Middle Ground Book-dummy #4 – ditto

Middle Ground, Book-dummy #4 2018 copyright Douglas Stockdale

Last weekend during my LACP mini-seminar on photo book development using my book-dummy #4 for the Middle Ground project, this book design really gelled for me. It was now time to move forward to the next phase; book printing. Fortunately Craig Evans, my printer representative for Dual Graphics, was also exhibiting at the LACP event so we had an opportunity to meet and allow me to discuss the final design tweaks with him.

Evans asked me to make a second copy of the book-dummy #4 (affectionately called “Ditto), and add post-it notes for reference to what was going where. He suggested to plan to meet up later in the week and bring my pre-press image files. I was ready to move from a physical book-dummy to the e-design (probably InDesign) in preparation for going on-press.

After assembling and gluing the previous book-dummy’s, I was pleasantly surprised that Ditto came to life relatively quick. I am still learning the ropes about binding a leporello book, but I feel that I am coming up the learning curve.

Thus week I completed the pre-press image file changes: sized each digital file to the image size for the printed page (now termed a plate) at 300 dpi, converted to sRGB from AdobeRGB and saved as high quality JPEG image (quality 12), and then labeled as to which plate number for the book printing.

I also prepared the draft Colophon as one of the few text pages, as well as the interior title page. As stated previously, I may only have the book title printed on the book’s spine. Now time for a little consideration as to the appearance of the back cover;s exterior, which might just repeat my name and web site at the bottom. All of this was delivered yesterday to Evans.

Next step in preparation for the printing is to have the InDesign completed and reviewed as a soft-proof PDF. Still a bit more to do, but getting a whole lot closer!

Reminder: Let me know if you want to be placed on my growing interest list (doug@douglasstockdale.com) for Middle Ground. More news about the final price and fund raising campaign shortly!

Cheers!