OUGD404 - Studio Brief 02 - What is a Book? - Production

Production - Before printing on the chosen stock I ran a few quick test prints. Black and white A4 prints were much cheaper than doing full sized A3 colour runs. The test print ensured that any mistakes were fixed before printing the actual edition. Some errors were found, including some folds being in the wrong places and some of theimgaes and text boxes being in the wrong place. 

For the final print 120gsm white matt stock paper was used. The thick paper allowed the concertina pages to be sturdy and durable when completely folded out to avoid any potential tearing, however the thickness did create some difficulties when it came to folding. Crop marks were included in the print to ensure that I could cut and fold each strip of pages to the correct size. 

I printed out 4 copies as I knew I would encounter some difficulties when it came to putting the book together. 

I started by lining up the crop marks with each other and drawing a thin pencil line across the pages where the folds would go. Everything had to be exact and I couldn't afford to lose sight of the crop marks once I cut down the strips with the guillotine. 

Once all the strips were cut out for my first attempt I went down to the print room to use the paper folding machine. This created a nice crisp fold however when I went to fold it all inwards I saw that the alignment was off, which in turn threw all the pages out of line (as seen below). 

I then used my spare set of strips and set about folding everything by hand using a bone folder to ensure I got neat, crisp edges that didn't wrinkle and crease when folded. The result was much better as all the pages were the exact same length and size. 

I then set about glueing the individual strips together. After getting advice from the lady at the bookbinding workshop she suggested I used a Pritt Stick instead of PVA glue as the pages were small enough and it would ensure the paper didn't buckle from getting wet. 

Once the content pages were perfectly aligned and glued together I set about making the covers for the book. 

I got scraps of bookrum and book cloth and a scrap of board book from the bookbinding workshop at Vernon Street as my publication was so tiny it could be made completely from leftover pieces of material. 

I then had to figure a way to transfer the design of my front cover onto the bookrum. This was the design:

I considered screen printing however the overall size of the cover was 8.9 x 8.9cm and I feared the tiny details like the hairs on his head would not be transferred. This is when I remembered photo transfer paper for T-Shirts and other fabric materials. I ordered a pack from the internet and printed my design onto a piece.

The first attempts failed when I realised I had printed them normally which means they would come out as back to front when ironed face down onto the fabric. 

Quite a few attempts failed after that when it came to ironing the design onto the fabric due to the nature of the bookrum being quite plasticky and rough. A lot of the designs smudged and some didn't transfer at all. 

This was the best result I got:  

At first I was quite disappointed as I am a perfectionist and some of the letters had smudged and the details on his face appeared blurry however after about 5 failed attempts on different types of bookcloth and bookrum and different lengths of time holding the iron on for I figured this was the best it was going to get. 

I then used the skills I had learnt in the bookbinding workshop to bind the covers and the contents pages together as neatly as I could, making sure everything aligned when it was all folded together.