The inside cover of the book. In the printed piece, this page is centered under a laser-cut chip-board cover, making it so that only the large black text in the center can be seen until the reader opens the book.
The first spread of the book. The light grey box behind the article text is not actually part of the design, but instead shows roughly how the semi-transparent vellum layer looks while overlaying the article body text in the printed version of the book.
The second spread. Aside from the change in color tone, the positive and negative space of the pattern on the left also swaps on pages without a pull quote.
The third spread. Though it may not be as obvious in the digital version, the split between the two pages is actually located at the right edge of the patterned box, rather than at the right edge of the red background behind it. Thus when printed, the semi-transparent overlay has an edge of red in the margin, helping it to better flow with the left-hand pull quote area.
The fourth spread. Besides containing the book's title within it, the pattern in the background of each left page is also a reference to Beatrice Warde's "crystal goblet" metaphor, which Rock mentions earlier in the article. Half of the goblets in the pattern are filled with wine, but in keeping with Rock's point of view on content's importance in relativity to design, half of them have been tipped over, effectively "spilling their contents".
The fifth spread. In addition to the metaphors used by the pattern, the book's physical design itself also symbolizes Rock's points. Though Rock's article — the "content" of the book — is somewhat legible, it is half way obscured by the "design" — in this case, the semi-transparent overlays containing my review of Rock's article. Despite this, however, the meaning of the "content" can still be inferred — perhaps even better — through the "design", as my review of the article includes a condensed version of the article's "message", just as Rock states that good design should for its content.
The final spread. Likewise, the way in which the "design" (the review) is handled in relativity to the "content" (the article) also reflects my personal viewpoint on the matter, as expressed in my review of Rock's article. As stated towards the end of the review, I agree with Rock's points, but only to the extent that the design doesn't "detract" from the content. The design can influence and even take dominance over the content provided it is enhancing the intended meaning of the content in some way, but when it becomes so designed that it is difficult to even decipher the meaning, the design has ultimately failed. Thus, the book itself is design with those same principles in mind: the semi-transparent leaflets initially obscure the content of the book, but they do not inhibit the reader's ability to read and understand it.
