Binding for Single Pages (1)

Great find, someone shot a video of Don Taylor making a double Fan single pages binding
Its 15 minutes long - turn up the volume and maybe even make some notes.   He shows you how to use glue and thread (!?) and how to tip on end papers.  Then how to end up some kind of book block which you could case in to a hard cover.  Its easy to find videos or photos /tutorials about hard back case binding and then just make the hardback cover and case this fan binding into it.

I may well use this myself.

If any of you find other info on "bookbinding single sheets" then please do post on here.

Blurb books - are 'perfect bound'. Bear this in Mind

This is the book I had printed by Blurb - you may have seen the photos in the earlier post  where I cut the book in half using a Stanley knife.  It’s the kind of knife you use for cutting a sheet of mount board, when you are  making picture mounts.

I bought the book, a black and white 'travel book", just to be able to 'alter' it e.g. tear it up cut it up etc etc.

As I was carefully taking the book apart I thought I saw little indentations that might suggest that in fact there was stitching involved........................... HOWEVER as I delved further I could see that indeed it was just 'bound' with glue.

Yes the book binding (as such) is what I feared it might be,  they call it ‘perfect bound’ - which essentially means its single pages are  glued-together, at the spine.  

This is the cover  - a soft cover.  The glue only takes up less than about a 16th of an inch 

1/4 of a cm  so hardly worth bothering with.

The front and back page of your softcover book may have the glue line slightly visible BUT again it's not really that problematic, in my opinion.

I am disappointed that their binding does not involve the use of signatures or stitches.   Never mind we will just have to  work with that.  As far as I am aware - it's not  an option on Blurb.

THIS POST WAS PROMPTED BY MARY TAYLORS COMMENT IN RESPONSE TO AN

EARLIER POST BY TERESA (LIBRARY OF THE LOST LOBA) thanks Mary who said"

What I'm concerned about is getting the POD book apart without destroying the pages at the binding? 
Any thoughts? 
I wonder if the paper choice make a difference? 

I don't want to create a mess. I want to take it apart so that I have single page sheets that I will then add a flexible woven spine to,  so it will lay flat and accommodate the dimension of the elements I want to include. 

Blurb does boast that their binding is solid.. I will need the full page so chopping the spine is not a good option.

I hope this post is useful in this respect.

I am now going to look into what a flexible woven spine is ??


Any suggestions regarding how to rebind the books together ( that is for those of us who take them apart - its not a requirement  - each of us will approach our alterations differently.

I have just moved house and studio.....so I might be a bit slow for the next few weeks, every time I try to do something like connect to my large screen I have to hunt for a wire to connect it all up ...anyway...a short note...

 

I would highly recommend not leaving this project till the last minute.  I have been playing around on the blurb site trying to place photos on various picture layouts and realised I need to get the size of the photos correct before playing.

For me I think Aine’s idea of preparing 20 sheets and making a real life dummy first which you can play around with and get a feel of how you might alter it post publication as well is the best way to approach this. 

Which is exactly what I am doing today.  I also looked through a few blurb books to see how other people had used the layout of the page with the image and this has helped greatly.

Thoughts on the theme

OK,
Time for me to try to get something down. I have a couple of free hours which is unthinkable on my schedule. Lots of things swirling around in my mind about this..the first being , will I have time to do it?? 
I've downloaded the Blurb software and looked at it. The size of the book has given me food for thought.
I've been working for some time on the notion of 'Nothing'  and into this the ideas about death keep cropping up... my visualisation in printed images, and the actual occurrences in my life of death, and there seems to be a lot of it happening ..maybe its my age.I started on the theme when I started work for an M.A. by Independent Study and was preparing the outline for my degree. It included a book , so the coincidence is high. I had to stop half way on my studies because my husband died, so the book was unfinished. Now I think I 'm picking it up again!
So the images will be the prints I have made on the theme (using innovative printmaking) and the alterations will be the journey.
Just got to get going !!

Getting going...

I've  decided to use some images from an animation I made about crumpled paper to get started and intend to alter the book by crumpling, so that it reflects the photographic images. Anyway, that's the plan and I've started making the Blurb book.

File Storage and Sharing

https://www.box.com/personal/

This site allows you to store and exchange files/images etc on the internet for others to download or arrange collaborative projects online where different people can upload download or comment on documents (saves sending large files by email).  Its free for personal users.

starting the project.

I have some images in mind that I am working on. There are many ways to work on a book, i love to create a story with images. For me, print on demand is a new challenge. I started to work on digital image while in Barcelona, doing my paperwork for my green card. I had a lot of spare time and no printing press. And a mac computer.
I made a first print on demand book as a way to learn digital image. And I found a way to work on it.
There are the pics I'll be work on. After that, there will be the book and the alterations.

Altering a POD book - getting started

Well I suppose that's how you would describe what I have been doing.........the thing is though that I feel awful doing it to the author of the book (LaMont Copeland).  It's a collection of his poems.  

The thing is though that the book was chosen at random.  I went for a black and white pocket book because I was thinking that I might use that format either in this project or at a later point.  

Money or rather cost was a major factor too...... as I was essentially throwing £10.00 down the drain.

I mean it's something I can ill afford at the present time.   Having said that I  wanted to see just how 'flimsy' the paper might be - I was anticipating it might be like 'bible paper'.  

But it's more like about 100 gsm copy paper, that one might use to print out something from a desktop printer.  

The images do kind of show through the paper.   I seem to remember our school text books were a bit like this.   I am just realising that I ought to take a photo of a page which has a photo on its reverse side for you to understand what I mean.  OK..........done that .............as you can see above.

I imagine though that if one had line drawings on either side that it might be OK.  I will have to give it a go.  I might do 2 test books i.e., one with line drawings on both sides of the page.  And another with a line drawing on just one side.  

Photos of what I have done so far.   I am also trying out some unusual mark making techniques.

as in the second picture above......with the text in the back book printed in reverse i.e., back to front writing. 

Of course its different 'altering' an already existing POD book by some one else.  The thing is though that if I had for example designed a book along the lines of the one above.  I might just have the text as small as possible.  Perhaps even uploading it as a jpg onto an 'open bleed' page so there weren't any margins or borders.  I would do this with the idea that later when 'altering' it I would highlight certain words.........................and I might have white space gaps so that when altering it I could then stamp in images.   I might design it in such a way that I could chop it up into two books  and make a 'dos a dos'.

Regarding Schedule

Just to let you know that I did post the schedule on to a 'static-page' so that if you wished to do so,  you could actually download it from the page and print it out or at the very least see it enlarged.

It is a bit big though i.e. about 3 x A3 sheets (landscape position option, on the printer)

Its visible on the  tabs bar across the top of this page with "Schedule" . 

 Click on that - you will see it. ...............  it's for your benefit and my own too !!

Typically I have lots of commitments over this next few months so making a schedule seems a way to feel more 'on-top' of things.  That's the theory anyway.............argh !!!

Aine

Although some of the things I am bringing to peoples attention may seem obvious or basic.................. do bear in mind that participants are at various stages of "computer/web/blog literacy etc etc etc" (for want of a better word) and I am just trying to help get people up and running.............

Also please do help one another...............  lets use this blog to ask questions of one another etc etc.

I feel that for the success of our project 

it is imperative that all participants

sign up to "FOLLOW BY EMAIL" which is  on the top right 

hand of the page when you come on to the blog.  just put your email into the box.

I will keep posting this notice until I can see (by checking through the feedburner google website that everyone has signed up)

Working...

It would be interesting to show aside any compilation about our writings and creative process..We are writing posts and probably many of us are still thinking about the content. We have downloaded the program and here we are...

I am seated right now trying to say something and I just have some ideas in mind. I downloaded the program. And I have some pics to work on and probably will be a good start. Or there will be another idea.

Schedule for our Project