First Chapter Design: Chunk3, The Business Model Canvas

Book Design Meeting Lausanne

Book Design Process

The book design process is quite elaborate and involves a couple of people. It starts with Yves Pigneur and myself regarding the content. Then it involves the Hub for feedback. It involves Tim Clark for the copy-editing. When all this is checked the content goes to Alan Smith who works on the design. Finally, it also involves Patrick van der Pijl who manages all the logistics regarding printing and distribution. This is all part of the design process and is obviously not as linear as outlined in the picture below. It's a bit of a messy and iterative process, but will hopefully lead to a great book! That's what design is all about: designing a better product that also has great aesthetics...

After a very rough prototype of the first test section, I like to print it out and talk about it with people. You notice a lot of details wrong, but its the big questions that matter early in. "Is this really about the person, or the idea they're telling us?". I like to go through and markup the comments and big ideas I get from seeing the thing in print. I write in the main purpose of each page, and collect references that might help communicate that idea. I also like to take some time and quickly test ideas for section opening spreads and try to connect a thread throughout the few.

Alan Smith explains some of the first rough book cover designs that he sketched out. The ideas are based on the working title "Business Model Generation". Please share your comments & ideas in this forum discussion.