Independent Art and Photography - Making the book, part 1...

So with a prototype already made, it was easy to see where I needed to make adjustments whilst constructing my final book. I re-aligned some of the images on the page, making sure that all the pages were consistent.

I then bought some matte double sided paper. I wanted the images to be matte to imitate more of a 'zine style as opposed to the gloss finish you would more expect to see in a book. I wanted the paper to be thick enough so that the viewer couldn't see the image on the other side through, but thin enough to make sure that is still easily to manipulate to keep it as a tangible object. I also had to consider that I would be using lots of lap folds to attach different images to each other, so if i had used too thick paper the fold would not be crisp.

I then had to make sure all the borders were consistent, and start folding. I used a bone folder to make sure there was a crisp edge to the pages.

After folding I then had to make my fold out section. To do this, I had to make several lap folds ( a tiny fold on one edge of the image which is then attached to the other image). The fold had to be crisp and precisely measured to ensure that the page folds in properly and doesn't get caught up on any other images when the book is folded closed.

I did exactly the same thing with the long series of shop fronts - firstly sticking each image to one another and then finally on to the book itself.

Once all the pages were folded and stuck, I just needed to flatten them down under some heavy books overnight so that the book didn't spring open when laid flat. After they were all flattened I would need to make the cover, bore the holes in all pages and then finally stitch it all together...