[ATTACH=CONFIG]667[/ATTACH]



A lot of roleplaying game books have these sorts of decorative elements in the margins away from the spines.
Do these serve any purpose besides decoration? What is the technical term for these, and what is their function?

Quote from: Cave Bear;943060[ATTACH=CONFIG]667[/ATTACH]



A lot of roleplaying game books have these sorts of decorative elements in the margins away from the spines.
Do these serve any purpose besides decoration? What is the technical term for these, and what is their function?

Copy Protection - so if someone prints a scanned pdf they use 4x the ink.

Quote from: CRKrueger;943063Copy Protection - so if someone prints a scanned pdf they use 4x the ink.

...That's brilliant!

You know any way to make pages clear in print but really annoying to read on screen? So that you have to get the book in print?

Quote from: Cave Bear;943067...That's brilliant!

You know any way to make pages clear in print but really annoying to read on screen? So that you have to get the book in print?

Hes not joking.

I know for a fact some publishers really do do this stuff as part of "anti piracy" tactics. Though more often its why theres some sort of background pattern under the text. Some dont even care if this interferes with the legitimate owners reading the game in print.

But the main reason for the margin art is to cover that theres less book than is really there. Hence why even in the 90s customers were occasionally rightfully complaining about the freaking huge and sometimes loud margins. Because they were.

Some are there because someone in marketing started promoting the idea that the buyers are so ADD that if there wasnt art in the margins theyd get bored and stop reading... I kid you not.

Well the spine margin is the Inner Margin, or Gutter.
The margin you are showing is the Outer Margin.
Bleed, is the part of the page that gets cut off, so if a picture or image goes all the way to the edge of a page, I believe it is called Full-Bleed.
Art in the margins is called I believe Border Art.

So Outer Margin Full Bleed Border Art?
As to why, yeah Copy Protection certainly can factor in to backgrounds, borders etc, I think other artistic/publishing reasons are to look high quality (art on part of every page makes you think there is "tons of art", increase book length, remove too much white (ie. Negative space, which can affect perceived value), etc.

However, I am not a book publisher.

Quote from: CRKrueger;943108Well the spine margin is the Inner Margin, or Gutter.
The margin you are showing is the Outer Margin.
Bleed, is the part of the page that gets cut off, so if a picture or image goes all the way to the edge of a page, I believe it is called Full-Bleed.
Art in the margins is called I believe Border Art.

So Outer Margin Full Bleed Border Art?
As to why, yeah Copy Protection certainly can factor in to backgrounds, borders etc, I think other artistic/publishing reasons are to look high quality (art on part of every page makes you think there is "tons of art", increase book length, remove too much white (ie. Negative space, which can affect perceived value), etc.

However, I am not a book publisher.

Most of that sounds right to me, though if we're lucky and eat our vegetables, maybe SineNomine will have a spare moment to throw in his considerable 2 cents.

Outer margins let you hold a book up without covering text with your thumbs.

For a while in the 90s and early 2000s the margins got a bit excessive.

I was very surprised and pleased when the 5e books arrived and had no margin art. And no intrusive background either. WOTC seems to use margin decorations very little to none at all from what I've seen so far.

Big border art tends to be the result of a few different motivations. A lot of these things have to do with the really, really weird aesthetic presumptions that have built up around RPG books. By standard book design principles, RPG books are insane. Things that are celebrated as signs of "lush production values" in RPG books would get a blank stare from most pro-grade book designers, because RPG buyers have such a bizarre appetite for non-functional book layout.

The biggest factor is the fact that most RPG books, those of the author included, are put together by people who are not book designers. They have a rudimentary grasp of the tradition at best, and most of them are capable only of doing what has already been done, but preferably with More Ink. A lot of RPG book designers are just really terrible at it by almost any standards, but they're the guy with the copy of InDesign and the nominal ability to churn it out, so hey, they're the guy who does it.

For these designers, the hallmark of good book design is that there is a lot of ink on the page. They are book designers, and design means something on the page, so therefore the best designers put the most crap on the page. They treat white space like it shot their dog. Whenever there is a blank place on the page, their immediate and instinctive reaction is to put something there, even if it's a perfectly serviceable outer margin that works just fine without border art that's a fifth of a page wide.

This is a scan of a Gutenberg bible page that I just made a few minutes ago. The Gutenberg bibles weren't meant to be high-end deluxe works, but they were put together on the principles of scribal best practice at the time. You'll notice the broad margins around the text block, with the width spiralling smaller as you move from bottom->outside->top->inside margin. Whether you're reading with your thumbs at the bottom of the book, as you would with a small volume, or if your thumbs are on the outside of the page, as if reading a large folio, your hands never get in the way of anything you actually want to look at. The inside margin is also fairly spacious so as to ensure that when the page is bound and the book is lying open in front of you, the natural curve of the page doesn't drag the text block into the spine gutter.

These considerations are almost totally nonexistent for PDFs and other screen-read books. Designers with no professional clue and limited opportunity to handle a physical manifestation of their work don't recognize the problems they create with excessive border art. They really see no reason not to slap a bunch of Stuff in those blank areas.

The second reason you see stuff like that is because RPG buyers have been trained to associate baroque books with high production values. The louder, more frantic, and more intrusive the art direction is, the higher quality the book is considered to be. Ideally, the reader wishes to be overwhelmed by the visual presentation of the book- they want lots of stuff to look at, lots of things to force their way into their notice, lots of visual excitement and engagement with the pages. At a first glance, this can be very impressive. Really dense pages can produce quite the oohs and aahs from readers.

The problem comes when you have to try to read these books. The same features that were exciting and engaging at first glance become oppressive and cumbersome. The classic elegance of more conventional design canons were there because they made actually reading a book easier; RPG books burn those canons down and dance on the ashes. Perversely, this is sometimes not much of a problem, because a distressing number of RPG books are purchased, admired, and then never actually read or used by the buyer.

Ultimately, I think a lot of these stresses are due to the conflict between the three purposes of an RPG book: an instructional manual for the uninitiated, a reference work for GMs and players, and an artbook meant to inspire a reader. Harmonizing these three purposes is tremendously difficult. Despite this, you end up with a task that would give Jan Tschichold an eye tic being handed to enthusiastic amateurs.

(N. B. Yeah, I sometimes use border art and tinted backgrounds because that's what the market loves. I just have the basic decency to let PDF readers turn off those layers if they don't like them.)

Quote from: SineNomine;943274The second reason you see stuff like that is because RPG buyers have been trained to associate baroque books with high production values. The louder, more frantic, and more intrusive the art direction is, the higher quality the book is considered to be. Ideally, the reader wishes to be overwhelmed by the visual presentation of the book- they want lots of stuff to look at, lots of things to force their way into their notice, lots of visual excitement and engagement with the pages. At a first glance, this can be very impressive. Really dense pages can produce quite the oohs and aahs from readers.

Reminds me of this idiot, screaming about 'bookcraft': Youtube Link

The epitome of RPG page design is still Classic LBB Traveller.
I didn't need full page, full color paintings of spaceships and aliens... but it still managed to fire up my imagination.

Quote from: Simlasa;943322The epitome of RPG page design is still Classic LBB Traveller.
I didn't need full page, full color paintings of spaceships and aliens... but it still managed to fire up my imagination.

My classic traveller book should be coming in tomorrow.

What you just wrote makes me wonder.  How many games out there would be stand on their own merits without art to help prop it up?

Quote from: RunningLaser;943331What you just wrote makes me wonder.  How many games out there would be stand on their own merits without art to help prop it up?

Back when Traveller first came out I think it was much more of a possibility. We weren't expecting nearly as much from the visuals. I would have been fine with Runequest minus art. Even call of Cthulhu. Chaosium usually had decently sized/spaced text. On the other hand, the FGU stuff I've got doesn't have much art but the text is densely packed and kind of off-putting.

But for the audience nowadays, especially the 'connoisseur' collector crowd, visuals seem a whole heaping lot more important and can sell otherwise blah product.

A number of the little indie PDFs I buy online have little or no art in them though, and that hasn't influenced my opinion of them either way.

Quote from: RunningLaser;943331My classic traveller book should be coming in tomorrow.

What you just wrote makes me wonder.  How many games out there would be stand on their own merits without art to help prop it up?

O and to a lesser degree AD&D was fairly minimalist. So is the original Boot Hill. Personal favourite is Universe from SPI. Its got all of 1 piece of art in it. The BW version of the cover at the starts of the player and GM sections. (Not counting maps for the pack in mini module.)

All of the Amazing Engine books have minimal art in them. One or two pieces. Some of the Mystarra/Gazeteer books have little to no art in them either.

There are also quite a few RPGs that have art in them. But still feel fairly minimalist or non-intrusive. One of my players has Cyberpunk 2020 and I did a quick glance through and it has only about 25 pieces in it and a few for equipment art. It does not feel cluttered.

Thank you SineNomine!!

Do you recommend any websites or books on layout / book design that helped you the most?
 

Quote from: JamesV;943110if we're lucky and eat our vegetables, maybe SineNomine will have a spare moment

I choked down some brussel sprouts and Sine Nomine showed up.

You can all thank me later.

Quote from: Spinachcat;943350I choked down some brussel sprouts and Sine Nomine showed up.

You can all thank me later.

Brussels sprouts are great! I bought some today. Good baked in the oven with some balsamic vinegar on them.