Book Arts, Graphic Design and Photography

One of the most common questions that I get is “What type of thread is best for binding my book?”

The two suppliers that I use most often for binding thread are Colophon Book Arts Supply and Talas. However, many many vendors sell thread for bookbinding. I have used silk button thread for a small book, since it was the only thread that I could find in the color that I wanted. The photo above shows types of thread most commonly used to sew books. The photo illustrates that binding thread is sold in different sizes. The second number 3, 5 and so on, indicates the number of strands that are wound together to form the thread. The first number indicates the thickness. Therefore thread that is labeled 25/3 is thinner than 18/3. Most often I use 16/3 or 18/3. But every project varies and I seldom ever say one size fits all. It is best to have a variety of size and colors on hand.  I am not real sure how vendors determine the first number. My best guestimation is that it relates to the length of thread need to equal a set amount of weight. I am not sure where along the way I heard this. Perhaps you can let me know the best answer.

It is easy, just watch this very short animation. Set the type upside down or “wrong reading” Click here if you have trouble getting the video to play.

Over a year ago, students in my Art 356 Print Production class designed layouts for a tutorial hand-out on Pressure Printing, also known as Stratography.

Tracy Honn provided the text from a hand-out that she used at a conference. I took photos of Carol Parker’s book that she created when she was in graduate school along with the original plates. Tracy Honn and Sarah Noreen printed a demo for photographs at the Silver Buckle Press. Two solutions are available for download. Alyssa Grabski’s solution is here. A link to Meg Neuville’s is here. Let me know if you have any questions.

Poet, writer and filmmaker Jimmy Santiago Baca met with students and staff at the Multicultural Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison recently. The focus of the meeting was to discuss how to build unity and increase awareness for Latino students. It was a pleasure to see such a well know writer and activist meet with students. You can see a photograph of Jimmy Santiago Back .

You may know that I created an account for the Art 356 class on the delicious.com site. You can see lots of sites that are related to the class. Also, please post websites that you interesting for other classmates. To post to the art 356 account go to delicious.com/post and tag the site. Let me know if you forgot the login name or password.

Two Rivers Wisconsin is home to the Hamilton Museum of Wood Type. This link will take you to a gallery of images that I took during a tour with Phil Hamilton and John Rieben.

This is a test to distribute a handout for binding a simple pamphlet stitch book.
Pamphlet Binding Stitch

Dennis Michael Peterson drew a large arrow on frosted mylar. As an experiment, we thought it would be fun to take a digital photo of the drawing and scale it down to print it on our letterpress printing press. His original graphite drawing is about 2 x 3 feet. In Adobe Photoshop we converted the image to a greyscale, set the image size to 8.5 x 11 inches and set the resolution to 300 ppi. The kind folks at Smartset in Minneapolis, MN made the negative for us and quickly mailed it to us. These plates are actually smaller samples that we had made for printing on a post card. Once the larger version is done, we will add more images to this post.
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Information and photos from Sandra Anible’s paste paper demo will be posted soon. Write me if you did not pick up one of her handouts.

When you select a font in InDesign® from the font menu, check the icons to the left of the font’s name. The icon is there to let you know the type format. The O indicates OpenType fonts, the TT is for TrueType fonts and the red a is for PostScript fonts. Get to know the advantages of each format.