Introduction to Photo Book Design book 2017 copyright Douglas Stockdale
Last Saturday on the first day of my Introduction to Photo Book Design workshop with LACP, I finally had an opportunity to make my surprise reveal; as part of the saddle stitch binding demonstration, each person in the workshop completed a limited edition, hand-made book (aka artist book) which was also their course outline! I had printed all of the covers and interior pages, then showed the class how to slightly score the cover with a bone-folder to ensure a clean fold, then fold and order the interior pages (3 sheets), and finally each one completed the saddle stitch binding with the long reach stapler of their own edition copy. Perfect!
I had been working on this book idea for the workshop since the Christmas break and thought that if each person were to leave with a limited edition book, it should be pretty cool workshop take-away as well as under score the point that creating limited edition books can be fun. So every couple of weeks I would advance this book concept; designing the covers, what I wanted for the Colophon in the inside back cover, developing the course outline which would become the text for the interior, the sequencing of the workshop, thus the sequencing of the pages and corresponding text. With some additional feedback from a couple of those who had signed up, I realized that I needed to refocus the key objective of the workshop which resulted in a new sequence of the course outline.
I wanted the resulting book to have stiff covers, so I printed the covers on double-sided Epson Presentation Matte photo paper (8-1/2 x 11″, subsequently folded once) using my Epson 4800 for the exterior which had one photographic image (aka plate) and then the interior text was printed on my Epson Workforce (WF-7620), a desktop printer/copier that I use for printing documents. For the interior text block, I used some #20 Staples copier paper (8-1/2 x 11″, subsequently folded once), also printed on the Epson Workforce desktop printer.
The text layout was created using MS Publisher (2013) and the two-page column template. This template design keep the resulting gutter clear of text after folding the sheets to create the pages of this book.
As a part of the workshop discussion about book dummy development, I also shared the various book dummy stages that I used to develop this book; hand-written text, pages taped together, and versions up to the polished printed dummy that I used to write the notes for how I needed to re-sequence the book after changing my objectives for the workshop.
Colophon: hand made photobook, edition of 12, this being the first edition, copyright 2017. Stiff cover book with 12 pages, size 5-1/2″ x 8″, design & printed by me, assembly and binding by the workshop class.
So tell me, how cool is that!
Cheers!
Singular Images 