Book design

Main article: Book design

Book design is the art of incorporating the content, style, format, design, and sequence of the various components of a book into a coherent whole.

In the words of Jan Tschichold, book design "though largely forgotten today, methods and rules upon which it is impossible to improve have been developed over centuries. To produce perfect books these rules have to be brought back to life and applied." Richard Hendel describes book design as "an arcane subject" and refers to the need for a context to understand what that means.

Sizes

Main article: Book size

Real-size facsimile of Codex Gigas

The world's largest book

The size of a modern book is based on the printing area of a common flatbed press. The pages of type were arranged and clamped in a frame, so that when printed on a sheet of paper the full size of the press, the pages would be right side up and in order when the sheet was folded, and the folded edges trimmed.

The most common book sizes are:

· Quarto (4to): the sheet of paper is folded twice, forming four leaves (eight pages) approximately 11-13 inches (ca 30 cm) tall

· Octavo (8vo): the most common size for current hardcover books. The sheet is folded three times into eight leaves (16 pages) up to 9 ¾" (ca 23 cm) tall.

· DuoDecimo (12mo): a size between 8vo and 16mo, up to 7 ¾" (ca 18 cm) tall

· Sextodecimo (16mo): the sheet is folded four times, forming 16 leaves (32 pages) up to 6 ¾" (ca 15 cm) tall

Sizes smaller than 16mo are:

· 24mo: up to 5 ¾" (ca 13 cm) tall.

· 32mo: up to 5" (ca 12 cm) tall.

· 48mo: up to 4" (ca 10 cm) tall.

· 64mo: up to 3" (ca 8 cm) tall.

Small books can be called booklets.

Sizes larger than quarto are:

· Folio: up to 15" (ca 38 cm) tall.

· Elephant Folio: up to 23" (ca 58 cm) tall.

· Atlas Folio: up to 25" (ca 63 cm) tall.

· Double Elephant Folio: up to 50" (ca 127 cm) tall.

The largest extant medieval manuscript in the world is Codex Gigas 92 × 50 × 22 cm. The world's largest book made of stone is inKuthodaw Pagoda (Burma).

The longest book title in the world is 670 words long.

Types