: Designing a book A friend of mine writes lots of poems and some of them have even got published in local magazines here. His birthday is coming up and I am thinking of putting all those

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I am assuming you have already acted on this, but for the benefit of others who might be considering something similar, you can use CreateSpace, which is Amazon's print on demand service, to create a beautiful book with little effort and no cost (aside from the cost of the book itself plus shipping). In addition to that, once you are done, the book will be available for others to buy online. Even if nobody ever buys it, you can say you have a published book out there!
www.createspace.com/

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Your book will be a beautiful gift and of course you want it to look beautiful, too. Here's what many folks do:

Find a book whose design -- trim size, layout, typefaces -- you admire
Adapt the design to fit your idea of a good-looking book
Apply that design to your friend's poems
Print the poems on your laser printer, perhaps using special paper: laid-finish paper is nice for poetry
Find some artwork you like
Print that artwork to use as a cover
Take everything to Staples and have them bind it nicely
Give the book to your friend
Bask in the certain knowledge that you've made your friend's day/month/year

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Not sure if you're in the US, UK or somewhere else, but there are quite a few services out there that let you design and create books yourself, and give good guidance on how to get best results. Most provide you with their own software or website interface to help make the process simple and straightforward. Alternatively, you can normally upload a PDF version of your document that meets their guidelines, and they can use that for printing. Here are some for you to look at:

Bookemon
Blurb (don't get put off by the "photo book" stuff, you can do text only if you wish, and choose pictures for the covers etc.)
Lulu.com (likewise, don't get put off about the publishing stuff, you can do private, one-off prints for yourself)

Alternatively (depending on your location), have a look at:

Morris Publishing
WordClay

All of them (should) have comprehensive guidelines and help sections on how to construct and format your book. I would suggest deciding on who you'd like to use to print your book first, and then look at their specific guidelines (things like bleed space, what format they want your book in e.g. PDF, and so on) as these may change from printer to printer.

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