In addition to selling more expensive, what else can be done with the binding of books?

Evan Gerald

The design of the book is more like the art of a door to jane.

At first they may be a pile of manuscript paper or a Word document, carved word by word under the attic in Shanghai, in the café in London or in the seaside corridor of Lisbon, and after the author's hesitation to submit the manuscript and the editor's selection, they have since had the fate of becoming books.

They may be a story, some kind of knowledge, or a struggle of a person's thoughts, there is no distinction between high and low, but on the way to the market, some of them are made into paperback books, containing semi-finished cores, becoming a member of the multitude of books; some are treated more "honorably", in order to block the water vapor into the complete core, the incisions of the book are covered with gold leaf and made into exquisite rolling gold mouths, smooth as silk, and the light can be discerned.

Digital media has revolutionized industries such as publishing, music, and film, but most publishers and authors still generate most of their revenue from selling bound volumes of paper, and the price factor involved is still in the binding of books.

As early as 2008, Goodreaders had calculated that more than 60% of people would buy a book because of cover design. Today, the price of a book, how much comes from the content of the book, and how much from the binding and design, there may be an answer on the e-commerce website.

Illustrated edition of Wuthering Heights Collection.

Taking Wuthering Heights as an example, the paperback edition is priced at 38 yuan; while the collector's illustrated version can enjoy leather covers, bamboo spines, 80 grams of pure paper and woodcuts by famous illustrators, priced at 289 yuan a book. In the comments section, many people will appreciate these designs and added value, and comment: "This world masterpiece is really worth reading!" "A good book is one that gives people a sense of nobility."

English books, buy is binding

Every year, when the Booker Prize announces the shortlist, it invites the Designer Bookbinders association to recommend six senior framers to carry out special binding designs for shortlisted books, a tradition that has been going on for many years. Each framer receives a set of printed pages that have not yet been sewn, free to play, without restriction, and these unique works are exhibited at the award ceremony, and the designer himself explains the creativity to the writer.

The 2018 Booker Prize finalist for "The Upper Canopy" by American writer Richard Powers. Pictured here is the cover that Lester Capone designed to frame for him.

From the time the Booker Prize shortlist is determined to the award in October, it usually only takes 4-5 weeks, and the framers need to familiarize themselves with the somewhat obscure shortlisted works, and the manual binding of a book requires at least 25 processes, and they also need to think of reasonable and creative binding techniques. So, for the framers, the pressure is extremely high.

In 2021, Kate Holland designed the binding for Damon Galgut's award-winning book, The Promise, using tools that have been passed down centuries ago, from the decoration at the edges of the page to the final lettering. She also used primitive cow bones to fold pages in half and sewed spines with rough twine thread to highlight the clumsiness of the hand. Compared to the portrait cover of the Penguin Book edition, land became the main element of the cover of Kate Holland's edition.

She believes that in Promise, the narrative of the third-person perspective leads the reader through the characters like a movie lens, and in the passage of time and time, no character is more important than the other, and only the land of silence and mystery can take on all this.

Before the 15th century, the cover decoration of most books in Britain was very simple, focusing on its function - the most important role of the cover was to protect the book. After the gilded embossing invented by Islamic framers was introduced to Europe, luxurious and elegant binding began to emerge endlessly on the British Isles. At that time, there was already a better treatment of leather, and the different colors of high-quality leather brought more choices for decorative effects, and also became an important tradition of European book binding.

In the 1820s and 1830s, the labor-saving printing and binding methods and mass-produced cloth book cases quickly occupied the market, and practitioners of traditional hand-bound binding believed that this made the book lose its beauty and soul. The loudest critic was William Morris, who initiated the anti-mechanization of the Fine Arts and Crafts Movement and established the famous Kelmscott Press, which was handmade paper, hand typesetted, and hand-printed to resist the advent of the era of mechanical reproduction.

London also saw the emergence of revival bookbinders after the war, mostly from famous binding workshops that lasted three or four generations. What they pursue is not only to use hand-bound books as independent and perfect objects, but also to reflect or lead the trend of contemporary art design.

Writer Dong Qiao has written several small articles about his obsession with binding, and he pursues the traditional European binding craftsmanship, "classic old cover old handiwork, the quality is not far from the beautiful decoration tradition of the 19th century". As for the illustrations, he was also obsessed with the old painter's old brushwork. Picasso's 1931 illustrated version of Balzac's novel, which cost 18,000 euros, was "annoyed at a glance." He even said: "The bookworm first only buys the books he wants to read, then searches for the books he wants to read, then he intends to read all the books, and finally brings home some beautifully bound old books, even if he can't read the extinct words in the books, he has to buy them for fun." "This may be the interesting thing about the traditional book binding in the Uk and even in Europe.

"I redesigned the Constitution of Japan"

On October 16, 2020, the audience visited the 2nd Nanjing Art Book Fair. /Photo: Visual China

In Japan, where graphic design is rapidly evolving, contemporary book design is a concept that transcends "craftsmanship". It not only refers to the opening book, binding form, cover, waist seal, font, layout, color, illustration, as well as paper materials, printing, binding and craftsmanship, etc., but also emphasizes the entire design process from book manuscript to book publishing, that is, from the flattening of the book form to three-dimensional, including the designer's artistic thinking, creative ideas and technical techniques.

In short, in Japan, book design is an expression that was born out of binding.

In 2021, Japanese graphic designer Shinto Matsumoto's redesigned book "The Constitution of Japan" won the Tokyo TDC (Tokyo Type Directors Club) Award.

In his acceptance speech, he said: "Design transcends the imagination of the economy. During the COVID-19 pandemic, I received this year's award. People are re-examining society, life and the body with unprecedented perspectives. This made them acutely aware of the obvious fact that society, life, and body were closely related to the state. The design concept of the book is based on the design and composition of the text of the Constitution of Japan, as well as post-war Japanese art under the influence of the Constitution of Japan, and in the second chapter, "Abandonment of War", Matsumoto puts a grimace of Einstein spitting out his tongue in the picture of the atomic bomb explosion.

Japanese graphic designer Tsutomu Matsumoto designed the cover of the Constitution of Japan.

Takada is a leading figure in Japanese graphic design today, known for his outrageous "ugly designs", often using low-resolution images and seemingly misprinted text. When he designed the 2017 yearbook for JAGDA, which represents Japan's highest design honor, he used children's lines to draw the sun and moon, causing an uproar in the industry, and some people said that his "chaotic design" tarnished the halls of JAGDA.

Later, in the preface to an exhibition in Ginza, he wrote down the concept of his design: "Designers must be like this, students must be like this, newcomers must be like this, men and women must be like this, people who say this should not care about them, pay attention to the direction of their understanding, happiness, and heartbeat, this is the message I want to convey." ”

"In Japan, more than 40,000 young people commit suicide every year. I've designed it to tell young people that they don't have to be frustrated and sorry for not being able to fit into schools, companies, and society. I am me, you are you. "This kind of book design posture is very close to the artist's creative behavior. In fact, artists often use books as a carrier to create, which gives birth to many unique book designs.

Richard Long's Covers of the Papers of River Muds.

Richard Long, the representative artist of land art. In Papers of River Muds, he uses pulp mixed with the mud of rivers around the world, the paper is different colors, and the text is to print the name of each river on the corresponding page of the book, including more than a dozen rivers such as the Nile, Hudson, Mississippi, Amazon and Yellow, thus creating a veritable book of rivers.

Prior to entering St Martin's School of Art in London in 1966, Long studied at the School of Art in Bristol and worked for a time in a paper mill. He thinks the paper mill had a big influence on him: "I believe that part of my appreciation of paper and books comes from this experience... I can use it as a vehicle to express a lot of ideas. ”

An impeccable ordinary book

In China, book design is still a less mature concept. Many publishers retain the traditional division of labor, with two departments each having the cover and the text of the book. Although the entire publishing chain has paid more attention to book design, it is still not a realistic thing to introduce the thinking of editing and marketing in book design, and let designers participate in or even make decisions about the whole process of publishing such as topic planning, product planning, and marketing promotion. The so-called art editor is responsible for the design of the book, only the cover and illustration.

July 8, 2021, Beijing. A variety of beautifully designed books are displayed at the Art Book Fair. /Photo: Visual China

In addition, many books tend to be designed more and more like crafts— non-standard sizes, difficult to read, and embarrassing bookshelves. In terms of friendliness to the home, the design of these books is even inferior to that of decorative books. Some of the decoration book copywriting is very tempting: "Furniture exhibition hall prop books, fake books, simulated books, decorative books, decorate your exhibition hall bookcase, do not let the bookcase empty without a little life." Whether it's a furniture store, a real estate model house, or a wardrobe, cabinet or other cabinet product, you may need it to decorate. ”

Lu Jingren, 75, was the first person in China to take the concept of "book design" out of binding. In 1996, he co-authored with Ning Chengchun, Wu Yong and Zhu Hong, "Four People of Book Design", proposing that mainland books need to complete the conceptual transformation from "binding" to "book design". When Lü Jingren was a judge of the "World's Most Beautiful Book" in Leipzig, Germany, he once said: "The aesthetics of books is not a single binding, but especially emphasizes the creative conveying structure of a book, the rhythm and space chapter, the proper application of fonts, the reasonable arrangement of texts, the well-printed materials and the pleasure of reading, among which the most important thing is the unexpected expression of editorial design ideas and text structure transmission, as well as the overall performance of content and form." ”

Ancient Chinese books do not have the word "binding", but "binding", which is a general term for art design and craft production. The Qing Dynasty bibliophile Sun Qingzeng discussed the art of binding in the "Minutes of The Collection": "Binding books, not in the view of gorgeous ornamentation, but should be protected and decent, the style is quaint, the thickness is appropriate, the refinement is correct, and the square is the first." That is to say, the principle of book binding is to protect the book intact, so that the reading function and aesthetic requirements are dialectically unified, and by no means simply decorative ornate.

In this way, the design of the book is more like a simple art. It can do nothing, or make it impossible for the reader to feel its presence. Whether it is a decorative book with the ultimate glitz and nihilism, or a dry work book, or a self-published handmade book that indulges in self-expression and is in the clouds of outsiders, it is actually not as good as designing an impeccable ordinary book.