Stitch Binding with Exposed Spine: Designing, printing and making publications.

When considering the writing and printing of dedicated texts, one of the features that we love to do is book design. With over thirty years of experience in content creation and design, we look carefully at the core of the writer’s intention.

In this example, we created with copies that are now deposited in several libraries within New Zealand and the USA. The title of the work is The Passing: A metaphoric interpretation of the impermanence of the book and was a featured publication in an exhibition dedicated to the physical book and the sense of apparent loss as the digital age marches on.

Book Design
The basis of the book, its design, and the exhibition was inspired by a text about the care of books in libraries and was printed in 1901. With this in mind, the design considered the core meaning from the text, that the approach considers each viewer and their impressions, and how the reader will handle the book and leaving traces of their touch on the physical book itself. The paper chosen for the publication replicates the feel and touch of papers used over a century ago. The covers were designed to be separate front and back boards and with the spine exposed, revealing the hand stitched pages. The design included chapters that were printed and folded as sections (publishers call these signatures). The signatures are usually hidden behind a leather or book cloth case binding that covers the spine. This cover is intended to protect the threads, but very old codexes often had those threads exposed.

The gallery images show printed sheets pasted onto book boards for the front cover and back cover (not shown). The hand stitched spine reveals the thread and sections that make up the internal pages, detail and full view of the introduction page.