The last week brought the stress of production and the pressure to make final decisions. My original hope was to bind my book with an exposed spine and using a coptic stitch however in attempts to have the book fold all the way open I decided I wanted each signature to be only one sheet. This provided some challenges in formatting my document so that it would print properly.
In the end, as with any last-minute printing job, things went awry and I ended up with single pages printed with the wrong margins and stuck doing a perfect bind. Due to the thickness of paper that I selected this was not the most successfully produced. It became a learning block for my second attempt and resubmission of the exposed spine, which with a bit more refinement and work turned out!
I was initially drawn to the exposed spine idea for the visual aspect but also its coherence with my concept. For me, the exposed spine reflected the exposing nature of the poetry inside the book. The poems are quite raw and some accusatory of gender norms and men's interaction with women.
Also in regards to production, I wanted to use thick paper and a solid cover to provide a durability and solidity to the book. I find that I enjoy heavier paper and that I feel it holds more importance. As well, as it was not a super long text, the thicker paper gives more volume to the book.
Finally, I was very happy with how the black printing on black paper turned out on the covers. Ideally I would have enjoyed printing in white ink on the cover as well, however did not have access to this for this project.
For the inside pages I printed on a matt stock. I was hoping to print on a felt stock that provided a very interesting texture to the page however it was only available in much heavier stocks and did not make sense to use. The cover is printed on a black card stock from Deserres and wrapped and glued around a piece of board.
