GREGORY HOUSE

Book Designer, being a true account of eleven years spent among types, papers, and press sheets

AT THE SIGN OF THE LOZENGE

Leipzig

“A well-made page is quiet until you need it.” HOUSE MAXIM, SET ABOVE THE PROOFING PRESS

gregory.house@example.com·+49 (0)341 555 0187·example.com/house·Leipzig, Germany

CHAPTER THE FIRST

POSITIONS HELD

❧ ❧ ❧

I design books: interiors, bindings, and the occasional facsimile. Over 11 years I have set roughly 240 titles for 14 publishers, most of them in editions under 3,000 copies. I still read every proof against the manuscript, which my colleagues consider a character flaw.

Offizin Falkenhain · Head of Design

2019–present

Direct interior and binding design for 26 to 30 titles a year across literature, art history, and a poetry series of 41 volumes to date.
Rebuilt the house composition standards: 3 text families, a 12-column grid, and a 22-page style manual now used by 6 freelancers.
Cut average makeready corrections from 14 rounds to 5 by moving proofing to annotated PDF with a fixed markup vocabulary.

Verlag Grauwacke, Berlin · Senior Book Designer

2015–2019

Designed 74 trade titles, including a 3-volume correspondence edition of 2,180 pages with a 5,600-entry index.
Won the regional Schönste Bücher list twice, 2017 and 2018, for a facsimile atlas and a paperback essay series.

Setzerei Mandel & Co. · Compositor, then Junior Designer

2012–2015

Set academic monographs in hot metal and digital workflows side by side; kept a case of 10pt Walbaum sorts in working order.
Digitized the firm's imposition schemes for 8, 16, and 32-page signatures, saving about 2 hours per press form.

CHAPTER THE SECOND

STUDIES & THE CASE OF SORTS

❧ ❧ ❧

Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst, Leipzig · Diplom, Book Art

2007–2012

Diploma project: a bilingual edition of a 19th-century printer's manual, 384 pages, letterpress cover in 2 colors.

Apprenticeship, Druckerei Hellwig · Compositor's certificate

2005–2007

Trained in hand composition, imposition, and platen presswork; final piece judged at 96 of 100 points.

Being the sorts kept ready in this designer's case:

Typography & page architecture Binding design Facsimile production InDesign scripting Hot-metal composition Paper specification Color management for press Editorial German & English Index typography

COLOPHON

❧

This curriculum vitae was designed and composed by its subject in Leipzig in the spring of 2026, on a screen standing in for a stone.

TEXT: EB Garamond, after the punches of Claude Garamont, set 17 on 26
DISPLAY & SMALL CAPITALS: Cormorant SC, for titles, folios, and running matter
PAPER: A warm off-white, hexadecimal f7f2e8, chosen to spare the eyes
ORNAMENTS: Pilcrows, middle dots, and the fleuron ❧, used with restraint

The margins follow the old canon: modest at the head, generous at the foot, so the thumb has somewhere to rest. Any errors that remain are the compositor's own, and he will hear about them.

SET IN AN EDITION OF ONE