Publishing Design | Exercises

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22.4.2026 -_____(Week 1 - Week__)
Caitlin Ong Lynn Dee / 0343801 / Bachelor of Design (Hons) in Creative Media
Publishing Design
Exercises

LECTURE

Publishing Design_1_Formats

The Book

Regarded as one of the oldest publishing formants in history and one of the most influential formants. Books are used to document and transmit, ideas knowledge, records, history, etc. When it comes to designing a book, it requires you to have a comprehensive understanding of typography, a good sense of space, an eye for details, and a good understanding of a publishing software.


Historical Formats

Other than books, countries around the world have adopted different types of publishing formants throughout the ages. And their unique maybe the possible reason for their decline.

Fig 1.1 World map indicating different civilizations

Mesopotamian Civilization: Iran & Iraq

According to Denise Schmandt-Besserat (1995) in her essay on the token system “Record Keeping Before Writing” the first writing system developed from a counting technology. Tokens ranging from simple to complex slowly evolved into bullae and eventually pictographic writing on clay tablets.

Fig 1.2 Mesopotamian Clay Tokens

Fig 1.3 Mesopotamian Clay Tablets


|Ancient Egyptian Civilization: Egypt

In ancients Egypt, scribes are the only people that could read and write Hieroglyphics where else most of the population are illiterate. Scribes primarily wrote on a special type of paper called papyrus, which is made from a pith of a papyrus plant. Additional, scribes would also write on the tomb wall.

Fig 1.4 Papyrus Making

Fig 1.5 Papyrus written in Hieroglyphics

Fig 1.6 Papyrus written in Hieratic, the Egyptian cursive form 

Indus Valley Civilization: India, Pakistan & Afghanistan

Although there is not much search about record keeping in the Indus Valley Civilization, but it is a fact that their writing system is very complex. One of their earlier known writing systems is called Cuneiforn. It is where documents are written on soft clay tablets by using sharp pointed tools. They wrote records about their government, religion, and trade.

Fig 1.7 Clay Tablets written in Cuneiforn

Fig 1.8 Indus Valley Civilization Relief Seals

Fig 1.9 Palm Leaf Manuscript

Fig 1.10 Old Stylus used to scribe on the Palm-Leaves

Fig 1.11 Palm Leaf Format with inscription in Devanagari

Fig 1.12 Palm Leaf Manuscript Library located in one of the Thanjavur Temples


Han Chinese Civilization: China

During the early period, Chinese characters are written in vertical columns. To accommodate this writing structure, people use a thin strip bamboo as a single column. If people want to create a longer document, two lines of thread link each bamboo strip to its neighbors.



The First Printed Book: Diamond Sutra 868 CE
The earliest known printed book is called the “Diamond Sutra”, it was produced in China during the end of the Tang dynasty. Discovered in a cave at Dunhuang in 1899. The document is made from paper in a scroll format. Paper was invented in 179-41 BCE.



Chinese Publishing: 10th – 11th century
Printing from wood block is hard work. All Confusion classics are published for the use Scholar officials. There are around 5000 scrolls of Buddhist and Daoists works since the time of Sima Qian. It is a laborious investment of labour with the carving of characters in the reverse side of wood block, but it stays till the introduction of movable type. This innovation was achieved by the Koreans.



European Civilization: Europe

Historical formats of books were first seen in the invention of the Parchment. This is first invented in Turkey and then later spread to Europe. Parchment is made from animal hide thus thick and heavy. Later the Europeans are the ones who started making parchment books.

Usage of paper travelled from China to Persia – Arab via the Ottoman empire to Europe. Later in the 1860s wood pulp is used as an ingredient to make paper and it was first used in the Boston Weekly Journal.

Books originated from starting with wooden blocks sewn together and then usage of parchment and then later the usage of paper. The paper was sewn, bound and glued together.






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