Making a Board Book - Construction and Evaluation

Making up the finished Board Book

Once I had all seven images ready to print, I looked at different types of paper at the printers to get them printed on and after some discussion, went for a 300g silk finished card, as it seemed thin enough to be foldable, but not thin enough to tear down the fold.  It has a shiny surface that is not as tacky as photographic paper so the pages don’t stick together. 

Sticking the book together went pretty well.  The inside pages stuck down well enough, but the Daler Mounting board is fractionally thicker than the book-making board we use at college, and seems softer and more easily dented.   Because the board was thicker, my original printed cover didn’t go round the outside of the book far enough.  It had been printed at the wrong dpi too, so it needed re-printing.  The second cover fitted and was a sharper image, but I didn’t quite fold it with the title central to the spine, which caused problems when it was guillotined.  The softer cardboard also buckled under the guard as it was guillotined, and the book was pushed slightly out of shape.  

Product Evaluation

1. There is a glaring error on the last page of the book – I didn’t make the image quite long enough, folded it inaccurately,  and now have a white strip down that edge as it would have taken too much off the rest of the book to guillotine it away.

2.  The board I used was not suitable for the guillotine, which has left the spine looking buckled and knocked out of shape.  Using the guillotine was still the best way of getting crisp edges though.  Also, if I had made the spine fractionally smaller than the width of the finished book, it might have been under less pressure and looked neater overall. 

3.  I didn’t get the text central to the spine, which means that the text on the back and front covers are also out, although having measured the difference, the text would still be to close to the outer edge on the front cover even if I had stuck the cover down accurately.   I over compensated when making the cover bigger.

4.  The book has the chunky, toddler friendly feel that I wanted, but it has grown!  I originally intended it to be 14 x 12cm, and it has grown to 14.5 x12.5cm, which accounts for the strip on the last page!  Even though I had left a 0.5 bleed around, if Jim hadn't trimmed it the size he has, the text weould be too close to the edge on some pages, (Alien 3 and 1 in particular)