John -- Thanks for the kind words about the Crooked Stick book. My back-of-the-mind model for it was "Perry Maxwell's Prairie Dunes" by Mal Elliott. This book is a beautifully designed horizontal layout -- which seems to me how a golf book should be done.
I learned this many years ago while working on a marketing project for the Pete Dye designed Brickyard Crossing course. (I am an advertising guy and we were creating a marketing brochure for the course many months before it actually opened for play.)
Our initial design sketches for the piece were in traditional U.S. 8 1/2" x 11" vertical format, which our client approved. From there we proceeded with course illustrations and brought in a noted Indiana landscape/outdoor photographer, Darryl Jones, to do the shooting. Early on during several days of shooting, Darryl rather casually mentioned that it was a bit challenging to get the shots we wanted. I can remember him telling me that landscapes (and golf courses) are horizontal and that vertical photos didn't capture the way the course spreads out before you as the player sees it. Darryl's photos, although vertical, turned out great and really made the brochure. But I made a note that any future golf work I would do would be horizontal to allow for photos to appear as horizontals at their maximum size. Later we created another golf marketing piece, this one for Heartland Crossing, Camby, Ind. (Nick Price & Steve Smyers design) -- in horizontal format (also with Darryl Jones photography). The difference between the two brochures is an interesting contrast. As a golfer, I prefer the horizontal version. In my mind, it just looks more like the course.
To this day, I am surprised at how nearly all golf books, club histories, etc. are done in vertical format. In many/perhaps most cases it costs more to print horizontal (as was the case with the Crooked Stick book). I suppose that is what's dictating the design. For my money (literally) I prefer the horizontal.
You can take a look at a few chapters from the horizontal Crooked Stick book at :
http://www.crookedstickbook.com/bookexcerpt.htmlAny GCAers (photographers, book readers or architects) care to weigh in on the horizontal vs. vertical question on depicting a golf course ? (Maybe this is a new topic.)