Basically Bass
Editorial design
/
2016–2018
Book layout, typesetting, cover design, prepress
Basically Bass is a bass guitar primer – musical notation, fretboard diagrams, a piano keyboard and instrument illustrations, all sharing a page with running text.
Notation and diagrams had to stay pinned in place while the running text around them changed length, twice, in two languages. Getting that right was mine to solve.
Serbian runs a tenth longer than English; the diagrams don’t move.
BassBookvar came first, in Serbian, in 2016. Basically Bass, the English edition, followed in 2018 from Galileo Music Communication. Same layout, same diagrams, different language – and Serbian runs a tenth longer than English; the diagrams don’t move. Every spread had to hold the longer text without the notation ever shifting off its mark.
Playing Techniques – hand-position photographs, tuner and fretboard diagrams, and instruction text sharing one grid, with the English cover alongside it.
Playing Techniques mixes hand-on-strings photographs with fretboard and tuner diagrams and a paragraph of instruction – three kinds of image plus text, on one spread, at the same relationship every time.
Notation, note values and rests sharing a page with the running text – the same constraint, a different spread.
BassBookvar won the Svetosavski pečat, the book design award of the Niš book fair, on 25 February 2017.
Svetosavski pečat, awarded to BassBookvar for best graphic design