Horizontal text on book spine

Michael Hernan
19 Jan 2010 — 1:21pm

/deleted comment

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eliason
19 Jan 2010 — 1:17pm

Christopher Burke's Active Literature: Jan Tschichold and New Typography

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nina
19 Jan 2010 — 1:29pm

I'll show mine too, since I'm asking. This is a Korean book (which I can't read, but find inspiring and fascinating):

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riccard0
19 Jan 2010 — 3:27pm

Not the best picture (but a remarkable novel):
http://s158562511.onlinehome.us/000204.jpg

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oprion
22 Jan 2010 — 11:34am

Then there's this.

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nina
22 Jan 2010 — 1:18pm

Hmm…
So how do people feel about the idea of flush-left horizontal text on the spine of, say, a novel?

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riccard0
22 Jan 2010 — 3:01pm

Well, if you have enough space, why not?
That said, flush left leans towards modern/design-y, so maybe it depends on the novel too.

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nina
23 Jan 2010 — 3:39am

"flush left leans towards modern/design-y"

Sure seems like it.

I guess I'm asking a non-question here… I was just wondering because this seems so rare that I was suspecting some underlying big issue. Guess not. :-)

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Bendy
23 Jan 2010 — 4:54am

I've never seen it done before so I'll be interested to see what you come up with. I'm sure you'll make it look great.

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riccard0
23 Jan 2010 — 10:17am

this seems so rare that I was suspecting some underlying big issue

Thinking about it, other than the inability to scream DAN BROWN or similia using all available space (mitigated by the better readability of horizontal text), the only other issue I can think of is with the type of binding. A used paperback book, one that was actually read, tend to develop vertical cracks along the spine. Vertical text would appear somewhat stenciled, but still legible until a certain point. The risk with horizontal text would be the cracks deleting single letters.

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boardman
23 Jan 2010 — 8:16pm

Interesting. I've been thinking about this as well of late. It seems that we've become quite used to tilting our heads (or our brains) to be able to read vertical text on a spine, especially when it reads from top to bottom (in North America). But on websites, magazines, or other collateral, it's not recommended nor is there a convention established.

Does anyone know when vertically displayed text became a standard in book publishing or is it just a matter of longer titles and shorter books requiring it?

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riccard0
24 Jan 2010 — 1:19am

Does anyone know when vertically displayed text became a standard in book publishing or is it just a matter of longer titles and shorter books requiring it?

This question came out before (http://www.typophile.com/node/65375), still no definitive answer.

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nina
12 May 2010 — 4:46pm

Got lucky with a short-worded title. So far nobody has complained – I'm curious to see if anybody will :-). It is rather uncommon, but I tend to think that's a good thing, in terms of making it stand out.