A recent trip to the Lan Su Chinese Garden in Portland, Oregon, inspired this conceptual project: the book I hoped to find in the otherwise well-stocked gift shop.
Aside from an overdeveloped need to view the designed world through a critical eye, there are not many drawbacks to being a book designer. However, one gotcha is that I tend to buy books I don’t need.
And if I cannot find the book I want, I may just create it myself.
A Look Inside
Designing the idea
Although A Reason to Linger is a conceptual project, exploring how the principles of classical Chinese gardens can transform small, everyday yards into places people want to inhabit aligns closely with my ongoing design studies. As such, I approached it as any real publishing project—developing its audience, authors, editorial structure, and visual language before designing the pages.
Plus, it was great fun art directing the sample content. For example, the accent orange throughout is taken from the Lan Su Garden’s branding, and the illustrated elements mirror the garden’s own signage.
Designing for the reader
The book moves from why, to what, to how: first establishing the philosophy, then introducing individual design techniques, and finally showing how they work together.
I combined photography and watercolor illustration, imagining diagrams, sidebars, and typography working together to not only make the book attractive, but to make its ideas easier to understand and use.
The physical design follows the same principles as the gardens themselves. The compact 5 × 7 hardcover uses framing, sequence, restraint, negative space, and moments of visual discovery to control pace and invite attention.
