Designing a book is about more than placing images on a page or choosing a typeface. Every decision shapes how a reader moves through the work, how the story unfolds, and how the book feels in their hands.

In a recent Create with Me workshop, Blurb Brand Ambassador Zoë Sadokierski shared how she approaches book design through her work as a designer, writer, and educator. Sadokierski is an associate professor of visual communication at the UTS School of Design and the founder of Page Screen Books, an independent publisher focused on artists’ books and visual essays. Her work explores how design can help audiences engage with complex scientific and cultural ideas.

Throughout the session, Sadokierski spoke about the principles that guide her design process. Rather than focusing on step-by-step software instructions, she emphasized intentional decision-making. Format, structure, and the relationships between elements all play a role in how meaning is created on the page.

Below, we’ve gathered several of the book design principles Sadokierski discussed during the live workshop. Read the article, or watch the replay of the event.

Start with audience and intent

For Zoë Sadokierski, the earliest design decisions are not visual ones. They begin with audience, context, and purpose. “When you’re making a book, you’re making an object that’s going to live somewhere,” she says. 

Before thinking about layout, she considers who the book is for and how it will be encountered. Will it be picked up casually or read with focus? Is it meant to be shared widely or experienced in a specific setting? These questions help define what kind of object the book needs to become.

Approaching design this way keeps decisions grounded in use rather than personal preference. A book meant to be handled often may call for a lighter format. A project created for exhibition may require different pacing or scale. In each case, the audience shapes the design from the beginning.

Starting with intent also helps guide content decisions as the project develops. Once the reader is clearly defined, choices around sequencing, density, and emphasis become easier to navigate.

Rather than asking how a book should look, ask yourself how it should be experienced. That clarity carries through every design decision that follows.

Design for the way books are read

Sadokierski approaches book design through the body as much as the eye. She talks about reading as a physical act, shaped by how a book is held, opened, and moved through over time.

One of the first issues she returns to is friction. “If I’m trying to read a book and my thumbs keep going over where the content is and I have to keep moving my thumbs, I find it deeply annoying,” she says. 

For Sadokierski, that moment signals a design failure. The problem is not visual style, but placement. Content that sits too close to the edge or too near the gutter asks the reader to work harder than they should.

She also thinks in terms of duration. Books are rarely consumed all at once. They are read across time, often in long stretches. Dense layouts, strangely formatted images, cramped margins, or inconsistent pacing make sustained reading more difficult.

Lastly, rather than treating each page as an individual canvas, Sadokierski considers how spreads work together. The relationship between facing pages affects flow, emphasis, and rest. When layouts shift too dramatically from spread to spread, the reader must constantly reorient, breaking immersion.

These decisions are subtle, but cumulative. Small interruptions compound over dozens of pages. When comfort is prioritized, the reader can remain focused on the work instead of the layout.

As you design your book, pay attention to where friction appears. Give content room to breathe. Think in spreads, not single pages. If your reader can move through the book without adjusting their hands or their attention, your design is doing its job.

Build structure before you place content

Sadokierski begins by building the structure her pages will live inside. Before adding images or text, she defines a clear framework that can support the entire book.

The first step is setting margins. Margins establish where content can sit and how much space the page needs to feel comfortable. They also account for binding and how the book will be held, especially near the gutter.

From there, she creates layout guides that divide the page evenly into a nine-by-nine grid. This grid is not something the reader ever sees. It functions as a measuring system that helps maintain proportion and alignment throughout the book.

The grid allows elements to be grouped into thirds, halves, or larger spans. Images can stretch across multiple columns. Text can align consistently from spread to spread. Because the divisions remain the same, layouts can vary without losing cohesion.

Working this way prevents design decisions from becoming reactive. Instead of solving each page independently, the structure provides a shared logic that carries across the entire project. When alignment stays stable, pages relate to one another naturally. The layout feels intentional, even as content changes.

As you design your book, set up the structure first. Define margins before placing content. Use guides to establish proportion. When the framework is clear, every layout decision becomes easier and more deliberate.

Add content to test relationships

Once the structure is in place, Sadokierski begins adding content. Not to finalize pages, but to test how elements relate to one another.

At this stage, precision is not the goal. She uses content to understand scale, density, and pacing. Rough images and unfinished text are enough to reveal whether the structure can support the material.

Placing content early helps surface problems that are difficult to see in theory. A layout that feels balanced without content may become crowded once images and text are introduced. Spreads that seem generous on their own can quickly feel tight when multiple elements compete for attention.

Rather than refining details too soon, Sadokierski focuses on relationships. How much space does an image need to feel intentional? How does text sit beside it? Where does the eye go first when the page opens?

Working this way keeps design flexible. Early layouts are exploratory, not precious. By resisting the urge to perfect pages too early, she leaves room to adjust structure before small decisions become difficult to undo.

This phase is also diagnostic. As content moves into the grid, patterns begin to emerge. Some pages ask for more breathing room. Others reveal opportunities for emphasis or pause. The layout becomes a way to learn what the book needs.

As you add content to your own book, think of this stage as testing, not finishing. Use placement to understand relationships and pacing. Save refinement for later, once the structure has proven it can support the work.

Make typography about reading, not style

Sadokierski approaches typography as a system built to support reading over time. Her decisions focus less on expression and more on clarity, endurance, and cohesion across an entire book.

Choose typefaces designed for long-form reading

In the live design, Sadokierski selects Freight for Dan Milnor’s book because it is built for sustained reading. The writing itself is informal and observational, so the typeface provides structure and balance rather than visual personality.

She looks for typefaces that remain calm across many pages and do not draw attention to themselves. Decorative or novelty fonts may feel appealing at first glance, but they often become tiring in longer formats.

Look for depth within a type family

When evaluating a typeface, Sadokierski also prioritizes the size and quality of the family. She says that a well-designed family includes multiple weights, roman and italic styles, and related variations that allow hierarchy to be created without introducing additional fonts. This flexibility becomes essential when working with body text, headings, captions, and emphasis throughout a book.

Type families with limited options can quickly restrict design choices as a project grows.

Limit how many fonts you use

Sadokierski is deliberate about restraint. In her experience, more typefaces rarely improve clarity.

Across her practice, she almost never uses more than two typefaces in a single project. Often, one family is enough. At most, she will pair a serif and a sans serif when the design calls for a clear functional distinction.

Limiting the number of fonts helps maintain cohesion and keeps attention on the content rather than the styling.

Test font pairings structurally, not stylistically

If you are using multiple fonts, Sadokierski suggests looking at their structure.

One of her practical tests is to compare the lowercase “o” from each typeface side by side. If the shapes feel compatible, the fonts are more likely to work together across the book. If they clash at that basic level, the difference will repeat throughout the layout.

This approach shifts typography decisions from intuition to observation.

Consider accessibility as part of design

One of the biggest things to keep in mind is that typography shapes who can read a book comfortably.

Sadokierski references the work of her former student, Olivia King, who designed a typeface called Inclusive Sans. Originally created with accessibility and readability in mind, the open-source font has since been expanded and commissioned by Penguin Books for use as a custom brand typeface, reflecting their commitment to clear and inclusive design.

For Sadokierski, this example reinforces a broader principle. Typography is never neutral. Design choices determine who is included in the reading experience.

Create rhythm across pages

After the structure, content, and type are established, Sadokierski shifts her focus to how pages behave in sequence.

She emphasizes that readers learn a layout quickly. Even without realizing it, the eye begins to remember where elements tend to appear. When that placement remains consistent, the reader can move through the book with less effort.

This visual memory creates a sense of orientation. The reader knows where to look for text, images, or captions without consciously searching for them. Over time, that familiarity builds comfort and trust.

Consistency also creates contrast. When placement stays stable, small changes become more noticeable. A full-bleed image, a pause in text, or a shift in scale carries more impact because it breaks an established pattern.

Sadokierski evaluates rhythm by looking at pages together, not individually. She flips through spreads in sequence to see how the book moves, watching for moments where alignment drifts or placement becomes unpredictable.

Designing this way shifts attention from perfecting a single page to shaping the experience across many pages. Rhythm is not created by variation alone. It emerges from repetition first, then change.

As you design your book, look at pages in motion. Notice where your eye expects content to appear. Use repetition to establish familiarity, then introduce variation deliberately so it reads as emphasis rather than noise.

Experimentation, test books, and learning through making

Book design does not move in a straight line from idea to finished object. It unfolds through testing, revision, and physical trial.

Rather than waiting until everything feels resolved, Sadokierski prints work early and often. Test books become a way to think, not just a step toward production.

Seeing pages in their final scale reveals things that are impossible to judge on screen. Type that feels balanced digitally may appear dense in print. Margins that look generous on a monitor can feel tight in the hand. Page turns behave differently once paper and binding are involved.

Sadokierski often prints pages, trims them to size, and places them inside another book with the same dimensions. Experiencing the work in context exposes pacing issues, tonal shifts, and typographic problems long before a final version is created.

This kind of testing lowers the stakes. Early versions are not meant to be perfect. They exist to surface questions, not answers.

Iteration becomes part of the creative rhythm. A project may move through multiple versions, each clarifying structure, emphasis, or flow. Learning happens through making rather than speculation.

This approach reframes what it means to finish a book. Small runs and test editions allow ideas to evolve organically. So instead of treating the first version of your book as the final one, try treating each as a step toward deeper understanding. The book reveals what it needs as you build it.

Keep designing, and keep testing

Book design rarely reveals itself all at once. It emerges through structure, trial, adjustment, and attention to how the work behaves over time.

Sadokierski’s approach is a reminder that good design is not about perfecting individual pages. It’s about shaping an experience that unfolds spread by spread. From early decisions about audience and intent to the finer points of typography and rhythm, each choice builds toward a book that feels considered, readable, and grounded.

If you want to see these principles applied live, watch the full Create with Me session to follow Sadokierski’s process as she designs directly in Adobe InDesign. Seeing decisions made in real time offers insight that’s difficult to capture in static examples alone.

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Blurb helps creators turn ideas into beautifully printed books, whether you’re working in BookWright by Blurb, uploading a PDF, or designing fully custom layouts in InDesign. Creating a free Blurb account gives you access to templates, printing options, and tools designed to support your process from first draft to finished book.