Final Digital Printing and Book Binding

Printing woes

My printing did not work the first time. Such a complicated document! But I managed to return the next morning and get it reprinted (after a further couple of attempts) which was an enormous relief, as not having a finished product at the end of all of my work would be crushingly disappointing.  To make sure that the print aligned on both sides so that it could be folded successfully I had to inverse the images that would go on the pack page. I wish i had known this before, as although most of my images were unaffected by this, it caused some to become a little miss-aligned, and the text on the train ticket is now illegible.

Setting up my indesign document provided lots of challenges and complications as my book design is not the most straight forward one. I had my initial indesign document which had the pages marked out for the concertina triangle spread which I put my artwork into. I then had a go at converting this document into a pdf and exporting and placing it into a new A2 paper sized document that would allow me to have a double sided print of three variations of my book. This is a much more sensible and practical way of (albeit it on a very small scale) considering 'mass' or at least multiple production.
The document had to be made incredibly precise in order for it to be able to print successfully, time consuming as that may be. To take advantage of being able to print out three versions of my book, I made adjustments to the layout of the artwork on book, meaning that they are all slightly different. These changes were not quite as varied as I had hoped, but it proved to be really quite tricky laying them out using the pages differently, as the books small size and triangular shape proved to be just too limiting for other variations to really be possible, they just looked badly aligned and squint when I tried this, so instead I opted for more subtle and minor changes, such as which way up I should put the fan of feathers in relation to the triangular shape. Having three book formats which I could be a little more sure would turn out more hopefully also then took the pressure of further down the line at the production and cutting stage of the book bindings.

Book Binding

-as concertina opted for, boards bound in buckram, cant decide over cover colour. I need to be wary of getting glue on the pages in-between as it will ruin the document. just had to cut out neatly and fold precisely. a bone folder was invaluable for assisting with this.

I became very indecisive over the colour that I wanted to bind my books in. It seemed important to me to have a colour that would suit its concept and content well. I liked the burgundy colours, as they were more formal yet still had an element of warmth to them. I liked the idea of using darker colours to try to reflect a more serious tone, or rather on the other hand I didn't want the book to appear only lighthearted and fun, or just sort of 'pretty' (no clear message to it). I was so drawn to the green however, as it complimented the colours in the artworks rather well, and it also reminds me of, and links them to in someways, the initial green books that I discovered in Leeds library, which is essentially where this idea really originated from.