced font.
Monospaced fonts were introduced by font foundries alongside the invention of the typewriter. Specifically designed for typewriters, they are what you may now think of as “typewriter fonts” (eg American Typewriter or Courier) and are essentially slab serifs. But, the key difference with monospaced fonts is that every letter, number or punctuation takes up the same amount of space on the line. This means that any character will always sit directly above the character from the line below. Though typewriters are now little used, the font style is still hugely useful especially when dealing with data, coding and technical language.
In terms of the design for WOW, this resolved our main problems. It meant we could set our words over three lines of type with all the characters being pre-designed to fall in line. We were fortunate that the Akkurat family had a mono version within it, otherwise we would’ve had to look elsewhere, or perhaps even go back to the drawing board as we didn’t want the cover to feel isolated from the contents in terms of design.
With this issue resolved we could experiment with how to isolate the WOW from the rest of the wording. Initially it was tried across the front and back covers, but crits between the staff and friends of the course felt new readers would simply see WOW and perhaps never make the connection. So having the rest of the wording on the inside cover created the reveal and allowed the reader to make the connection.
Initial trials for the WOW concept. Note the hour glass shape the WOW takes on the front cover.