Binding Together

After meeting Kavya, we three- Me, Aman and Kunal- decided to sit together and go through the binding process. We met the same afternoon with our materials, tools and substitutes that we had or tried to get. Buying paper, understanding materials and finally BINDING TOGETHER was great fun.

The tools we used included pencil, scale, paper,cardboard, needle, awl, fevicol/adhesive, substitutes of weights(books) etc.

We bound 6 books altogether-2 each. The 2 types of bindings we explored were:

1. Long Stitch Binding

2.Section Sewing

Kavya se Baatein

Kavya Aggarwal is an entrepreneur who has a start-up known as “KAAGZI COLLABORATIVE”, which is officially an year old. Kavya is a NID graduate.

This interview was a detailed one with plethora of questions to get her views on Hand Book Binding, how she started, how did she learn, what types of bindings she deals in, her views on manual- how helpful will it be(according to her), her views on DIY, what tools equipments and substitutes she uses, her target audience, and more and she answered them all very patiently with a smile on her face.

Meeting Immanuel Suresh

This was the 1st meeting with Suresh(Kunal and Paul’s Guide). It was more of an interactive session and started with “What is the similarity between the 2 MANUALS- Instruction Manual and Manual Book Binding.

He told us that we not just have to know the Binding techniques but we also need to know what Publication Design is as the Instruction Manual to be designed is nothing but Publication Design. He also asked us to understand who the USER will be(Target Audience).

MANUAL IS SOMETHING THAT MAKES YOU DO(Doing is the core idea)

Instruction Manual- Certain methods that direct you to do it, i.e. it navigates the user through a particular process(The purpose)

He briefly told us how a manual varies from other aspects of publication design.

We also discussed about what Design Decisions we need to take- Type, Images, Illustrations, Paper, Space, Cost etc.

It was an interesting discussion which left us with interesting insights and yes WITH LOADS OF WORK

Re Search to Research…

To understand more about what Book Binding is, the tools, equipments and substitutes, the process, illustrations, etc.(a very long list) I thought of reading and going through the books available in the KMC(at NID), namely:

1. A History of English Craft Book Binding Technique, by Benard C. Middleton- Deals with         decoration of covers rather than structure of the book and the Binding process

2.Modern Book Binding, by Alex J. Vavghan- Informs about the Letterpress Binding and             Stationery Binding. The basic process: Folding, Gathering, Sewing, Cutting, Backing,               Case making and so on.

3. Introduction To Book Binding, by Lionel S. Darley

These books were helpful in some way but apart from being very elaborate I found nothing that was related to the Indian context.

Finally the 1st Guide meeting

This being our 1st Design Project all 5 of us(Aman, Bhoomika, Kunal , Paul and me ofcourse ) working on the same project were eager to meet Tarun and know more about  the project and directions to work.

We all sat together to figure out what  the project is about, what we need to do, what important decisions are to be taken, how research needs to be done etc. …

And the discussion included

Why this project?

Out of all the 11 choices given to us, the core reason behind choosing this project was that I always have been learning things from manuals or through instructions but for the first time its a chance to help others do the same by exploring  and finding  interesting ways to do it. The second reason was that before these  projects were being introduced to us I  already had gone through the process of learning and doing Hand Book Binding once, taught at Print Labs at NID, which was very interesting  .

The project being a combination of pitch and live both gave us an idea that the end deliverable might be a printed manual which means it’s a good opportunity to learn Publication Design, which I have never done before.

The next crucial  task that followed was making a proposal which was :

Proposal

With the final proposal(up till now) I approached Tarun to be my guide to which he agreed the same day. 

Deb Caletti says:

We are thickly layered,

page lying upon page,

behind simple covers.

And love – it is not the book itself, but the BINDING.