Book design principles

What are the traditional book design principles?

In order to follow the expectations of Penguin, my book needs to consider involving the following:

• Barcode
• Logo
• Spine
• Blurb
• Quote?
• Name of author and name of book 

Including these aspects will obviously provide a familiarity with readers, and contextualise my design in regards to traditional book covers. However, this does give me opportunity to play with these components in order to create a more contemporary design; my design doesn't necessarily have to follow the formal structure, as long as it includes them; e.g. I could play with the positioning of the barcode. 

Marbers Grid

During my research, I found that a key rule in book design is Marbers Grid; a way of composing a design in a way that is visually striking and plays with the relationship between image and text. 

 A lot of Penguins books follow this rule, as it allows the designer to create a hierarchy with the image and text; often with the Marber Grid, the image is the focal point of the design, and sometimes negative space is heavily involved to set the two apart. I really like the very modernist design for Nineteen eighty-four, as the concept itself is only clear if you have read the book; the image itself is very striking, and has a lot of depth which is broken up by the clean lines of the title. 

For my own design, I could experiment with using this grid, and possibly play with creating my own version and manipulating it; having a grid is very crucial in book design as it makes it a lot easier to create a series which Penguin may consider.