Tag Archives: Bookbinding

bookbinding, stuff i've made

Some very simple sketchbooks

The art shop where I work was recently sent a big stack of paper in mill packs. According to the manager of the main warehouse in Perth, the paper was not selling quickly enough and so the line has been discontinued. “Find a way to get rid of it,” we were instructed.

Always curious about paper, I opened some of the mill packs up, and was amazed to find a really beautiful text-weight paper from some mill in Japan. It has a delicate laid texture, and comes in 15 hues —from a dark blue-black to a pale cream color—with yellows, greens, greys, blues, reds, and tints of apricot in between. It reminded me a lot of the old Fabriano Artist Diary that used to be made in Italy by the nearly-300 year-old paper mill Fedrigoni. Those Artist Diaries used to feature 10 to 12 different colors of paper…not just the pale and muted hues of sand, fawn, and so forth, but also bright reds, greens, and a sunflower yellow that never failed to cheer me. Fabriano still makes its Artist Diaries, but the colors these days are restricted to pastels and shades of grey or brown.

I asked my boss if I could buy the paper from the business, a little bit at a time, to make some very simple, strong, rustic-looking journals with strong, unadorned calf leather covers, for use as field and travel sketchbooks. She loved the idea, and I used my lunch hour that same day to fold and cut just enough sheets of this gorgeous paper to make two books.

I figure I have enough calf nubuck from my last trip to Asia to make 20 of these A5-sized journals…and probably some smaller scraps of the same leather to make little A6 ones, too.

For as long as the leather and paper last, I’m accepting orders at my ETSY shop for these. The colors have been listed as options…you can get a book in just one color of paper, or a mix of all the hues available, as the books in the photos are. And if you want to select just two, three, or however many colors? Just arbitrarily pick the “Mixed” option, but send me a message to let me know which colors you want included. Some of the colors are in very short supply, others come in full mill packs (or two!) so it really is first in, best dressed.

For my own journal, I think I’m doing on that is just sunflower yellow and Prussian blue… ooh, yummy!

link to my ETSY Shop RIGHT HERE. Thanks!

About these ads
Standard
embroidery and textiles, made with paper

Tea with Lady Lavender

tea

Hello, sorry It’s been so quiet on here. I’ve been quite busy making stuff…just didn’t remember to take pictures of anything I was doing, hence nothing to show you or blog about.

Yesterday I started working on a series of mixed media journal covers because I visited my own ETSY shop a few weeks ago, and things were looking very, very lonely and neglected. I am trying to get back into bookbinding now, because I have a dozen or so text blocks of beautiful paper all bound and ready for covers. The covers are always the hardest part (but also the most fun) because I don’t like to repeat myself, and I tend to get stuck for a long time, fiddling with tiny details on every single one.

The subject of this batch of journal covers is tea time; this one’s predominantly lavender. The base is painted artist’s canvas. I’ve used various papers—tea stained pages for the tea cup, and my own marbled paper for the tea, some gift tissue—and bits of fabric. Machine as well as hand stitching. Acrylic paints (and some dimensional glitter paint), acrylic inks, and some shading with colored pencils.

tea

tea

What have you been tinkering with lately?

Standard
bookbinding, stuff i've made

Light an old flame…

Spark something

1. Untitled, 2. City of Light (907), 3. Gorgons Head, 2003, 4. Twist and Shout, 2007-, 5. Royal Purple journal, 6. book 910 – 5, 7. Buggery: Beetles on books, 8. Sailing the night ocean, 9. postcards from the archipelago : sea monster attacks black ship…, 10. Untitled, 11. Cup o’ Lovin’, 12. Pterynotus bednalli miniature book(1 inch x 1 inch), 13. Miniature book (Simplified Codex), 14. the finished book…, 15. NON-PAREIL I, 2003, 16. “Gladiolus Rag” (Book 885), 17. Fauve Sunset, 18. Spider Lily (detail of embroidery), 19. Langstich und kettenstich, 20. Recent journals 1, 21. SCALLOP Amulet Book, 2004, 22. Closeup of a recent journal I made, 23. Only the Pure of Heart…, 24. Sorceress of Serendip, 25. 891, 26. Crazy Circus Chair, 27. heart shaped doily doodle…, 28. Lagooned in Gold, 29. Pilar’s Journal, 30. 895, 31. headbands, 32. Moroccan Diamonds, 33. caramel (no.906), 34. puff (no. 908), 35. Relax: Robyn’s Journal, 36. 904 : : Pink hippies

I feel pretty lousy for neglecting bookbinding. Well, that’s not the only activity I pretty much dropped when I became obsessed with learning to paint…I haven’t embroidered anything for ages, either! I’ve got to find a balance between this new painting bug, and everything else.

In an attempt to rekindle my bookbinding flame I was looking at my Flickr bookbinding set this evening. Seeing all these very different journal and book covers—particularly the old ones that I’d forgotten about—made me happy and sad. Most of these books are with other people, now, and it’s a bit like looking at a photo album of children who grew up and moved away. On impulse I made a mosaic of a few of them—fd’s flickr toys only allows 36 thumbnails so I’ve had to choose from among so many journals, and probably chose older ones simply because I haven’t seen them in so long, it’s like they’re new to me again.

I’ve got one day left to stay home and do something creative…what do you think I should work on: embroidery? Bookbinding? :)

Standard
art + design, bookbinding, classes + workshops, Creative Travel Journal, projects, stuff i've made

Week 4 of Designing a Creative Travel Journal

10 journal concepts

I quickly revised my problem from last week, and drew 10 new concepts for this week’s homework, submitted yesterday. In them, I’ve re-focused on the journal, with most of the storage space for things like postcards, ephemera, trinkets, pressed flowers, and all the other little bits and pieces that one collects along the way when moving through an unfamiliar place. Some of the books still have a little storage built in for things like a small tin of watercolours or pencils, pens, but I stopped thinking in terms of an entire bag dedicated to rolls of tape, glue sticks, and big fat tubes of acrylic paints or whatever else a person uses to artfully fill his/her journal.

I had to do these concepts the same week that I was actually supposed to be building prototypes. It took forever to make the leap from a concept, on paper, to actually making something. I dawdled ever so much! I think I was scared of finding out that my concepts were impossible to make in the 24 hours I had left before submission deadline. I’d done so well, so far, that I hated the idea of slipping behind, now that things were really getting interesting. My two chosen concepts involved techniques I didn’t have much practice in. Much of what I thought I knew was theoretical…like I figured it couldn’t be too hard to stitch a zipper on a pouch! But I’d never really tried, before. Finally stopped faffing around yesterday and put concept D together in three hours. Amazing how much theory and preparation you can do without once you stop overthinking and just do it.

Concept D: Journal and Jacket

prototype D

It’s VERY ROUGH, but the gist of the idea is there. A flexible wraparound cover jacket, with pockets and pouches on every available surface,
prototype D

and a leather strap that hooks into the book, through the little hollow between cover and text block that all my hand-bound books have, and snaps down on the cover to hold it in place.

prototype D
prototype D

This snap was a serendipitous find. I didn’t have any snaps, nor a snap setter, but as I was rummaging through an old toiletries pouch of buttons and buckles for something else to use, I saw that the pouch itself had a snap. Took a utility knife to that pouch in a flash, and stitched it on with rough and impatient abandon.
prototype D

Concept C is almost identical to Concept D; the only difference is that the book pages are bound to the cover in C. This sort of binding (a limp, or longstitch/linkstitch binding) would allow me to space the signatures out a bit more, accommodating the things to be added in by the user. But the idea of the re-usable jacket and journal refills seemed, on the whole, a more considerate and practical solution. I can work out how to space the pages in the journal itself later, I hope!
prototype D

Concept I: Dos a Dos book and box

prototype

I used two books, bought at the second-hand bookstore years ago, intending to use them in altered book projects I never started. They’re very faux elegant, pretentious things…fancy goldstamping on some horrible ‘leather-look’ textured paper, and only one edge of the pages is gilded: the top edge, which visitors are sure to see when this deep red set of Australia’s Great Books sits on a bookshelf. The other three sides of the text block are left plain.
prototype

I took the text block out of Adam Lindsay Gordon, and replaced it with clamshell box ‘jaws’. They’re uncovered, in these pictures, because I had to submit photographs an hour later, but I went and covered them afterwards. Then I simply glued the two books together, back-to-back and topsy-turvy, to resemble the binding format known as dos a dos (two to two).
prototype I

Some letters, photos, and trinkets in the clamshell box, to heighten that feeling of travel treasures…
prototype
prototype

And the completely indigestible, utterly boring pages of that great Australian classic—that nobody I’ve met seems to have read, but of whom everyone here speaks in hushed and reverent tones—We of The Never-Never on the other side. I read three chapters. I am thinking it’s time to do that altered book project now, and paint or draw on these pages.
prototype I

So, which one do you like better, D or I? And if you had to buy a travel journal, would you consider buying one of these (provided it was made properly, not out of placemats or old books)? I’m only asking to test how successful the designs were, but would love to hear what you think!

Related articles
Standard
aboard the M/V sonofagun, amazing people, craftiness, Inspirations, travel

Rumour book « Art of Kris Larsen

my Captain's Rumour Book

Kris has (once again!) shared some pictures of an amazing book on his blog. This is his own personal Captain’s Rumour Book…an intriguing, mystery-shrouded and jealously guarded secret tradition of all questing sea captains…

or  at least so Kris would have it, via the fantastic novel Railsea by China Miéville. :)

In Miéville’s work, rumour books are just that: a logbook where a captain who has devoted his/her entire life to hunting some great, elusive, near-mythical quarry (brilliantly referred to as “The Captain’s Philosophy”) jots down all the rumours—big and small— regarding his/her questing beast. Captains trade rumours of having sighted each other’s beasts, or sometimes they go to large, sprawling Rumour Markets to purchase them from reliable—and not-so-reliable—Rumour Merchants. Where does one find a Rumour Market? Well, the whereabouts of those are also just rumours, and you have to track down some Rumour Monger who might sell you that morsel of information.

Living with Kris is a big adventure. Every. Single. Day. I don’t know anyone else who could dig through a little box of knickknacks, pull out two wafer-thin, dark, small coins and nonchalantly tell this story about them:

“The upper coin is a Roman copper from the reign of Emperor Dioclecian 285-305 AD. It came from a shipwreck in the Adriatic Sea. I got it in barter from an Austrian diver I met in the Chagos Archipelago…the second coin comes from the medieval Arab city-state of Kilwa, which flourished in East Africa, today’s Tanzania. Overrun and destroyed by Portuguese in 1505 it never recovered. Coin is 500-700 years old. I bought it in Kilwa from local kids fossiking in the extensive ruins of Kilwa Kisimani…”

Emperor Dioclesian (285-305 AD

And, just to stir your imagination a bit more, from the same treasure trove that yielded the two coins, Kris pulled out and showed me a small green wine bottle—sandblasted by time and over 300 years old—that he came across while wandering the old Pirate Cemetery on Île Sainte-Marie in Madagascar. The idea is positively haunting.

What, you don’t believe me? Friends, I assure you, I paid top money for these rumours, and got them from a very reliable Rumour Monger! ;)

via Rumour book « Art of Kris Larsen.

Standard
art + design, classes + workshops, Creative Travel Journal, paints and pens, projects, stuff i've made

Designing a Creative Travel Journal 3 :: took a wrong turn, somewhere

decomp 10 concepts2

Week 3 of Design: Creation of Artifacts in Society, via coursera.org, introduced us to problem decomposition…you break a big problem up into small parts, and come up with all the possible solutions for each small part, independent of everything else. To give you an idea: if you were going to design a fabulous chocolate cake, with an experimental créme de cassis frosting, in the shape of a volkswagen, you would then go and make half a dozen kinds of chocolate cake, several versions of the alcoholic frosting, and also work out some plans for shaping and arranging pieces of cake into a volkswagen. Then you would try as many different combinations of the ideas in those three lists as was feasible, and ‘sketch’ them up as concepts.

I picked two latent needs to explore from my list in the last post:

First was that the journal could be carried on the body. Second was that it would have lots of pockets for all the souvenirs, plus the art materials, LED lights, ziplock bags for leftover curry, reading glasses, intra-uterine devices, USB drives, hypodermic needles, a spoon, a safety pin, pet hamsters, and all those other things friends as well as readers of this blog suggested. At about this point, snippets of the old fable about a man, his son, and a donkey, started to flicker behind my conscious thoughts.

decomp 10 concepts1

By decomposing each of these needs, I drew a lot of “attaches to the body” objects: backpacks, shoulder bags, belt bags (aka bum bags or fanny packs), things with hooks that could hang from your belt or your neck, stuff you could wear on your head, strap to your biceps or thighs, hide up your bum…

Then I tried to tackle the idea of storage, and found myself drawing boxes, a chest of drawers, zippered pouches, suitcases, pockets, envelopes, cargo pants, photographer’s jackets and other bits of clothing, even those shower accessories things, with pockets, that rolled up…all sorts of ridiculous things.

Then I tried to take something from list A and something from list B, and draw the concept. What I ended up with were a bunch of weird, bulky bags and rolls and things that looked like stuff an arctic explorer would take on an expedition. Once or twice I tried to lighten the load, and put more emphasis on the idea that somewhere in all this junk there was a journal…yes, a book! Most likely suffocating. One concept looked like the bibles carried around by missionaries in the jungles of Borneo. I threw in a modified medieval belt book (it’s wrapped in fabric like a big scarf and I added zippered pockets…there’s a knot or knob on the end that you slip underneath your belt, which is just a length of rope, because hey, it’s the 11th century, and you’re a Franciscan monk, okay?) and, in a kind of hysteric desperation, even drew an apron with some pockets. And ruffles. Called it the “Writer’s Apron”, shed a few tears of self-loathing, and went and got miserably drunk on the back step near the outhouse. It would be funny, except that it’s…not.
decomp 10 concepts3

So I knew I wasn’t in Kansas anymore. It became pretty obvious that I had to go back, all the way back, to the statement of the problem, and change it. I’m a bookbinder, for fuck’s sake, not a designer of Patagonia extreme hiking gear! WHERE IS THE DAMN BOOK?

My problem statement was actually two products, I realized. There was the carrying case for the journal…with pockets for various tools of journaling. This would be re-usable, because when a traveler finally gets home and puts her finished and precious journal on the shelf or coffee table, she doesn’t include her art materials, tape rolls, glue sticks or IUDs in the display.

And then there was the journal, with its own set of storage spaces for postcards, souvenirs, drawings, and things that wouldn’t get used again…they belonged with the journal, part of the memories gathered from the trip.

So Week 4, which requires two or three prototypes of the product, has been pretty crazy for me. I had to backpedal all the way to my problem statement, get rid of the bag/swag/roll idea, put aside all solutions for things like where to keep the hamster cage and the spoon, and instead unearth the poor, asphyxiating journal. My new set of concepts focuses on what can be done just with binding formats, the variety of pages inside, and how to include some pockets and things on the covers. Show you in a few days! Right now, I’ve got two or three prototypes to build in 24 hours!

Related articles
Standard
art + design, bookbinding, Creative Travel Journal, Inspirations, philosophy, projects

Designing a Creative Travel Journal part 2

New Years Day, 2003.

Okay, so here’s the list of user needs I came up with, as promised yesterday. The finished journal does not have to incorporate all these needs! In fact, some needs may even contradict others. At this stage in the design process, I don’t want to discard anything. Later I’ll have to narrow these needs down according to importance and practicability. I’ve interspersed some (pretty random) old photographs of journals, mail art, and whatnot, to liven the post up a bit…pictures do not correspond to anything in the text.

I’ve tried to identify these according to a model by Japanese design guru, Noriaki Kano, that Prof. Ulrich shared with us. So far this is the most interesting new thing I’ve learned, because I’ve never really thought about design and products in these ways before.

The Kano Model divides user needs into 4 groups:

  • Indifference—if you meet this need, user’s feelings are neutral. If you neglect to satisfy this need, user’s feelings are still neutral.
  • Linear (performance) needs—user’s dissatisfaction/satisfaction is directly proportional to the level this need is met (Note: price is often classified as a linear need)
  • Basic (must-have) needs—if you satisfy this need, even spectacularly, the user barely notices (neutral); but if you don’t satisfy this need, user is extremely unhappy…miserable, furious, disgusted.
  • Latent (Excitement) needs—this is the G-spot. These are unexpected features. If you don’t meet this need, the user doesn’t even notice it’s missing. But if you do meet the need, the user is delighted (and writes you chirpy fan mail, pins the product on Pinterest, blogs about it…you’ve struck gold.)

Needs in bold type are more abstract needs, followed by more specific needs that might fall under the more abstract one.
Needs in italics with an exclamation point (!)  are what I suspect could be the users’ latent needs.

Iban (Sarawak) scorpion design

Problem statement: How might I create a product that encourages travelers to write, collect, make art, take photographs and explore more on their travels?

Journal incorporates storage space for various things collected, recorded, and made during the trip
Journal has pockets for maps
Journal has pockets for small souvenirs like coins or charms
Journal has a place to store reading glasses
Journal has a place to keep the main writing pen handy but safe
! Journal has a place to store coloured pencils or watercolours and some paintbrushes
! Journal has a section for pressed objects and large drawings or visuals (ex. maps)
Journal has expanding pockets in the covers
! Journal comes with pocket of small tools—ruler, scissors, needles and thread, double-sided tape, glue stick, pencil sharpener…

Artistamp1 collage

Journal is strong, long-lasting and keeps contents secure
Journal has tough waterproof covers that can take abuse
Journal materials won’t rot or disintegrate in humidity
Journal binding is strong and pages won’t come out
Journal’s added contents are protected from the elements and don’t fall out
Journal pages accommodate a long trip (4 months to 1 year)
Materials are acid-free and archival

Journal is reasonably priced

Journal is customisable
Journal comes with ways to attach photos and postcards
! Journal comes with system of symbols to codify, personalise pages and flag entries
! Journal comes with pockets that can be glued down to pages where they’re wanted
! Options exist that allow user to order custom content to be printed before binding.

Untitled

Journal is convenient to carry
Journal fits into most handbags or backpack pockets
Journal is lightweight for carrying around and onto planes
Journal complies with airport security hand-carried baggage rules
Journal has a closure in place to keep it shut.
! Journal attaches to the body for easy carrying and access

from Kat

Journal is easy to deploy
Journal opens flat
Journal has at least three bookmark ribbons, and they don’t fray.
Journal sections are marked by dividers and tabs
Journal pages can be numbered and dated
! Journal has a table of contents or Index
Journal closures are quick to open and close

Andreas Hofer postcard

Journal is enjoyable to use
Journal exterior is beautiful and elegant
Printed text is in an elegant and readable font
Journal comes in several designs and colours to choose from
Pages are a mix of ruled, blank and grid-lined for different purposes.
Ink used to print lines is subtle
Paper used is of highest quality, for fountain pens, juicy inks, and watercolours
! Journal comes with ideas for fun entries and journaling techniques to use while travelling
! Journal comes with access to a community of  other users

September

Journal has useful travel information
Journal prominently displays owner information in case it gets lost.
Journal has an easy-to-access section for important information
Journal has pages for travel itinerary
Journal has world time conversions
Journal has pages for calendars
Journal has pages for budgeting and expenses
Journal has a directory for friends, contacts, shops, agencies, etc.
Journal has pages for most-used phrases in a foreign language
Journal has pages for transportation and lodging information
Journal has pages for travel and packing checklists
Journal has a section for plans and dreams, goals, or a wish list

▣

Related articles
Standard
art + design, Creative Travel Journal, Inspirations, projects, travel

Designing a creative travel journal, part 1

1-4 memento travel journal

I am doing an online course at the moment, via the coursera.org website. It’s called Design: Creation of Artifacts in Society, and is being given by Karl T. Ulrich of  the University of Pennsylvania.

Each student was asked to identify several “gaps” in personal life that seemed to cry out for some sort of design solution, and then pick one to work on for the 8-week course. We’re just about to start the third week, but I’ve already had to produce three schematic drawings, one physical prototype, and gather data via research and interviews to come up with 30+ user needs for my ‘product’! So yes, very busy, when you throw in the day job and real life! But I love the opportunity that the course gives me to work within the realm of my skills, yet provides new tools with which to expand that realm.

I decided to make some sort of journal/repository for creative travelers…an object I’d very much like for myself, but parts of which I thought might be incorporated into the hand-bound journals I sell in my shop, as well.
Travel journals need to be so much more than books with pages for writing. A traveler needs a place for important information, checklists and itineraries; needs somewhere to keep photographs, stamps and postcards, and a place for small objects like charms, seashells, pressed leaves, bottle caps, or “those bracelets from discos when you hook up with a guy,” as one of my interviewed users suggested.  There’s more than writing to be done on the pages, too—there’s sketching and art-making to take into account. Maps and travel routes. Quick access to useful foreign language phrases. Addresses and numbers of the people you meet, the shops where you found the best bargains (you think you’ll remember, but you won’t…write it down, or keep their business card!), and so on.

I’ve looked at a few commercially produced travel journals on the market…Moleskine’s Passions and City Notebooks, Nomad, Clairefontaine and Habana journals…

prototype 1.4 scaled03

Prototype 1.1 was pretty simple…after all, we hadn’t been taught anything yet in the first week! Ulrich just wanted to see what we’d come up with, initially. I used cardboard, brown paper, old magazine pages and duct tape to make a modified Limp Binding book, with pockets (mail envelopes) inside the covers, a pocket on the back of the book (for a set of aquarelle pencils or watercolours), and besides standard pages, stitched in an accordion book, some pockets with mylar ‘windows’ for photographs, and a small pamphlet-stitched notebook that can be pulled out and used separately from the main book.
prototype 1.4 scaled04

I had a hundred ideas for making the journal ever-more-fabulous as I stitched up this prototype…but anyone who’s been to uni learns NEVER to pour all of their brilliant ideas into the first prototype…what’ll you do for the rest of the 8-week course?
prototype 1.4 scaled06

Don’t go giving those professors the idea that you’re some kind of wunderkind, or they’ll expect you to build an iPad from scratch for the next prototype! Keep pace with the syllabus, pretend to make slow but steady progress under your professor’s gentle guidance—that idyllic, fairytale model of learning, so beloved of experts in education—and help create a warm and fuzzy feeling in the academe by reinforcing stereotypes of “The Mind: How It Works”. ;)
prototype 1.4 scaled07

Truth is (at least for me) that prototypes become obsolete long before I’ve finished them because while I’m waiting for things like glue to dry, my mind has raced ahead to assemble, use, disassemble, and improve the next three or four versions of the thing. You’ll often find me, coffee cup and cigarette in hands, staring into space, and you’ll think I’m spacing out, but what I’m really doing is building something, one step at a time, in my mind. Most of my design solutions are manufactured and tested in the lab behind my eyes. It’s cheap and saves time.

I’ve already put together a list of 30+ user needs for my proposed “ultimate travel journal”, but if you are the sort of person who keeps a creative journal while traveling, I’d love to hear your own ideas of what such a journal would have to include to make it your favorite. Just wondering whether I’ve overlooked anything. I’ll show you my own list of 30+ User Needs tomorrow…

Related articles

Featured on Freshly Pressed by WordPress

Standard