Book Binding & Photoshop

Recently at uni, I completed some illustration skills workshops.

The morning session focused on bookbinding. To begin, we were shown different binding styles and cover materials.

My pamphlet-bound book

For the first task, we had to create a book using pamphlet binding, a relatively simple form of binding. It can be used, for example, to produce a small book as a gift to clients to show off your artwork. 

The binding involved first folding the paper and the cover with precision, then creating five small holes along the spine, leading to sewing the book together using a running stitch. We were then taught how to use a guillotine machine to trim the book for neatness, something I found difficult at first as the machine required a lot of force to use.

Despite finding it difficult to fold the paper evenly, and line up the holes when stitching, I would love to have another go at it in future projects as I was pleased with end result - a charming little book.

                                       

              My perfect-bound book

Afterwards, we learned how to create a 'perfect' bound book. 

It involves the use of a glue binding machine, after folding the book cover in a way that creates 'gulley' or spine so that it can contain the paper. With this binding method then machine essentially creates book for you, applying hot glue to the edges of the paper and binding it to the cover.

In theory, this method can be seen as more desirable as it is heavily machine-based and the books produced can contain more paper, however I personally preferred the more simplistic charm of pamphlet binding. I would use it when creating larger books for efficiency.

My Photoshop rabbits

The afternoon session focused on developing digital skills in Photoshop. We were tasked with manipulating images of rabbits in various ways (such as changing it's colour) in order to learn Photoshop techniques.

As I work mostly in Procreate, I was not familiar with Photoshop, but I quickly got the hang of it, mostly through trial and error. I enjoyed working with it immensely, and look forward to learning more Photoshop and other digital software skills in the future, and applying the knowledge I gained to my own artwork.