A Study On Applications Of The Negative Space In Book Design

Traditionally book designers paid a great deal of emphasis on expressionsby graphic objects and text characters. Little attention has been given to areasbeyond the text, the area that is called a “negative space”or the background.The usefulness of the negative space in book design has been ignored and thearea is even considered meaningless, non-sense or a waste of page space.Based on intensive theoretical research and extensive case studies, thisMaster’s degree thesis has thoroughly examined the negative spaceapplications in book designs by studying their artistic features and expressions.Functions of negative space in book design have been elaborated anddiscussed. Effectiveness of using negative as a design element have beendemonstrated. The work concludes that negative space plays very importantroles beyond its apparent emptiness or conceptual nothing. Negative spaceprovides substantial functionalities in altering the ways and styles ofinformation are interacted. It has many dominant and subtle effects in alteringinformation pace, information delivery and emotion exchange. It can do morein enhancing the appeals of a design than the positive space such as graphicsand text. Negative space appears in many different ways such as a blank area, a tone, or text background. Meticulously pairing with the positive and thenegative spaces, a book designer can achieve variety of effects and styles.The work finds that designing a book’s layout is actually a process withinwhich a designer manipulates the relevance and relationship between what isthe factual and what is the imaginary. Visual perception can be affected bycontradictions and harmony among factual and imaginative elements.Therefore great book designs can be obtained by directing the interactionsamong all the elements to cause contradiction and to reach harmony.