Whilst I was dreaming of my next holiday I will probably never afford, I started looking through the guidebooks in our house. I don’t think I ever really appreciated the huge differences between the companies, I was naive enough to assume that one book was pretty much the same as another. I couldn’t have been more wrong, some go through describing a place initially by words without a single photographic prompt, where as others feel more like a printed slide show. On reflection I can see why each company has decided to do things differently, as otherwise each book would become (as I originally thought) a clone of the other.
The other thing that I noticed was that whilst each book had spent some time working on the cover, none of them appeared to consider the content layout of the book to be of particular importance. I find this really odd, you expect to feel seduced into visiting all the exotic places on each page. Instead I found myself thinking, “why did they try and put so much on one page I’m getting a headache”. Obviously I am making a very general and biased overview here, but from the 7 different companies books that I looked at, not one of them really looked as if it had been designed. So just a thought, if anyone does know of any good guidebook companies that make their books enjoyable not a chore to read, please do let me know.
Edit: I have since found a book by Alistair Sawdays that does exactly what I was struggling to find before. Also I really liked the bit in the front of the book where it basically said, if you don’t agree with what is written here, let us know, we don’t claim to be objective, this is a book on our opinion and experiences and it wouldn’t be a very good guide book if it wasnt. (I am paraphrasing as I can’t find the book at the moment)
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