Towards the Automation of Book Typesetting: Abstract and Introduction

Table of Links

• Abstract and 1. Introduction
• Computational Approaches in Editorial Design
• System
• Experimentation and Discussion
• Conclusion
• Acknowledgments and References

Abstract

This paper proposes a generative approach for the automatic typesetting of books in desktop publishing. The presented system consists in a computer script that operates inside a widely used design software tool and implements a generative process based on several typographic rules, styles and principles which have been identified in the literature. The performance of the proposed system is tested through an experiment which included the evaluation of its outputs with people. The results reveal the ability of the system to consistently create varied book designs from the same input content as well as visually coherent book designs with different contents while complying with fundamental typographic principles.

Keywords

Design tools; Data-driven Design; Generative Design; Graphic design; Typography.

1. Introduction

Typography is the art of giving our language a visual form. Thus, it is through typography that we materialise and store our knowledge and information [1]. Since the publication of the first typographic book, in the mid-fifteenth century, society has been looking for the most appropriate way to convey a message typographically. In the field of editorial design, this effort has focused on the search for the best principles for designing typographic compositions, such as books [2].

Advances in digital technologies have been changing the work process of graphic designers. The emergence of computational approaches in the design domain enabled designers to explore new perspectives, new conceptual and visual possibilities, and achieve new types of solutions. Furthermore, the emergence of computational approaches comes with a paradigm shift in the role of the designer, who begins to create processes that enable the creation of designs, instead of designing the final solution. In other words, the design concept is translated into a computer program that systematically explores various design possibilities from the original concept. That said, in the particular case of layout design, we consider that the potential of computational approaches is not yet being fully explored.

In this work, we explore a computational generative approach for the automatic design of book layouts. The result is a computer system, which operates inside the Adobe InDesign environment, that automatically generates book designs from input content. Figure 1 shows different books created with the presented system. It starts by receiving the input content, namely text and images. Before generating compositions for the input content, the designer can specify restrictions on some of the visual characteristics of the output compositions, e.g. format, size, grid and font. Then, the system automatically typesets the content based on a set of typography rules and principles found in fundamental literature in the field. In the end, the system presents the generated composition to the user as an editable Adobe InDesign document.

Overall, the system is capable of creating layout compositions that comply with specific fundamental typographic principles while matching the graphic preferences of the user. In addition, experiments conducted with the system demonstrate its ability to autonomously generate varied compositions with the same input content and also generate visually coherent compositions for different input contents. In addition, it creates functional layout designs in an almost unpredictable manner. This reveals the great potential of this approach to layout design, both in generating outputs that the designer uses as final solutions and in using the outputs as starting points for further explorations. This work is aligned with the experiments previously developed by Ferreira et al. [3]

The remaining of the article is organised as follows: Section 2 overviews related works; Section 3 describes the system, namely the interaction process, the engine that runs the system, as well as its inputs and outputs; Section 4 presents an experiment conducted to validate the designs created with the system and discusses the results obtained; Lastly, Section 5 summarises the main contributions of this work and identifies future work.