Yesterday was the deadline of the project 1 pages. Everyone had to come in with their 125 pages ready to collate and bind the books. Hannah had printed all the divider pages for everyone and everyone was supposed to bring their own cover. As smooth as the plan for the day was, there were a few obstacles to overcome.
In the morning I still had to finish the inserts of my page 5 because the day before I realized that there was a better solution than what I had in my mind. So, while others kept arriving and starting to share their pages into 25 piles, I quickly folded my booklets and assembled the copies of the 5th page. Then I was ready.
When the pages of 25 copies of the book started to pile up we noticed that the books were gonna be to too thick for the spiral binding that we were supposed to do at uni. I measured the pile of pages and it was about 2,5 cm – way too thick. Alistair suggested that everyone can edit their own copy and decide whose work they wanna include. Someone else suggested that we could divide the book into two, for example level 6 and level 5 books. I didn’t really like either idea. Everyone has worked hard to produce 125 pages and just discarding some of them seems so unfair. I’d rather divide the book into two, but then the level 5 book would be much thinner.
Eventually I asked Alistair if we have to spiral bind the book or if we are allowed to use alternative methods. He said we can. So I googled “book binding london” and found a few places. The best one seemed to be a place called City Binders near St Paul’s. They do wire-o binding for documents up to 2,8 cm thickness. I told others about it and there seemed to e at least a few interested in getting the book bound there. Even Alistair decided to go there and test the place with his copy of the book.
I waited at uni until Alistair came back to see how the binding looked. It looked great! I will definitely go there too. I can’t go yet though because I didn’t have my cover yet. I had planned everything based on the fact that we will spiral bind the books and I was gonna construct the cover around it so that I would cover the awful spiral bound spine. But now that I can do wire-o binding instead, I don’t need to do that. I actually like wire-o binding. It is much more professional-looking and steadier than a plastic spiral. And the wire-o binding in Alistair’s copy looks really nice too so I am happy to let it show.
Puro Laevuo 