Canada

A book designer in Canada works between two book markets: the domestic trade and the much larger one to the south. The tag gathers studios that set type, build covers and prepare print-ready files for authors and small presses operating from Canadian cities.

Expect work shaped by bilingual publishing, cross-border distribution and the trim sizes both markets accept.

Canadian book design work often begins with a manuscript that has to cross a border to reach its readers, and the studios here build covers and interiors with that in mind. Raven Book Design, Studio Wyse and Vivalogue Publishing each work on titles that will sit on Canadian shelves and on American and British ones, so their typography and jacket choices carry a double duty: legible to a reader in Toronto, credible to a buyer in New York. Where a United States designer may lean on a domestic market's conventions, and a United Kingdom studio on a trade shaped by its own chain buyers, these three share a habit of working in both metric and imperial trim sizes, and of setting bilingual or French-language text without treating it as an afterthought. Vivalogue Publishing, for instance, handles authors who publish in more than one country at once.