#design binding process

Design Binding Commission - Singapore through 19th Century Photographs

Back in March this year, I started working on this commission for a dear customer, but my life went into a whirlwind of an upheaval. It was difficult to manage having a clear mind to work on a design binding, and having to sort out the toughest months in my life thus far. So I decided that I should pack it up and do it when I am at my best and my mind is clear.

As promised, I will show a weekly update of the work in progress, as my customer enjoys watching his book come along. And also, this is a chance for me to share about the process of how a design binding is done. 

It is not often that the textblock comes nicely in folded sheets, unbound, from the printers. It almost always comes already bound, in the factory, by a machine. Then it takes some precision work, effort and a lot of slow careful heating to remove the factory binding. First the case comes off by gently cutting away the board endpaper, then with slow heating, the fly leaf comes off. I learned a very hard lesson to not pull off the tipped on fly leaf because it takes a whole chunk of paper off from the first folio of the first section. It will then be a tedious task to repair that. So instead of a heated tacking iron, I used a hair dryer to slowly heat it bit by bit, and ease it off slowly from the first folio. I enjoy looking at the textblock after all the nasty adhesive has been removed, and I have a nice clean spine to work on. 

My initial idea for this book was to use rather bright colours in a kaleidoscope kind of way, but through these months away from my bench, I decided that this book should not have such a loud cover, for such an amazing collection of photographs of my country from the 19th century. I have decided to do something more 3 dimensional, almost as though the photographs are coming out at you. But subtle.

So first things first, the endpapers ideas have to be sorted out, endpapers decorated, prepared and then sewing will begin.