The ideal Bible layout
Dear Bible publishers,
You’ve been doing some really cool things lately. We’re getting so close to perfection that it’s both awesome and frustrating at the same time.
Here are 3 things that I keep seeing that would make the difference between almost-there and perfection. I’m hoping you guys can do something about it ☺
Check out my Bible. Looks pretty tasty, right?
It’s so close. But there are 3 big things that would hugely improve the reading experience. Some Bibles do some of these things. I want to show how this Bible above could achieve all three.
1. Eye travel
Because of the way your eyes naturally travel around things, those page numbers end up irritating you, slowing down your reading, and reducing comprehension. You may not even notice, but they are. Your eyes end up doing this:
Why not put those page numbers in the place your eyes are least likely to see them, like this:
Instantly the focus is now on the text of the Bible itself. Look at that beautiful white space. The words “Matthew 15–16” could even be moved further away from the passage to be less distracting — but we’ll keep moving.
2. Moving section headings to the margin
One of the best thing about the ESV Reader’s Bible is that your reading is not interrupted by the editor’s section headings.
I think these subheadings are more intrusive than we realise.
They influence what we expect a paragraph to say. They hide the connections between different sections.
I was disappointed when the ESV Heritage borrowed so much from the Reader’s Bible, but decided to leave the headings in:
However, section headings are useful.
e.g. when you want to quickly find a passage. The ESV Legacy almost finds the perfect balance by putting them in the margins:
It’s a beautiful layout!
But… I think it was a mistake not to put a line between paragraphs. The text feels intimidating and you tend to drown in it.
The Legacy is also a fairly hefty Bible.
But I don’t see why this can’t be pulled off in smaller format bibles.
It does require slightly wider margins than some smaller Bibles have, but I’ve yet to hear someone complain about having too much margin.
The Heritage above could pull it off if they were prepared to shrink the font size slightly. Have a look at this mock up:
But to really appreciate it, you need to see it in the flesh. Here’s the Bible I posted at the top. I’ve left the left-hand page as normal. The right hand page is photoshopped to put the section headings in the margin:
See how clean and readable the passage is!
See how uninterupted the narrative! But, if you really wanted to, you could still find what you were looking for in the margin.
Dear Bible publishers, can we PLEASE have editions like this?
Pretty please?
The biggest challenge, I found, was fitting in the cross references. I deliberately chose a page with loads of cross-references to show that it could still work. The cross references just need to push down to the bottom of the page (where they already spilled, along with a few other notes).
I also realised that the section heading doesn’t need to align with the top of the paragraph, it just needs to be near enough to help you find it.
One last change: I moved the columns slightly to create more white space around the text. Room to breathe! White space, guys, white space.
3. Helpful use of colour.
Used carefully, I think that colour can help clean up a layout, as the ESV Reader’s Bible shows so well.
I’ll let this picture stand for itself. Just imagine. That column on the right… Allow yourself to dream.
Dear Bible publishers… please?
