Concertina

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Please don’t judge me unless you love it: I signed up for a bookmaking class this semester.

Thus far, I have been surprised with how much I am enjoying it! Besides the occasional stress-relief and breathing exercises, I have learned a lot about binding books and the book as an art form. It’s a really relaxed class because it feels more like an arts and crafts class than a studio, but I am learning and producing great things! Also, can you imagine how handy this skill will be in design? Answer is “very”.

Our first book was a “to-and-fro” book. Our first interesting book was the concertina fold. It’s basically an accordion fold that pages are glued or sewn on. I’ve been flirting with this idea of deconstructing a children’s book and cropping the pages in one of my books. Naturally, once we learned an interesting enough binding technique, I ran to Goodwill and bought five or six books.

Check out how adorable these are. It is becoming hard to type because my heart is melting, but I’ll try to continue.

Basically, I just tore these books apart and exacto’d them to 5×7. I glued them onto my yellow accordion “concertina” binding, which was a pain because they weren’t all exactly even so some stick out at odd angles (nothing a little tweaking won’t fix!)

Here it is partially complete with my covers underneath. Once this book is complete with covers and any extra little additions I plan on making, I will definitely upload photos so you can understand the scale and nature of this book. I’m not in love with this concertina binding, but MUCH more fun, and prettier, than that first one the class was taught. Blah!

Has anyone else ever tried bookmaking? Want me to scan my handouts and post them online? Haha

Have a good one, everyone! I’d love to hear back from you

-Alyssa Lee

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