Table of Links

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

5. Conclusion

We have presented a novel approach to computationally design books. The presented system implements a generative design process which takes advantage of the scripting capabilities of Adobe InDesign to procedurally typeset books from content provided by the user. We have shown the ability of the system to (i) create book designs that consistently comply with a series of typographic rules, styles and principles identified in the literature; (ii) produce visually diversified books from the same input content; and (iii) produce visually coherent books with different contents.

The work presented in the paper may challenge the typical roles of both the tool and the designer. First, by automatically creating and suggesting design alternatives, the tool ends up playing a more active role in the design process. Then, by modifying and developing custom tools, the designer is no longer a mere tool user and becomes the author of tools tailored to specific needs. We believe this shift can be fruitful since it enables the exploration and discovery of new technical and creative possibilities.

This work can hopefully provide directions to further research on generative processes for supporting design exploration and finding unique designs. In the particular case of typography, generative approaches such as the one presented in the paper can be useful and reveal great potential, especially in the current print-on-demand market and digital publishing, where each publication may be unique.

Our future work will move in the direction of employing Artificial Intelligence techniques, such as Evolutionary Computation and Machine Learning, to enable a deeper exploration of the vast space of book designs that can be achieved with the system and also to automatically suggest settings to designers according to their needs or goals.