Design Center: Beginning Book Arts Lab

Catalog description

This is a class of basic issues regarding hand bookbinding and letterpress printing. It's purpose is to develop a basic structural sense of book forms, of flat format work and of three dimensional forms. Learning hand craft techniques, developing hand skills and the sensitivity to materials are also a goal. Binding projects assigned will target the unique nature of papers, fabrics and archival card-boards. Structural procedures and techniques will be identified with each assigned binding project. The binding projects will be: A hardcover for a paper back book, a single signature book, a multi-signature book with flat spine, and a box construction. The box project is designed and crafted to contain a small letterpress printed class edition, either in book form, or as a set of un-bound pages. The letterpress component teaches the standard issues, unique to the relief process, in press work, handset procedure of cast metal type, page form spacing, lock-up of pages in press, proofing, and production printing. Each semester a small class edition project of text content and image, in two-color registration, is designed, hand set and printed. Image generation can be by hand cut block, assembled type-high forms, or digital process to polymer plate. This class is not to be repeated.