English / 한국어
As exemplified by Seikaisha Shinsho, an obi (Japanese word for belly band outsert) tends to play an important role in Japanese—and Korean, to a lesser extent—book design. It is a type of dust jacket that covers only a portion of a book: even a book with a dust jacket may have an additional obi. It usually carries blurbs and other more promotional elements, allowing covers to concentrate on more editorial aspects. This duality reflects the two, often conflicting goals of book cover design. In the marketplace, a book’s cover works primarily as an advertising, not unlike a commercial poster; on the other hand, as part of an integrated object, it is also expected to respect its content—with all the dignity of the work it covers. Assigning different roles to cover and obi is a solution: a book can maintain its integrity as a serious work by relegating less “honorable” jobs to obi, which is essentially a throwaway. The relationship between the two parts, however, can be a subject of experimentation, as some designers have recognized.
