Project: Making Process Books

As part of my end-of-year assessment at Camberwell College of Arts back in May of this year, I undertook to make some process books as a means of presenting some of my work. I was dissatisfied with how I had previously collected and presented my work and I determined that a more formal approach was required if the process was to be of much value to me. I started by scanning a series of on-site location sketches that I had undertaken starting in March. As I went over the sketches, I recognized that I could make some notes about the development of my approach and technique and so the book format suggested itself to me as an appropriate fit. While I was at it I decided to make two other process books: one covering the figure drawing sketches I had done earlier in the year, and the other covering the major course project, the development of which was scattered across loose sheets and several sketchbooks.

Format

I started by determining what formats I wanted for my books by handling an assortment of sketchbooks. For my location sketch book I ended up choosing to copy the landscape format of one of my sketchbooks without modification while I opted for more standard A5 and B5 formats for the other two.

Sketchbooks I consulted to think through the book formats

While I had envisioned the pulling together of the book to be very straightforward, the content being essentially done, this was an underestimation of the task. The images had been cleaned up after being scanned in, but placing them into the book often revealed further necessary edits. Further the association of words and images and images next to each other  within the books began to suggest new illustrations to me. For a time I played around with including photographs of the locations I had sketched, but I was unable to quickly find a satisfactory aesthetic solution and opted to abandon this approach, keeping in mind that the content of the book was only part of the process.

I consulted the G.F. Smith catalogue book to begin paper selection. Another aspect that I picked up on from handling my sketchbooks was the importance of a hardcover. The soft-cover booklet, even when made from a thicker cardstock, always has a way of slightly annoying me. However, the idea of making hardcovers did not become concrete for me until I received the paper samples, where heavy cardboard was supplied to sandwich the pages. I laid them out and realised I had just enough material for the covers for the books I had in mind.

The package of G.F. Smith paper samples that I received in the mail

Covers

I figured out how to make the covers from simply looking at my sketchbooks and seeing how they were composed. They consisted of a board cut to size with a sheet of card paper wrapped over the ends and glued in place. I simply copied this approach.

Card paper measured and ruled out for the hard covers

Card paper cut to size, hard cover board placed on top

Applying glue to card paper, being careful to give even but thin application. Fortunately the card paper was thick enough to avoid buckling

At this point it hadn't occurred to me to apply the glue using a brush which would have been able to provide a more even and thinner coating, so I simply applied the glue via the nozzle with a measured approach.

It takes a book to make a book, as I used the largest and heaviest book at hand to apply pressure for approx. 2 minutes to press the board into the glue, ensuring a secure bond.

The ends wrapped over the edges, with imperfect overlap at the corners owing to some amateur measuring and cutting on my part

It took a certain technique to get the ends of the card paper folded over and glued onto the hard board. I pre-folded the edges with a bone folder, then after applying the glue folded them over with a large book, using it to hold it down once folded until it was secure. I found this method to be the only thing that worked in applying an even pressure across the entire edge, as any gaps would result in the edge springing back before I could glue over the other edges.

Prototyping

I had to think about how I wanted to bind the pages together and considered sewing them together using a technique similar to that employed on my sketchbooks. However, I had no experience sewing, so I went ahead and made a prototype book using the remaining pages of a layout pad that I had lying about. I failed through several sewing attempts before finally getting a (barely) workable result. Exacerbating my troubles, and what I didn't know at the time, was that the thread I was using was too fine for the task, nor was my needle ideally suited to it. These materials had simply been the only ones I had been able to acquire quickly and locally. 

In the end I opted to go ahead with sewing the books, as I had gotten some feel for the technique by the completion of the prototype. One issue that the prototype highlighted for me was the need to use a different glue for attaching the pages to the inside covers, as there was severe buckling in the prototype.

Titles

I knew that the cardstock I had chosen was too heavy for digital printing. I decided on using letterpress for the titles on the covers. I was also aware that a reflective ink (such as gold or silver) would work well on the covers and would be available through letterpress.

Letterpress again impressed to me the importance of engaging with the material as soon as possible: my chosen title font for one of the process books was unavailable and a suitable replacement needed to be found. I updated the book to match my intent on the cover, but also used the letter spacing from the book for my typesetting.

I printed out the type as I had it on the cover page and lined it up to help me match the tracking. Notably the tracking had to be made variable, with the spacing between the A, T, and I being narrower than on the other letters.

While trial runs on newsprint worked fine, I hadn’t anticipated that the hardcovers would be too thick of a material for the press to handle. In the end I just managed. For such a thick material, foil stamping would be a more appropriate process. Alternatively, I could have pressed the card prior to bonding it to the board, although here I had concerns of the text becoming distorted or simply off-centred.

Printing

The first set of sample paper I received from G.F. Smith did not exactly match what I had requested, with one of the paper types being of heavier stock than I had wanted. I tried unsuccessfully to print on this stock but it proved too heavy. I considered other printing options including digital print services, but found through trial runs that it was not possible to get a good enough front-to-back alignment on the page as the printers are intended for one-sided printing. In the end the issue was resolved by placing another sample request, this time getting the correct stock.

I set up the pages in InDesign in "mastered" format, meaning that the pages were intended to be folded and put into signatures prior to binding. This results in adjacent pages not being printed next to each other since for example the first sheet in the signature forms the first and last page of the book. After printing I needed to get the pages trimmed down to the correct size. Fortunately the letterpress facility at the College has a guillotine that can cut through thick stacks with a few vertical cuts.

Binding

I used a bone folder to fold the pages, absolutely essentially for crisp folds, and made holes in the signatures with an awl. Sewing of any kind remains quite a bit beyond my abilities and I struggled to bind the signatures cleanly and securely despite my experiences with the prototype. I wasn’t particularly successful in this regard.

Various components laid out for my location sketch book (covers and interior pages)

Conclusion

Making books has provided me with a way to make sense of my work. The process of compiling my work and drawing it together has helped me to see how my work can potentially configure into something of value. It has also provided me with a short-term run in book-making and alerted me to many of the potential pitfalls. Chief among the lessons learned is commencing with the materiality of the book concurrently with the content development and providing lots of time for prototyping. On the prototyping side I didn’t prepare enough spare cover samples (owing to lack of material) to allow for bad covers in the letterpress process.

Overall I am reasonably happy with the way the books turned out. My binding of them leaves a lot to be desired and this is an aspect likely best turned over to someone with skill in this area. I am quite disappointed in the quality of print that I was able to achieve, with the images appearing somewhat blurry and the front to back pages full of alignment issues. Printing proved to be a struggle and in the future I need to allow enough time for this to be handled by an outside specialist.