Damn you, Repetitive Strain! (plus mockup)
Ok, here is the thing: How am I ever going to bind this edition? It was binding the last edition that did this to me in the first place. If I was still teaching undergraduates, I might be able to bribe, blackmail, or threaten some of them into helping me. Out here in the cold I am not quite sure what to do. Perhaps it is time to take advantage of the NHS. (Will they bind it?)
Anyway, I am pressing on. Yesterday I finally did a letterpress test (just a test, mind you, not a final design) with the buckram and today I bound a mockup, this time using proof sheets, to see if I could resolve a few more issues about the binding and the cover. These are my conclusions so far:
1. Stop whining and just letterpress print the buckram rather than agonizing over screen printing. Save the screen printing for later. Also that will be better for my sad wrist.
2. After having printed on the buckram, be patient and let it dry before rubbing all over it with my fingers and making ugly finger smudges in the ink. (Compare smudgeless printing above with smudgeful book cover below.)
3. Work out what to print on the cover, for God’s sake, or I’ll never get anywhere. What is printed there now is (a) a test, and (b) hideous.
4. Use a lighter color of book cloth.
5. Sharpen up the binding or I will be a laughing stock in the bookbinding community. The fore edge is about three mm to big, the end sheets are sloppy and too thin, and I need to work out the width of the spine piece. Jeez. But I guess that’s what mockups are for grumble grumble.
So here is where we are. Waiting on some new plates, designing the tricky center folios, finalizing the binding, cutting down the last of the paper. Stay tuned.
One comment on “Damn you, Repetitive Strain! (plus mockup)”
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Big Jump Press 
ok, sarah, i look at your “hideous” mockup and can tell it’s yet another beautiful book. i can see those pages opening enticingly…