Second thing in the case of title pages is working across a spread which I feel “announces” the book in a more satisfying manner than the old way (very old) of having a single title page on its own. I think of the first few pages of a book in a similar way to movie title designers, it’s the place that leads you into the book as a whole, and I try to make it all cohere rather than being a disparate collection of individual pages.

The third thing I bear in mind is to not show off too much since you don’t want the design at the front to make the book seem top-heavy. I’ve done that a couple of times but only when the content justifies it, the most notable example being the Lambshead Disease Guide which was a crazy book that demanded a crazy design.

Something about the ‘hotel under the sands’ layout is almost subtley striking, I don’t know what it is about it.