Typophile - Wire bindings: smart or cheap? - Comments

the problem I have with

innovati — Mon, 19 May 2008 17:22:59 -0700

the problem I have with spiral bound is where it’s small and the pages don’t copmletely turn and they get all bunched up on each other and folded and then you can’t close them and you can’t open them and it just makes you want to tear your hair out.

But I have seen elegant spiralbound solutions too.

Classic!

KenBessie — Wed, 14 May 2008 08:23:33 -0700

Classic!

Here it is: It came out

James Puckett — Tue, 13 May 2008 17:15:38 -0700

Here it is:

It came out well given that I had to tighten the wires by hand. Apparently hardcovers don’t work in the machine the Corcoran keeps around, but no surprise there…

Actually, we had a class on

dezcom — Tue, 13 May 2008 16:39:58 -0700

Actually, we had a class on binding in design school. As a final project, we had to hand bind a book of our calligraphy work. It was fun as I recall. I was not so good at threading the needle though and luckily there were only a few stiches per signature.

ChrisL

The difference was we were

Linda Cunningham — Tue, 13 May 2008 16:33:54 -0700

The difference was we were bent over a drawing table instead of working at a computer.

You had a drawing table? Hah! We had to make our own drawing tables by finding slate slabs and splitting them to get a flat surface, and then getting two real horses to stand still with one end of the slab on each back to get a surface to draw on. ;-)

While I was apprenticing a couple of weeks ago, I learned a very simple sewn binding that would have taken you an hour or so — easier and considerably cheaper than wire-o.... (Can’t find instructions or a tutorial for it on the web, though!)

Oh, you “Rubylith days”

KenBessie — Tue, 13 May 2008 12:12:15 -0700

Oh, you “Rubylith days” guys had it so good. We had to walk for miles in the snow (uphill, both ways) just to get to the Rubylith mines. Then we had to dig in the mines 24 hours a day just to get enough Rubylith to carry back so we could sit, hunched over, at a drawing table for 24 hours a day.

But, seriously, James, I’m glad you’re happy with your solution. Can you post a photo?

“Yeah, but did you guys

dezcom — Tue, 13 May 2008 11:53:22 -0700

“Yeah, but did you guys get assigned entire magazines back in the Rubylith age?”
James,
I won’t go into how tough it was in the Rubilith days. You have to remember that there were still 24 hours in a day then as there are now. We worked about 16 hours a day as students then, slept about 5 hours and ate, drank, and partied the rest. I don’t imagine things have changed that much for you young guys today. The difference was we were bent over a drawing table instead of working at a computer.

ChrisL

No, but they made them

James Puckett — Tue, 13 May 2008 11:16:34 -0700

No, but they made them anyway to showcase their awesomeness.

Never a bad idea…I’m sitting here printing an extra magazine to showcase my awesomeness right now…

Of course, I guess that people doing magazine layout spent much of their lives hunched over a board, so I should probably shut up.

>Yeah, but did you guys get

dan_reynolds — Tue, 13 May 2008 11:10:31 -0700

>Yeah, but did you guys get assigned entire magazines back in the Rubylith age?

No, but they made them anyway to showcase their awesomeness.

Good thing you were not in

James Puckett — Tue, 13 May 2008 10:25:56 -0700

Good thing you were not in design school 30 years ago :-)

Yeah, but did you guys get assigned entire magazines back in the Rubylith age?

“if I can manage to stand

dezcom — Tue, 13 May 2008 09:24:19 -0700

“if I can manage to stand over my drawing board that long—right now my neck and shoulders are killing me”

Good thing you were not in design school 30 years ago :-)

ChrisL

I ended up doing Wire-O and

James Puckett — Tue, 13 May 2008 09:00:44 -0700

I ended up doing Wire-O and it came out really well (spending eight hours printing feeding in matte photo paper helped). I’m going to try putting dust jacket over the whole thing if I can manage to stand over my drawing board that long—right now my neck and shoulders are killing me from being hunched over that thing.

I am coming in quite late,

Ricardo Cordoba — Tue, 13 May 2008 08:27:33 -0700

I am coming in quite late, James, but if I could only choose wire binding, I would go with wire-o. It’s probably just personal taste, as Ken suggests, but I feel that wire-o is a bit classier-looking than coil binding... Coil binding tends to be thick and colorful, while wire-o is usually thin and black. And as others have already said, with wire-o your pages will align. And coil binding tends to come undone more easily, in my experience.

[EDIT] Oh, and I agree with Nora... It depends on how you use it. What I said about coil binding applies to the plastic variety, not the metal kind shown in Nora’s photos!

Thanks for suggesting the

James Puckett — Tue, 13 May 2008 07:16:04 -0700

Thanks for suggesting the hidden binding, I didn’t even think about it! I’ll definitely use that for the cover on the final portfolio piece.

It’s like using Helvetica

nora g — Tue, 13 May 2008 05:39:39 -0700

It’s like using Helvetica ... can be smart .... or cheap. Depends on how you use it. IMO there are are a lot of spiral bindings looking ugly. I hate the plastic bindings but I like the metal spiral binding. A very simple method to make it look less ugly in the eyes of your “book-arts-friends” is to make a hidden spiral binding. You add as last “sheet” to bind no “sheet of paper” but a simple cardboard with the width of approx. 4 times the width of your papersize plus the width of the spine (??correct term??). The cardboard is four times ??channeled/scored??. After binding you can fold the cover.

Wire bindings: smart or cheap?

James Puckett — Tue, 6 May 2008 10:48:28 -0700

I’m designing a short publication of one of the work done in one of my classes this semester and thinking about having it wire bound. It probably won’t exceed 40 pages so I’m thinking that a perfect binding will just fall apart, and I want it to lay flat so I can talk about it in interviews without having to hold it down. So I want to have it spiral bound.

My book-arts friends think I’m just some sort of lazy monster, and are trying to convince me to do some wacky stitched binding or some other crazy thing, and say spiral bindings look cheap. Do designers really look down on spiral bindings, or are my friends just being snotty because they want to see everything hand bound from five kinds of paper with printed vellum tip-ins?