This book was a real treat to lay out, because it included such a wide variety of prose styles. Nearly every chapter required a different sort of presentation, all coming together like patchwork.

The Book Cover

The cover is meant to reflect the convergence aspect of the book. The radial pattern is made up of many smaller symbols that have meaning in the story.

The title page

The title page.

The Title Page

Section openers.

The Title Page

Chapter openers and strikethrough text.

p 268

One of the chapters in the book required Japanese text.

p 293

And another used nested blockquotes for style.

pp 342-343

Footnotes exist in many chapters, and some are very structured and complex.

pp 388-389

A late chapter is formatted like a log or journal, and I made a number of adjustments to reflect that style.

p 407

For the same chapter, we had a need for inline geometric shapes, so I created a custom symbol font for that purpose.

p 416

And it included a few tables, and other elements that are more common for non-fiction than fiction.

p 484-485

Toward the end of the book, a number of shorter pieces are assembled, and they've got a variety of formatting styles as well. This is an extended dialogue.

p 494-495

And here we've got a transition into something like a script format.

p 502-503 or 510-511

This is a text-only interpretation of the pages of a comic book. It also includes nested footnotes.

p 549

More heavy use of strike-through.

I really enjoyed finding creative and mostly semantic ways to create all of these different styles, while trying to make design decisions that can work for ebook as well wherever possible:

p 549 p 549

What impressed me the most about Phillip was his commitment to the project. Not only did he read the novel—which already puts him in a rare class of designer—but he rose to the myriad difficulties of the project’s design—each chapter more challenging than the last–with the care, personal investment and attention to detail as if the book were his own.

A.V. Bach, Eisenstein’s Monster 

Eisenstein’s Monster is available on Amazon in print and ebook.