Designing Book Interior Layouts
Markdown--- name: designing-book-interior-layouts description: Guides the complete book interior design pipeline from typography exploration to final HTML/CSS/JS prototypes and technical specification documents. Use when designing print book layouts, selecting Google Fonts pairings for book covers/interiors, creating page layout prototypes with precise dimensions (e.g., 14.8x21cm), or producing typography spec sheets with extractable SVG decorations. --- # Designing Book Interior Layouts
Given a book's cover description, genre, and target audience, execute this pipeline:
Input: Cover shows minimalist ink-brush mountains, genre = literary fiction/memoir,
constraint = no ornamental ❦, no Syne font
Output:
1. 5 Google Fonts pairings (title/author/body) with rationale
2. Simulated 5-agent design council debate → 1 winning pairing
3. Single HTML/CSS/JS file: 4-page spread prototype at 14.8x21cm
4. Single HTML/CSS/JS file: typography spec sheet + copyable SVG decorations (#000/#fff variants)
Never skip phases. Never ask the user to confirm between phases unless they explicitly request checkpoints — run the full pipeline in one response by default.
Progress checklist to include mentally (and in output when the task is large):
- Phase 1: Generate 5 font pairings
- Phase 2: Run council debate, select 1 winner
- Phase 3: Build 4-page HTML/CSS/JS prototype
- Phase 4: Build spec documentation + SVG extraction doc
Phase 1 — Typography Exploration
For each of 5 pairings, specify:
- Title font: must look strong in both UPPERCASE and Title Case. Prefer distinctive serif/display fonts (e.g., Fraunces, Newsreader, Spectral, Cormorant, Bricolage Grotesque, Litera-style faces) — avoid generic defaults (Playfair Display, Montserrat, Lora, Merriweather, Roboto) unless genuinely the best fit, and avoid any font in the user's negative-criteria list.
- Author font: harmonizes with title (same superfamily, or complementary contrast — e.g., geometric sans against humanist serif).
- Body font: MUST have full family (Regular, Italic, Bold, Bold Italic) available on Google Fonts — verify this mentally; reject fonts with incomplete families (many display fonts only have 1-2 weights).
- Provide a short visual mockup in text form, e.g.:
TITLE: THE QUIET ARCHIVE (Fraunces, 700, uppercase, tracking +2%) Author: by Rania Wibowo (Fraunces Italic, 400) Body: "Morning light fell across..." (Newsreader, 400, 11pt/16pt leading) - Justify each pairing against the cover mood, genre conventions, and audience (e.g., YA vs. literary vs. technical nonfiction expect different voice).
Phase 2 — Design Council Debate
Simulate 5 distinct agents with genuinely different priorities, not agreement theater:
- Art Director — overall mood/brand coherence with cover
- Lead Typographer — kerning, x-height, optical sizing, pairing contrast quality
- Editorial Designer — genre convention fit, reader expectation
- Accessibility Specialist — legibility at body size, line-length, contrast, dyslexia-friendliness
- Production Engineer — font licensing/embedding reliability, print rendering at small sizes, file weight
Structure as short back-and-forth exchanges (2-4 lines each agent, referencing specific pairings by number), surface at least one real disagreement, then converge on a single winning combination with a one-paragraph joint rationale. State explicitly which of the 5 pairings won.
Phase 3 — 4-Page Prototype
Build ONE self-contained HTML file (inline <style> and <script>) with:
- Two page-spreads (pages 1-2, then 3-4), each spread = two
.pagedivs side by side (even on left, odd on right, or per print convention — verify odd pages fall on the right). .page { width: 148mm; height: 210mm; }, centered on screen,box-shadowfor lift-off-background effect, white background, black text.margin: 20mmimplemented as inner padding or a content-box inset — do not confuse CSSmargin(page gap) with the book's print margin (use padding for the safe text area).- Body text: use the winning body font, real prose sample (write plausible sample text matching the genre — don't use lorem ipsum), first paragraph of each chapter/section with a drop cap, subsequent paragraphs with first-line indent and no space-between (standard trade book convention).
- Chapter opening page: title font for chapter heading, generous top whitespace, one restrained decorative element that echoes the cover motif (e.g., a thin rule, a small line-art glyph) — never the ❦ character or any explicitly forbidden element.
- Page numbers ("folios"): styled with a small ornamental treatment (e.g., flanked by thin rules or a tiny custom SVG glyph), positioned per convention (outer bottom corner or centered footer).
- Include
@media printrules sized to the physical page for realistic printing/PDF export. - Keep JS minimal — only if needed for a live font-size/leading toggle demo; not required.
Phase 4 — Spec Documentation + SVG Extraction
Second self-contained HTML file containing:
- Embedded/scaled-down replica of the 4-page layout (read-only reference, can reuse Phase 3 markup at reduced scale).
- A typography table per text role (Chapter Title, Author Line, Body Text, Drop Cap, Folio, Running Head if any) listing: Font Family, Weight/Style, Font Size (pt and px), Line Height, Letter Spacing, Color.
- A dropdown/select (native
<select>or accordion) that switches between every decorative SVG element used in the design. For each decoration, show it twice — once withfill="#000000"and once withfill="#ffffff"on a contrasting swatch background — inside a<pre>or<textarea readonly>block containing the raw<svg>...</svg>markup, plus a "copy to clipboard" button (simplenavigator.clipboard.writeText). - All SVGs must be original simple line-art (geometric rules, small botanical/architectural motifs matching the cover) — never the ❦ glyph or anything on the negative-criteria list.
- Always write real, genre-appropriate sample text — a fantasy novel and a business memoir should read differently in the mockups.
- Verify font family completeness before recommending it as body text; a title/display font missing italic or bold should never be proposed as body text.
- Respect every negative constraint literally and confirm in your own output that you avoided it (e.g., "No ❦ used; decorations are custom line-art per constraint").
- Odd pages traditionally recto (right-hand); verify page order in the spread markup matches real book pagination.
- Keep the monochrome palette pure black/white/grayscale — no tinted grays unless requested, no color accents.
- Make both HTML deliverables single-file, dependency-free except Google Fonts
<link>imports — must open directly in a browser with no build step.
- Don't confuse CSS page
margin(gap between page boxes on screen) with the book's 20mm print margin (must be internal padding/safe area). - Don't use lorem ipsum or placeholder text — always write contextual sample prose.
- Don't pick a body font with only 1-2 weights available — check for full family (regular/bold/italic/bold-italic).
- Don't let the council phase be a rubber-stamp — include at least one genuine point of disagreement before convergence.
- Don't insert the ❦ symbol or any other explicitly forbidden element, even as a "placeholder."
- Don't skip the print-safe
@media printblock — the deliverable is meant for physical book production, not just screen viewing. - Don't output multiple files when a single self-contained HTML file was requested — inline all CSS/JS.