So… moving on from prototype 4, I applied all the adjustments, translated the updated text from Romanian to English, then reached out to John Cutrone and Karrie Frasman asking for feedback on the English text. Thankfully, this time round all the edits were just commas, so I finally had a version ready to print.
Since I felt prototype 2 worked better than both 3 and 4, I contacted a different printer, in an attempt to have all the spreads printed on high end self-adhesive paper. I asked them to print two test copies. The process was as follows – in the studio, I attached each spread to a cardboard back, with a kiss-cut for the fold, and then glued all the resulting units together. The adhesive paper was laser-printer safe, so I was confident I could later print the bulk of the book in-house. I also tested several varnish combinations – including varnishing all the pages with acrylic binder, and folding them afterwards – in an attempt to avoid the dreaded white fold line. At this point I might have been… grossly underestimating the work it would take to make 20 copies at the studio in this manner.
Protoype 05 will go down in history as Warpy McWarpface, because I read online that you are supposed to use PVA glue for bookbinding. I diluted the glue with 50% water (because that’s what we used to to at the art highschool) and… well… all the pages warped DRAMATICALLY. Also, the acrilic binder on the folds? it does nothing.
For prototype 06 I used the right kind of glue, and it really did look like the perfect solution, so I bought the nice laser printer safe self adhesive in a 100 A4 pages batch – and I still have 98 of them. Because, while they are laser printer safe, they are also just a little bit to thick for my own laser printer.
So, I gave up on the self adhesive paper idea (to be honest, it was also taking A LOT of time). I went back to the prototypes, decided that number 04 didn’t look so bad after all. Therefore, I searched the internet for a bulk distributor, bought a lot of Fabriano Accademia paper… and moved on to the final stage.
(Spoiler alert – it took another… 6 months).
