OUGD504 - Guidebook - Production

Once the booklet design was finished, I began trying out different prints on different stocks. I tried printing the booklet onto plain white A4 paper, but I felt this looked quite unprofessional and didn’t give off the right ‘vibe’ I wanted.

  

  

I then looked using sugar paper - an off-white colour that would match the quirky and ‘indie’ aesthetic of the publication. I trialed printing onto this stock and was shocked by how much I loved the print - the nature of the paper meant that the ink was absorbed in a different way to normal paper, leaving an almost grainy effect. This particular element was something I felt really added to my publication in a positive way, and gave it another dimension as such.

Also because the paper was off-white, it made all the colours appear differently in the flesh. At first I wasn’t too sure about this as the print-out looked very different to how I had originally designed it on-screen. After some feedback though, the colour of the print on the off-white paper really grew on me and I decided to take this
forward into my final print.

Once printed, I took the stock down to the binding room and bound it together using a simple saddle stitch. Whilst this was efficient and simple enough, I felt as though I could add something extra as a finishing touch. Using a lighter orange coloured thread, I used a
friendship braiding technique called the ‘chinese
staircase’ that wrapped around the saddle stitch. To me, this really resembled a vine-like plant, which tied everything together nicely.

  

  

Due to the independent nature of the magazine, this was appropriate, however if it were to be mass produced a more efficient and quicker method may have to be used.