GenresNon-fiction
Art & Design
Looking, making, and the history of both.
Art and design writing has to help the reader see. That means describing a picture, a building, a chair, or a photograph so that someone who isn't standing in front of it can still follow the point, and then saying something worth following. History, biography, and criticism can all do this job. A book that only delivers verdicts, lovely, important, overrated, without showing the work is asking the reader to borrow the author's taste instead of growing any.
Context is not the enemy of looking. Who paid for the building, what the designer was arguing with, what the photograph left out: these make the object more interesting, not less, so long as you get back to the thing itself. Reproduction and layout matter more in this category than in most, and if you are writing to pictures, don't repeat them and don't ignore them. Write for a curious person who did not go to art school, without writing as if art school never discovered anything useful.
The kinds of book inside it
Art history
Works and movements are explained in time, with enough looking and enough context that the reader could walk into a gallery and notice more.
Design
Usefulness and appearance are both in play, and the book should talk about how things are made and who they are made for.
Architecture
Buildings are experienced as well as looked at, so materials, use, and the life around the structure belong with the famous view.
Photography
The image and the act of taking it are the subject, including what the frame excludes and what the photograph has been asked to prove.
When you want a first sketch, Storywell can draft a contents list in this vein. You are still the one who writes the book. Compose an idea.