I will not make another blue book, so help me god.
New mockup (with slipcase) and Hot Damn! Let me just say that the moment I gave up on my weird attachment to buckram everything about this binding started looking a whole lot nicer. Just to refresh your memory, here are the previous two mockups, bound in two colors of buckram:
It is worth mentioning here that every single book I have ever made has been blue. Here is a blue book. Here is a blue book. Oh, look, here is blue book. Hey how about a blue book, just for a change of pace? There is absolutely nothing blue about the content of this new book. None of the colors inside are even remotely blue. But a lot of them are yellow. So I am taking a bold step.
Just as I have never attempted a yellow book before, I have also never put a label on the cover of a book. In general, I prefer to print directly on book cloth. For some reason a label suddenly seemed appropriate to me. I though of it in a flash on the train to London yesterday, and I couldn’t get it out of my mind. A label is the ideal way to to bring the stream of text from the interior of the book to the cover. If I attempted to print text this small onto book cloth, the weave of the fabric would interfere with the look of the delicate letterforms. The whole thing would look sloppy. With that in mind, I decided to do a test with a spare page from the book.
After cutting the label, I traced around it on one of my boards and cut a recessed area. By the way, prepare to be jealous of my bone folder.
Whoa, green doesn’t look good on you. My friend Jessica Peterson made me that hot bone folder at the Paper and Book Intensive this summer. Thanks Jessica!
Case is coming together and kablam:
When it comes time to print the labels for the cover, I will print them in black, not gray. But this certainly gives me the feel for what it might look like, and I am very pleased with it.
Here it is in the slipcase, which also has a small recessed label (see the photo at the top of the post.)
So there it is! Huge progress! I feel like I have the binding almost resolved! But of course, there is still a huge problem:
6 comments on “I will not make another blue book, so help me god.”
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Big Jump Press 
First comes the blue-buckram-interruptus incident, now comes the overwhelming onslaught of ominous-bone-folder-envy.
I’m resilient. I’ll get over it, someday. Sniff.
hot damn is right! those yellows are gorgeous, and i love the inset labels. yum. you make me want to make books, and you make me want to make them well. any time i start to get lazy about my make-ready in any printing situation, i think, “what would sarah bryant do?” and i take a deep breath and keep adjusting, or i clean the press and mix the color i know i want, or whatever the thing is, i TAKE THE TIME TO GET IT RIGHT. and, while i’m sure i’m learning something and developing character, i’m also making better things. so thank you.
W.W.S.B.D.
I love it
!!!
That is the greatest! thanks Laura, honestly, that is the best compliment possible. xoxo
!!!!!
I love the shape of your label. I like your bone folder, too. That’s gorgeous!