14 Nov 2016 — What we will print (and also about the production)

From Nuphap Aunyanuphap to Silviã Lãnfrãnchi

It’s quite hard to realize that our final workshop with Relational Design have finally passed (especially in a very beautiful and inspiring city like Barcelona)

However, looking on the bright side, we can now fully manage our time on our project. ;-)

Also, thanks again for your input on the previous post. Still, I haven’t got a chance to find the english version of The Future of Books by Robert Darnton. Anyway, I’ll keep search!

ps. for those who are wondering about what this project is about, please see here for the project info.

Regarding what we will print…

Alice in Wonderland’s illustration by Sir John Tenniel — Archive.org

Since we’re taking Alice in Wonderland as our first head start title, I liked really much the idea that we’ve previously discussed: how our publishing house could focus on public domain titles.

Here are the reasons:

1. Our publishing house could serve as a physical ground at which people can have access to those titles (which are available on an digital online archive). Here, it doesn’t mean that those titles cannot be found anywhere else in printed format, but our publishing house can be a place where this aspect of the book are made visible and pronounced.
2. We can bring back and/or reinvent the value of classic titles by reintroducing them to the public with modern and contemporary design, production, and distribution process.
3. As before, doing so would eliminate the ‘content’ and ‘editing’ process of book publishing, leaving us more time to explore and innovate the design, production and distribution process. (However, this aspect is now a supplementary to the two important and interesting values above).

Here, I would propose, for now, that we focus now on literature titles because, first, our initial title is Alice in wonderland. Also because there are alot of open sourced literature titles available online, and some of them might have open sourced illustrations that we can experiment with.

What do you think?

Regarding the production

Before we went to Barcelona, I’ve listed some possible print shops and techniques that I planned to contact after coming back from the workshop. Some of which I already has contacted last Tuesday before I left Milan, but the rest I’m planning to do so this Thursday.

Most of the places I’ve contacted (so far) happens to be digital print shops within Milan. A good thing about digital prints is that it’s quick, convenient, on-demand, and no limited minimum number of production. They also are very open on the sizes and techniques (we can print non-standard sized paper with, for example, embossed paper technique without any problems). However, as we can predict, all these convenience came with a bit expensive costs.

Here, the binding technique is, in the contrary, quite limited. Places I’ve recently contacted can only do Brossura, Punto Metallico, and Cover Cartonata Rigida (and Spirale Metallica of course)

Anyway, the cost is not too much to handle if we decide to do, let’s say, 20 copies (with ~50 pages each). However, let’s see if we can find better solutions. I’ll keep you posted with further results of my survey (including the technique we’ve recently discussed such as Risograph and Offset printing).

Some thing to add..

Today I met Stefano in the studio and he recommend us to check out these interesting things he came across while he went to Torino Graphic Days:

1. Print Club Torino — A graphic design and print lab in Torino. They offers various printing/book making tools and techniques (including risograph printers that we are very interested in) together with workshops and courses on how to use them. I think we should arrange sometime to go there soon! (Seeing from their vision and services, distance is not going to be a problem here for sure) ;-)
2. A small book on the poem L’infinito by Giacomo Leopardi — Here, it’s interesting that they printed only short poems (with the book size very relative to the content). I forgot to take the picture of the publishing house that make the book. I’ll do so and post the link asap! :-)

A book on Giacomo Leopard’s poem L’infinito (1819)

Something more crowdfunding

Since you are working and researching on the crowdfunding, there are some references I found that might be useful to you:

• The Future Chronicles project is super interesting project for me because they have explored a connection between digital publications and physical prints. In each edition, they explored the history and future possibilities of one specific topic (eg. this first edition is about internet).

Cover of The Future Chronicles Edition #1: The Internet

e-book edition of The Future Chronicles Edition #1

• Restless Classics’ 400th Anniversary Edition of Don Quixote is one of the most successful kickstarter project, republishing and reenhacing the timeless classics with beautiful design and selling technique — together with forewords by inspiring professors.

Don quixote kickstarter campaign

What do you think? Do you have anything you’d like to add/modify/suggest?

And as for our readers/followers, please feel free to suggests and make comments anyway that you feel would lead the project in the better direction. It would be really great to know what you think.

Thanks alot and see you on Wednesday! ;-)

N.