At a time when print communicators are lamenting that broadcast and electronic media have carved deep inroads into their market, British publisher DK Eyewitness Books is selling millions of visually lavish travel guides and reference books worldwide by making words and pictures work together on the printed page

Say the word "reference book" and most people think of something boring and academic. But DK Eyewitness Books is proving that doesn't have to be the case by showing readers in pictures what other books only tell them in words. Since DK introduced its Eyewitness series in 1988, it has sold over 40 million copies in 44 languages (and that's not counting the millions of other books packaged under the DK imprint).

What makes DK Eyewitness Books so compelling is a "lexigraphic" design style developed by Peter Kindersley. A graphic designer by training, Kindersley co-founded DK with editor Christopher Dorling in 1974 to package books for sale to outside publishers. Then in 1982, DK began publishing highly illustrated reference books on its own. Despite the company's success, Kindersley felt that books in general weren't keeping up with the speed and entertainment value of broadcast media. His search for a solution led to a design approach that integrated words and images in a way that conventional books had never done. By wrapping expository text around silhouetted images, DK books used pictures to give meaning to the words and words to give meaning to the pictures.

In 1987, DK tested this lexigraphic concept in a children's reference series, causing a sensation worldwide. "The style led us to build a whole children's business out of books based on that look and also to take it into other areas," says Christopher Davis, DK's deputy chairman. Parents and educators quickly embraced the lexigraphic approach, and DK began hearing from people who told them that even dyslexic children loved its books. "Faced with a gray wall of solid text, children with learning difficulties are often intimidated," Davis theorizes. "But when words and pictures are linked in bite-size chunks, they find it easier to 'graze' on the page and absorb manageable amounts of text. They can see that the text is explaining the picture and the picture brings the text to life."

This signature style of all DK Eyewitness books has proved equally compelling to adult market segments that DK staffers divide into "show me" and "tell me" people those more stimulated by images than words, and vice versa. Rich with content, Eyewitness books use a lively mix of full-color photographs and illustrations, cutaway and cross-section views, 3-D models and maps that help readers visualize the subject. The accompanying text acts like a voiceover, explaining and adding new levels of information to what the reader sees.

This picture-intensive style, printed on premium coated paper, is understandably expensive to produce. "The money goes on the page," Davis says. To recoup its sizeable upfront costs, DK focuses on reference subjects that have a long shelf life and on giving each book immediate worldwide distribution. Most non-English editions are printed with foreign partners who work nearly simultaneously on translated versions that fit into the design. "We are able to spend more on a page by having a huge community of markets to support it," says Davis. "Our books have been conceived to make sure everything backlists as much as possible. We try every which way to keep them going." Today over 80% of all the titles DK has published are still in print.

As an international publisher, DK is particularly sensitive to how its books will be received in cultures as diverse as Ireland and India. "One reason for showing silhouetted objects in the kids' books," Davis explains, "is that if a London bus or a suburban house was in the background, it would convey information that a child in Mexico City, Taiwan or Stuttgart would look at and say 'this book doesn't work for me.' We see ourselves like Benetton or Gap, where you don't think about the country where the product originates."

Another reason for DK's signature white background is its fastidious desire for absolute clarity. For its animal books, DK photographs live lions, tigers and elephants against a huge white sheet, at considerable cost and bother. But to DK, it's worth it. "When the animal is isolated, readers can concentrate more on the details of the coloring, the texture of the coat, than they can if it's surrounded by jungle or green," Davis says. That dedication to accuracy is also why DK doesn't simply remove backgrounds using a computer; reflected color would remain on the pictured object and cast uneven light and shadows.

DK's hefty investment in clean silhouetted images has proved to be a major contributor to its success. Its picture library now includes more than 2.5 million photographs and illustrations (with about 6,000 new images added each week) ample material for products ranging from videos, stickers, puzzles, CD-ROMs and other books to the commercial licensing of the pictures themselves. DK's picture resource also contributes significantly to its most daring line extension to date: its lavishly produced DK Eyewitness Travel Guides series.

Douglas Amrine, editor-in-chief of DK Eyewitness Travel Guides, admits that DK's entry into this highly competitive, overpublished field was a "leap of faith" and one that some experts advised against. Before the first travel guide came out, Amrine recalls telling the proprietor of a nearby guidebook and map shop that DK was going to do travel guides, starting with London, Paris, New York and Rome. "He said, 'I have 60 something guides to Paris on my shelf already. I certainly don't need another one. For the money you're talking about charging, I doubt that many people will buy them.' Having sold 11 million books since September 1993, we seem to have proved him wrong."

DK's confidence stemmed from its belief that "travel guide publishing had never really joined the 20th century," says Amrine. "No one had ever taken advantage of color printing to make travel guides that were not only beautiful to look at but practical to use. No one had thought about how you can present travel information in a visual way."

While the travel market was new to DK Eyewitness, the lexigraphic techniques it applied were not. DK Eyewitness has packed its travel guides with over 1,000 pictures, stunning 3-D and cutaway views of museums, palaces and cathedrals, detailed street maps, handy phrases, and essential survival information. The guides are an adventure in themselves, as fascinating to armchair travelers as they are functional for those on the go. As with all DK books, the visuals in the guidebooks carry as much content as the text. "The essence of the lexigraphic approach is that we always, always add an extra level of information," says Gillian Allan, art director for DK Eyewitness Travel Guides. "Everything has to work very hard and can't be gratuitous."

DK's operations are organized to do just that. Unlike most publishing houses where editors drive the process and then hand off finished manuscripts to designers, DK editors and designers work closely as a team from the concept stage. The overall DK creative staff in the London main office includes about 250 editors and 250 designers, with roughly 42 people working solely on the travel guides. DK commissions subject experts to serve as authors for its travel guidebooks. A major country guide, for instance, may have as many as 20 authors, with additional researchers, specialists and contributors familiar with the destination. "The original picture list for a travel guide begins as an editorial list," says Amrine. "An author who knows a certain cathedral may tell us the altar piece is a 'must see,' and we must include a photograph. Or an author may say something would work better as a cross-section than a cutaway. We'll discuss it and try to accommodate that."

Collaboration is continuous with travel guides, since virtually the entire book must be updated each year. The reason is that invariably the unexpected happens, Amrine says. "The first edition of our Paris guide included three or four photos of a very popular and photogenic floating swimming pool on the Seine that had been there for over 100 years. Just before we published, it sank. We quickly took out the pictures in the next edition." Buildings get renovated, opening hours and phone numbers change. All of that has to be researched and updated.

The Travel Guides staff is also concurrently involved in producing five or six books a year in multiple languages, with a goal of publishing many more including travel guide editions for children. "We have been setting up creative teams outside our offices and contracting out production in many different countries," Amrine says. "We already have creative teams in Italy, Poland, South Africa, the U.S., India and Singapore, and will have more countries coming on in the next few months. They are all working to our briefs, guidelines and standards."

Eyewitness Travel Guides is also working toward a greater presence on DK's website. "We plan to scan in the entire contents of our Travel Guides series," says Amrine. "Every single double-page spread will be scanned and placed online. It will be a tremendous resource of images and information. We'll also be posting updated information for our guides as we receive it."

This online connection is a natural for DK, which early on anticipated how people now surf the Web. "The information is presented in such a way that you can pick it up and move in any direction. You don't have to start from page one and go to the end," says Amrine. "I think the Eyewitness Travel Guides or any sophisticated DK reference book is about as close as you can come to a multimedia product in a printed form."

But that doesn't mean DK foresees becoming strictly a multimedia publisher. "People access information in many ways," Davis explains. "It's often easier to look up an encyclopedic entry in a book because you can see the coverage at a glance." But more and more, he adds, DK will market its books with multimedia products and its multimedia products with books. "In the future, I think we will move forward in a parallel universe."