Artist's Books To create the content for this chapter, we designed books for friends who are artists. Each artist specializes in a different medium: painting, song writing, photography, and mixed media. By designing the books in response to the artists’ work, we were able to test a variety of formats and binding methods.

We used some of the binding methods presented in the blank books chapter as well as some new ones. Whereas the design and production of a blank book hinges largely on materials and construction methods, printed books pose additional problems of reproduction and assembly. For example, careful planning is required to set up printed pages so that they can be bound together in a signature. Below are questions to consider in deciding what type of book is appropriate for your needs.

The Painter Lori Larusso is an artist who wanted to produce a self-promotional piece that would show two different aspects of her work and yet keep them distinct. She needed ten books to distribute to curators and for grant proposals. An accordion-fold book mirrors the “two-fold” nature of Lori’s work by permitting two bodies of work to exist separately, printed on opposite sides of the page, yet contained within one book. Reproducing her paintings demanded attention to color. We carefully monitored the output from our inkjet printer and adjusted our print settings to keep the color of the prints as close as possible to the color of the paintings.

The accordion fold allows the book to function both as a poster and a book. The viewer can look at the work as one long spread or flip through page by page just like a standard book. The first page of the piece can serve as the cover, or you can attach heavier-weight covers to the front and back as an additional feature (as we did here). The covers of Lori’s book were screen-printed on chip board and then attached using Xyron permanent adhesive.

The Lyricist Roshan Gurusinghe is a production artist by day and lyricist/musician by night. He writes lyrics for the Seattle bands, baby i love you and Booker Brown. Roshan wanted to present his lyrics in the format of a book. He needed at least 300 copies for various projects, and he wanted to be able to produce more books as needed. A photocopied, saddle-wired booklet was an economical solution.

A saddle wire is a metal stitch (like a staple) placed through the center fold of a single signature. Copy centers provide this service, or you can do it yourself with a long-necked stapler, available at office supply stores. Saddle-wired books lie flat when opened. For the best results, keep your page count under twenty-four pages; otherwise the book will bow open around the center spread. Saddle wiring can only be used to bind a single-signature book. If you don’t want the wire to show, make a paper book jacket to wrap around the cover.

When preparing files for a saddle-wired book, you must arrange your pages in printer's spreads, because when the pages are folded and bound together, they will be in a different order from how they are designed on screen (except for the center spread). This process is also called imposition, the arrangement of pages for printing.

Photocopying is an affordable printing method for a relatively short-run project like this one. You can achieve a sophisticated effect by substituting standard photocopy paper with more interesting papers. We used an off-white textured card stock for the cover and a lighter-weight off-white paper for the text block. We inserted end sheets made of tinted vellum between the cover and the text block, offering an element of surprise, variation, and color as the reader opens the book.

The Mixed Media Artist Alexis Peskine is an artist from Paris who wants to promote his work to galleries in New York. The book needs to be easy to carry around and inexpensive to mail.

The solution was a 5-x-5-inch portfolio with metal binding studs that mimic the dots and nails he uses in his work. To make the book easier to open, we sandwiched sheets of translucent vellum paper between back-to-back pairs of color prints. The vellum sheets are an inch or so longer than the prints, creating a flexible hinge towards the spine of the book. We punched holes through the vellum hinge, and we used binding studs to hold the sheets together. This method allows for more flexibility when turning the page.