As I mentioned in my previous posts I am really short on time in this assignment and the turn around between completion of my book and it being professionally printed won’t be enough time before my final course submission. I will though have my book professionally printed with a printing company in time for formal assessment where I can showcase my printed work and show how I have gone through the printing process in industry.

The company that I have looked at for professional printing is Solopress;

https://www.solopress.com/perfect-bound-brochures/a5/

I have one of their paper sample books that they sent me in the post for one of my previous exercises which I refer back to for paper samples and I really like the size and the style of the book. I think that for my book for assignment 5 I would like to do something similar to this.

I would need to take into account the size of my book, the paper that I want to include on the insides.. would they be silk, glossy.. would they be a lightweight paper or would they be heavier.. lightweight would be 160gsm but a heavier option would be a 200gsm. Would I want the front covers to be matte, glossy, silk? It would also depend on how many pages my finished book is- if there are under 50 pages the printing costs would significantly less than if I were to have a 100 page book. It could all depend on how many colours are being used in the printed document too, usually it is cheaper to use minimum colours.

What is my role in the printing process and what might feed into my creative decisions for designing and creating my book for assignment 5?

The size and format of my book, I anticipate that my book shall be A5 size and landscape, similar to that of their own paper sample book.

Will I choose colour or Black and White? I shall have my book printed in colour, I know what I want to do for my book and it will mostly be an informative photo book so the images need to be bright, colourful and glossy.

How will the professional book be bound? I have researched Solopress and they do perfect bound brochures which are ideal for books with a lot of pages! It ensures that the pages are glued into a spine like a proper book rather than just a pamphlet style.

What papers do they have for me to choose from? There are lots of options on the website for this. There are so many options to choose from for the inside papers and covers. Silk, Glossy, pulp, bond.

Do they have any other specialist paper? They do some gorgeous specialist papers such as Gold dust iridescent and Gold haze iridescent

How will the book be finished? How will it look when it is printed and almost ready to be sent back to me?- There are a lot of finishes that you can choose from for your books too including creasing, matt lamination, spot UV, gloss lamination,

What is primarily my job and nothing really to do with the printers? Making sure that I correctly upload any files; PDF is the best option to choose when sending to the printers