Please critique my page design

[MarieMeyer505]

pages for a print book, goal = education about color theory. Audience = a student at an art/design school, or a professional interested in color. This is a self-directed project, I plan to self-publish.

The book is a new introduction to the Munsell Color System. There are 15 chapters in the style of the attached screenshots , each one covers a “big idea”. The layout that you see here - text on the left, images on the right - is followed throughout, with the text always matching up with the facing images.

Have I been over-generous with the type size and white space?

[Just-B]

@MarieMeyer505

Have I been over-generous with the type size and white space?

No, at first glance, I don’t think so. Then again, I don’t know the physical dimensions of the book.

When presenting new information to students in which one concept builds upon another, it’s good to break things up into chunks with a liberal use of white space.

The chunks give people the impression they’re learning things a step at a time and not drinking from a firehouse of non-stop information. The white space gives everything a more relaxed, friendly, open and uncluttered feeling, which, once again, keeps information overload anxiety to a minimum. This helps improve both understanding and retention.

I like what you’ve done. It’s clean, straight-forward and attractive. I especially like how you’ve contrasted the text on the left-hand pages with the infographics and examples on the opposite side of the spread. It’s especially nice given that students studying a book like yours might lean toward visual learners who benefit from seeing visual reinforcements of what they’ve read.

If it were me, I’d be inclined to scrap the justified column of type and use ragged right with no hyphenation, but that’s just me. And speaking of hyphens, I noticed two or three places in the copy where you used them in places where an em dash should be used instead.

[MarieMeyer505]

Thanks very much! Page size 7.375" x 9.125".

[smacdesign]

For a book about color it’s not very colorful… nor very creative. Sorry. You’re trying to reach a highly creative group of readers… the font styles are traditional and it looks to be you have 5 different ones , the backgrounds are varying shades of grey rectangles , and the text blocks are huge … you need to push yourself more. Get some inspiration from other design authors.