Making New Books

For a while now I've been thinking about making some new books for the Small Publishers Fair which this year will be held on the 16 & 17 November, at Conway Hall, Red Lion Square, London.

I find it so easy to procrastinate. I read somwhere that, 'The main thing is to begin, the next main thing is to FINISH. Anything can happen in between'.

With that in mind and to start the ball rolling I took something I wrote about 3 years ago and began with that, intending to write something new but discovering that I like what's happening with this.

This shows the idea taking shape, with some paper off-cuts and a photocopied image.

To take things a little further I cut some paper to what I thought would be a good finished size, using digital text and a photocopied image I made up a prototype.

I like a generous amount of space around text, and especially the image. My aim being to encourage the eye to linger and rest on the page - to give enough space to concentrate on what's there.

I like the way things are taking shape, but I'm not yet convinced by the cover. 

I do want to use blind emboss for the title, however, this might not be the best book for that - I'll see when I've tried out a few more alternatives.

In the meantime I'm going to cut a lino block for the images, and maybe try out letterpress for the text . . . . of course that will depend very much on which type I have - I do like the digital font I've chosen.