I feel that the main issue lay in who I took advice from. The advice of some of the tutors was contradictory and this was through no fault of their own. To improve the production, I would have approached the tutors at Rossington Street prior to printing my spreads. I would have presented my book sketches to get an idea as to whether this was feasible and how I could physically produce it. This way I would not already have my book printed and require that copy to be bound. Perhaps this way I could have considered the final product more carefully, rather than it being a construction of the pages that I had printed.
Printing was another issue. I have learned that if there is a printing error that is not my fault I should mention it straight away rather than leaving it until another drop in which consumed more time.
I feel that another flaw in this project was that although I created a mock up, I should have created an actual bound mock up using a black and white copy rather than a paper mock up using tape. This way I could have worked out if the binding method would actually have worked, as it seemed feasible in the paper copy. I had planned to do this, but the printer in the studio seemed to print the booklet out incorrectly. In hindsight, I would have tried another studio printer, but I had used too much printer credit at the time to do this.
Other than the technical issues I faced, if I were to complete the project again I would personally aim to be more creative. I feel that although I was adventurous with the binding, I should have tried a more creative layout, or stock.
Despite the issues I faced in this project, I was successful in many areas. Firstly, I feel that I mastered time management by booking my book binding and print room appointments in advance. This led to a smoother process. If I had not been so organised, the issues I faced would have set me back much more.
Secondly, despite not being as creative with the layout, I was still pleased with the design overall and received feedback from the class (which were effectively my target audience) that the design appealed to them. I was also prepared in that I printed out mock-up pages to test the size of the page and the ideal type and body copy size.
I feel that my type setting was good, as this was the aim of the project. Some paragraphs were difficult to typeset due to their content. However, with time I will learn how to tackle awkward content. To a professional eye, it is likely that my type setting is not perfect. Perfect type setting is something I am aiming for in second and third year.
Overall, I felt that this project could have been carried out more effectively. However, I am pleased that I have learned so much from my mistakes and overall I feel the mistakes will improve my practice more on the whole. My interest in book binding has only increased with this project and I plan to produce hand bound notebooks in the future which I could potentially sell.
Here is the final product:
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