[SPECIFICATIONS]
8.5 × 11 in, 52 pages
Printing: 1-color Risograph printed
Binding: Metal spiral binding
Cover Material: Gmund Colors Royal Blue 111lb C; Fabriano Emerald 160gsm; Skivertex Ubonga Black, Colorplan Ebony 135gsm.
Inner papers: Cougar Vellum Rough 120gsm, collated with offset swatches from Small Editions studio
Finishing details: Gold foil stamp on cover
Typefaces: Sabon, Grotesque MT
Production: Small Editions
Binding: Small Editions, with help from Caslon Yoon and Zachary Desjardins-Moony
Publisher: Small Editions
Edition of 500
Printed in Brooklyn, 2024
Paper and Ink is both a technical and theoretical resource for anyone wanting to use paper and printing to shape the message, atmosphere, and concept of a book. It’s our attempt to share the knowledge our studio has amassed through 150+ book projects over the past 5 years. It’s centered around the idea that things like paper, endsheets, thread, ink laydown, specialty finishes, folding structure, and cover material all belong to the book as much as its content, and it’s the designer who brings everything together under one cohesive plan. This requires not only material sensitivity—or an intuition of what “feels right”—but also an understanding of the possibilities and limitations of book production.
Because it’s impossible to truly understand paper or printing without feeling and seeing it in front of you, we included swatches from many of those projects—leftovers from accidents, make ready, or overage—alongside the text. We find so often in our commissioned studio work that there’s a disconnect between digital designs and printed reality. Bridging that gap requires experience and resources, which can be really hard to come by as an individual artist or designer. We hope this book can help readers leapfrog over some of that gap. Despite its technical nature, we think it reads like a love letter to bookmaking (at least to us book nerds).
The entire edition is printed, collated, and bound by hand. Each book contains different swatches, meaning each book is unique and imperfect by nature.
This title is held in the collections of:
Rhode Island School of Design
Yale University School of Art
Virginia Commonwealth University
Purchase the book here.
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