“This series of workshops offers an introduction to bookbinding. You will explore various construction techniques using folded as well as single sheet pages and will learn 5 different sewing methods to produce different styles of books. You will follow a series of step-by-step practical demonstrations covering the basic principles of bookbinding techniques to build up your confidence and skills in simple bookbinding.
Over the 2 sessions, you’ll cover: • Basic principles of bookbinding • Simple handmade books using various binding techniques • Working with some of your screen prints, create one-off books or limited editions. • Dependant on time, the types of binding will include: simple pamphlet binding, pamphlet sewing onto a W-fold cover, stab binding, a maze book, and concertina/ leporello.”
This workshop was, by far, one of the most informative, and the one I can see myself utilising most in the future. There’s something about creating an object that you can hold in your hands and interact with that is just so satisfying.
We started with a simple method called Single Pamphlet Binding, wherein we used our screenprints made in previous workshops to create the covers. The process was an easy one. Only one signature was required, so you just have to fold a relatively small amount of paper in half and leave it to the side. You then cut a strip of much larger paper to fit the width of the unfolded paper and then some. After folding the cover in half, all that is required is a simple stitch to keep it in place within the cover, and to fold the excess cover over to create an inside cover.
We then moved onto a slightly more complicated method, the W fold, which is basically two pamplets in one divided by a part of the spine. I liked this one as I felt it allowed for more detail and volume of pages. I also incorporated papers that I had already printed on inside to make it a more interesting flip through, rather than a sketchbook waiting to be filled.
We then moved on to the lesser book like folds, such as the maze fold and stab binding.
Each of these were less impressive in my opinion, but quite fun for a few experiments. The stab binding is something that I immediately thought would be nice to use for swatches or scrap pieces from future experiments, such as photogram test strips and the like.
Susie Wilson is an artist that comes to mind after these workshops. She works primarily with prints and binding them into books like the example above. In future, I’d like to use her unique techniques (such as pop and cut outs) in my own binding. In particular, I’d like to play with the shape of the books, as I feel so much more than the average rectangle can be done, as shown by Wilson in the example below. I plan on asking Ruth how this could be accomplished soon.
Overall, I feel that being able to make books of your own design is an invaluable skill for Graphic Designers. What better way to bring your vision to reality than to make, by hand, the way in which it is represented? A method that was shown and explained to us was dos-a-dos, meaning back to back, in which two pamphlet books share one cover back to back. I intend on using this method to make my Zine alongside illustration, photography and letterpress.
Prosaic Vocabulary 