Courtney Richmond - Production

Due to the way that we wanted the book to be bound, with a leather casing in a traditional style with gold gilding and embossing of the title and decorative features, we had to find a specialist bookbinding company which would be able to complete the request. Through recommendation of an agency was working with at the time of this brief beginning I mention the fact of the need for speciality binding, the managing director of the agency recommended the company Hollingworth and Moss to me who were speciality binding company based in Leeds. To which we contacted the company as can be seen below in figure 1, after investigating into their website and finding out they had the perfect type of finding which we required.

Binders Website

Binding Inverstigation

Quote

Once the print was formatted in the correct manner to be able to fit in with the way the company had quoted us, it was sent to print and collected from their local warehouse where the bookbinding itself occurs. This allowed for Courtney to not encourage delivery fee and also speed up the process of the production itself. The document was sent off and checked over multiple times by ourselves.

Although when it came to the day of collecting the print, we had found the company had actually produced the book backwards and printed it as such, they had also not completed the leather bound casing to the standard which was quoted and also which was expected for the price paid for the book, all of which was  specified before the order was put in. The company offered to rectify this, so we returned to the company and was later to be able to collect the rectified book the book this time and be bound in the correct way but still with the wrong type of cover which they refuse to redo without adding extra cost and an extra three weeks to production time. Once we open the book they had bounded in the incorrect method to using the inner crop marks rather than the outer they had not accounted for the centre spine image loss, which was detrimental to the book due to the fact that it had quite a few pages which had double page images.

Therefore they offered to reprint it yet again. On the third attempt all seemed well at first, despite the fact that the cover was still not to the standard that was quoted for or expected, but after we had the books of 24 hours, the glue which had been used in the binding had seeped onto the double spread images and ruined them.

Wrong Bind

Wrong Cut

Glue Seeping

Wrong Paper stock

The overall experience was horrific and we refuse to pay for the production of a lacklustre rushed job, when questioned about this the printers claimed due to the fact that the book was a bespoke one of print they didn't bother having anyone to check it and didn't put that much time nor effort into the actual printing and binding process due to the fact that had to be rushed twice to simply get the correct page order. On top of this the third print had an incorrect paper stock distorting the colour of the images themselves.

Solution

Due to the fact that the printers were incapable of producing the order in which we paid for, we will be looking for other methods of production. Due to the fact that this brief had been sent recently, in order to be able to get the different shoots that were needed edited and processed and designed in the way that it would be fitting with the book, we were unable to have the book reprinted in time for my deadline, although we are looking for a printer to be able to produce the product in time for the photographers deadline which should be no issue at all.

In the meantime we will be producing zines with a different company which can be manhandled in the way that a letter but could not, to sit alongside the leather book within the end of year production show, to showcase the photographers work in a malleable way. Due to financial constraints this will not be done until closer towards the time of the show itself, which is in June, although the file is processed and ready to go. This includes a front cover design which can be seen below in figure 2, due to the fact that scene will be digitally printed I created a cover design that resembled the decorative embellishments which we were expecting from the physical copy that was produced.The design was created using a leather texture and vintage flourishes inspired by the books found within the research stages. The typeface itself  used on the front is a mix of Baskerville italic and Baskerville bold, with the title of the book that the photographer chose ‘Oh Darling, Isn’t it Marvellous’.

To be able to show the way in which this will be produced due to the fact that the physical object will not be completed till after my deadline, I’ve created a mockup to show the exact style and quality of the book once it is printed in the correct means.