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Design Category
Book design, 1999
Design firm
John Hill (Bethany, Connecticut)
Collection
(2000) 50 Books/50 Covers of 1999
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There was the classic and timeless challenge of convincing a nonvisual, traditional publisher that biography illustrations are not limited to a signature of photographs on coated paper collected and inserted mid-book. This is a book of words, pictures are secondary but important. To get maximum quality from halftones and one black on uncoated paper, we worked with the pre-press house and did some tests. Best results came from a modest screen of 150 percent and with extremely “open negatives.” This allowed the printer to run higher than normal ink levels without plugging shadow detail or altering type. Normal ink levels would be quickly absorbed by the uncoated sheet and render flat, gray photographs.