The way a book is bound has a huge impact on
its tactility. So, PVA at the ready…
I love what’s possible in digital design
and production, but the truth is there’s something that digital products lack
compared with print. This is tactility, the effect of touch and physical
behaviour as a part of the overall experience. Even in print, this is all too
often forgotten as a part of the overall design process, or at least relegated
to quick decision at the start of a project.
Bret Victor’s November 2011 post on his
‘future of interaction design’ blog (worrydream.com) is well known as the
‘pictures under glass’ argument. While he goes off on a bit of a rant and
misses a number of important aspects, he does have a point. There’s no way for
a digital publication to deliver the same physical experience as something
printed, for instance, on a textured or soft-surfaced material, such as flocked
‘velvet’ paper. Or demonstrate the clear difference between a hard-back and
paperback book. Or the delicate fragility of bible paper versus the rigidity of
a dense card stock.
Even binding – how a stack of papers is
held together – is something that gives the final product part of its overall
impact and helps determine how the end user feels about it. This is a key part
of both the visual and the directly interactive aspects of print. Don’t believe
me? Then take a look at the various different kinds of binding that can be used
when producing a multiple-page document.
In commercial production and is hand-made
book binding, the pages are usually gathered together in signatures, a process
that’s based on commercial print production processes. Signatures are folded
sets of pages, the result of printing multiple pages on a single large sheet
before folding and trimming, leaving one edge uncut. The sheets in a signature
can be sewn together or ‘saddlestitched’. This means stapled, but for God’s
sake don’t call it that! It tells a printer you’re clueless, which is never
good. Wire-stitched is the general term for stapled, and saddlestitched is when
the whole thing – covers and contents – is stapled through the spine. You’ll
see this used in thinner magazines, generally not anything with more than
around 64 pages. (Why 64? Because most pages are fitted eight-up per side, 16
pages in total, on the paper that goes through the press. Each one of these is
a section, and four sections would equal 64 pages, typically plus cover).
Although
there are ways to blind a book without gluing and stitching, those two methods
are the most common. If you want to create your own book, you can use glue, a
clamp and a cloth…
…While
hand-stitching can yield beautiful crafted results
If you’re reading this in print format,
then the copy of MacUser that you’re holding in your hands is ‘perfect bound’,
a curiously upbeat term for glue-based binding. Pages are either trimmed to
individual sheets or collated into stitched section signatures and held
together with hot glue along one edge. Paperback books as well as magazines are
typically trimmed down to stacks of single before the glue is applied. It isn’t
really perfect: in older books, the glue can start to crack and drop pages. It
also doesn’t let publications open as flat as other kinds of binding. Despite
the possible problems, it’s popular because it’s a cheap and fast process
that’s well suited to mass production.
Case binding takes prepared signatures,
sews them all to each other along their bound edges, then glues them to binding
the cover – the ‘binder’s boards’ and endpapers – to produce the final hardback
result. It’s a fun process if you do it by hand (I sat in with some of my
students on bookbinding sessions a couple of year ago) and it’s the basic
method for the majority of high-quality books. Tape binding is a variation on
this: pretty much as above but with a cloth strip glued to the spine, sometimes
as a strengthening step for perfect binding rather than stitching. Case is
optional.
Wire-O, spiral and comb binding are all
really versions of the same thing. These use plastic or wire threaded through
row of punched holes. Simple, although there are more styles than you might
guess. One Wire-O variant is called Canadian, where the loops go through one
side of a card cover (half-Canadian) or both the front and back.
A much more interesting binding technique
if you’re making something yourself is the French fold. In short, this is done
by folding sheets of paper in half, then binding the open edges rather than the
fold. Each page is actually a loop rather than a simple sheet. Printing just
needs to be done on one side of the paper, which makes it easier to produce
from ordinary desktop printers; just choose the two-up option from the Layout
section of any standard print dialog. It does bulk out the final product
because you’re using twice as many sheets as an ordinary double-sided set of
papers, but it’s highly distinctive. If you want to try it yourself, follow
these steps.
Print and fold
Print your papers two-up on a page, and
then fold each sheet in half. Accurate folding is the key. Book binders do this
with a bone folder – a device for folding and creasing, not the kind of folder
that stores things. This gives a clean, consistent crease to the folded edge,
but you can use a thumbnail in a pinch.
The
French fold is an interesting DIY printing and binding method to master
Align the pages
When you’ve done your set of papers (and
checked that they’re all the right way around), you need to knock them up to
the fore-edge, the part furthest away from the spine. This makes them all
aligned at what will be the open end of the book. Unless you’ve folded each
sheet with inhuman precision, the back edges will be slightly ratty and uneven,
so trimming that is the next task.
Trim the edges
Press down the set of pages and hold a
steel ruler along the edges opposite the fold. You’ll need a scalpel for this,
or a very sharp craft knife, and some patience. Cut gently and repeatedly,
don’t try to press through too quickly or you’ll distort the edge.
Glue the binding
Clamp the pages, sandwiched between a
couple of bits card, leaving maybe an inch of the newly cut edge standing free.
Now push this sideways to fan the pages a little and apply PVA glue. Push the
spine the other way and repeat, then squeeze the sheets together and see if you
need to touch up the glue anywhere. Clamp the whole thing or put it under a
heavy weight for at least an hour, but preferably overnight.
Clamp the pages,
sandwiched between a couple of bits card, leaving maybe an inch of the newly
cut edge standing free.
Stitched binding
Alternatively, for thinner productions,
there’s the ‘Singer-sewn’ method of binding, where the pages are stitched
together right through the stack next to the spine and the thread is left
visible. Tackling more than a few sheets is hard work. Taking the technique’s
name at face value isn’t a bad idea: an old Singer sewing machine (or any
brand, really!) with a tough needle, thick thread, and set to a wide stitch can
work well. Honest. Although watch your fingers, try to stick to 3mm or less
thickness, and don’t blame me if you break the sewing machine!
Adding the cover
The final step is adding a cover, soft or
hardback. Rather than have me go on about this, head to but.ly/dustjacket, a
used online tutorial from the University of lowa. There’s more detail there
about the rest of the process, too, in case you want more detailed
explanations.
You can use this technique to make one-off
books for presenting work if you want to make a certain kind of ‘creative
craft’ impression. You can also do this to make your own sketchbook or
notebook. It’ll take hours to do, so I’ll understanding if you prefer to buy a
regular one down at the local stationers, but it’s always a good idea to try
this sort of thing. And while it doesn’t really matter, it’s definitely more
creative-cool to use your own custom-made sketchbook.
