Handbound Book
This book was a project for the typography class in my certificate course. The first step of the project was to do type repairs on signs, books and menus that we found in the real world (as opposed to the digital one) and lay them out on an 11x17 page, making an interesting composition overall. The final assignment was to create a book out of all that work plus a title page, table of contents, and colophon.
Once I had my layout chosen and all my materials printed and it came time to create the physical book, I decided I wanted to experience the process of hand-binding. The cover is hand-painted ink on watercolor paper wrapped around heavy cardboard because I wanted the lovely imperfections of visible brush strokes. After working with graphic design programs where geometric perfection is easily achievable, it was nice to get back to my painting roots, use my hands, and work on something that couldn’t be done digitally.
The reason I chose to do an abstract minimalist cover for my book was because my typography and page layouts were very minimalist as well. I set my pages with as much negative space as possible, creating a sort of wide open art gallery effect, even though the actual subject matter of the book was not very exciting.
Dapifer Bold
A close-up of my stitching and paper choices. On the left is a heavy gray page that's very satisfying to handle, and on the right is the thinner patterned paper that I used to glue the text block to the covers.