Limited Edition Book Design
Starting from a PDF, I took Jack Vance's classic sci-fi book, The Moon Moth and Other Stories, and began to redesign it from a rough text to a finished, hand-bound book. This book was made for educational purposes.
Concept & Design Objectives
The goal of this limited edition version is to create a true collectors item in science fiction. This book is already pretty rare, with some versions being more coveted than others. By keeping the exterior simple, but enticing with a black leather cover and adding a small sparkly star on the front, I hope to add a but of magical curiosity for anyone who gives the book a glance. The software I used to design the book is Adobe InDesign. This projects requires dedication to understanding end to start organization and file management. Using InDesign, I designed over 300 pages of the book. It was important to have knowledge about design elements such as proper justification, paragraph styles, and to always be on the look out for orphans and widows as changes are made to each page.
The interior of the book is designed to look like a copy that you might find in an old book store. The type faced used in the body of this book is Tribute, a serif font created by Frank Heine from a type specimen from 1565, by the French punchcutter Francios Guyot. The second typeface used in the design of this book is Elevon. The futuristic typeface was created by the type face studio, Dalton Maag. I wanted to use typefaces that combined the vintage essence of an iconic sci-fi novel while also giving the work a fresh, new look.
The green end sheets, paired with the diamond patterned ribbon, is a homage to the author, Jack Vance. While the outside is black leather, classic is refined, the sparkly star, bright green, and fun ribbons, brings an air of youth and visible creativity to the old stories.
Stitching and Binding
This image is of the printed book block right after being hand stitched. There are a total of 27 signatures, each signature having 12 pages.
The image above is the book block after the first few stages in the binding process. The sewn signatures are glued together tightly using pressure to seal any space between them. Book end are added for a classic look. The mull is added to hold the signatures together and to help seal the block into the cover.
Here is the inside of the cover of my book. I wrapped two symmetrical boards in faux leather using special book binding glue, and lots of stretching.
Here is an inside look at the end pages.
