Online bookmaking workshop

All you need is some photographs and some enthusiasm and you will soon be making your own books. This course is designed for the complete beginner and will take you through making your own handmade books like a true artist.

For the photobooks, not only will you learn how to design up your first ever book and order it online, we will take you through that next step of making the design exactly how you would like it to be. Videos will be made of each of the sessions and you will be able to revisit them, download them and keep them.

Join Shirley Steel and Len Metcalf in a two month long bookmaking workshop. This is heavily based on us demonstrating how we make books. We will show you how we think about the designing, layout and visualisation required to start your own book. We will demonstrate using different types of software, from those provided by bookmakers, all the way through to those specialist professional design programs. We will show you how to make your own simple folded books, that zine makers and artists love, printed on a single sheet of paper. We will demonstrate book binding, like the gorgeous stab stitched books, zine, hand sewn through to making hardbound covers. This live workshop gives you time to ask lots of questions, and gain support in your own book making journey.

Course content

• What types of books do photographers make (traditional, handmade, digital, mass produced, bespoke, books as an artwork)

• How do you come up with a design and look for your books

• Designing text, layout and font considerations - how to include text in template driven photobooks

• How to design a page in a book. How to glue photographs into a book and how to print out pages with photographs included as design elements

• How do you order your photographs

• Print on demand technology

• Software & clear demonstrations on how to use:

• Lightroom to create a book within, and for printing out individual pages

• Indesign & Afinity Design

• Book making software provided by printers, such as Momento, Photo Book Shop, Blurb

• Zines and making a folded book out of one sheet of paper and then how to add more or a cover if you wish

• Portfolios, how to make, what to put in them, and ideas to house them

• How to make covers for your books, hard, soft, printed and with text / photographs. How to attach pages into your covers

• Japanese stab stitched book - demonstration start to finish

• Concertina book, with traditional hard covers - demonstration start to finish

• Binding methods

• How to cut and fold paper (including how to understand how paper bends and doesn’t)

• What tools do you need for each type of book, and how to improvise. Materials required for bookmaking.

• Techniques to use, such as folding, gluing, cutting, and trimming

• Printing and publishing your book, marketing, promotions, selling and distribution