The risograph printer is now also available to us, which allows us to print the magazine at a much reduced cost. We started the project a lot sooner after online issue 6 than we did Anthology 2 after issue 4, which has definitely given us more breathing space, however it still feels very claustrophobic.
Because we were printing it ourselves I needed to paginate the magazine first, which was a new skill to learn, and which I've since taught to everyone else! I was really struggling to figure it out, searching google and getting dodgy looking softwares as a result, I was getting pretty stressed out trying to figure it out when American Dan suggested I call Dittopress and ask them. My first thought was I don't think they'd want to help me do that, it's sort of taking business away from them. But I was still stressed and no further ahead, so I called them and the girl on the phone was really helpful. She explained the whole process clearly enough for me to understand without being physically shown. I'm still very appreciative to them for being so helpful!
I thought there'd just be a button on indesign I could press, but it turns out you need to make a dummy book, unfold it, make your pages according to how they match up on the dummy book sheets, export them as spreads, drag these spreads into A3 size document, flipping horizontally and vertically the top spread (I make books at A5 because any bigger is beyond my price range). I made my Grug the Destroyer comic book first before attempting Backwards Burd, so any mistakes I made were with my own work, not the Burd's.
We folded the amount of sheets required for the new issue (10) and realised it was too thick to be saddle stitched (saddle stitched is right for 30-40 pages I'd say) and we had 80, so we did some research.
I considered japanese style binding, but I don't think the look is right for Backwards Burd. It seemed too delicate/intricate for us, I wanted something that said traditional comic more. For now we have settled on perfect binding, which is probably called thus because you have to get everything perfect for it to work.
The printing process was gruelling. Because the risograph is in the tutors office once you're in there working you can't leave, because if you do you might not be able to get back in again, or I just felt like I was being annoying enough, without getting the tutors to get up and let me in more. With that in mind I just worked as quickly and solidly as I could, and a few hours later over a 1000 sheets had been printed on both sides.
We also got the covers done, we did them 2 colour, burgundy and red. This worked really well, even though sometimes it moved around quite a bit registration wise, they still look really cool.
Then the hard part, putting them together. I went to BnQ to get the parts to make a book making press inspired by this video:
I think this probably isn't the best way to do things, but it works for the most part. We found that the books we made weren't sticking together when we opened them out fully. This was because the spine wsa drying all wibbly-wobbly from the wetness of the glue. So Dan figured out a good solution, we glue the edge, then use 2 of our metal rulers, one above the spine edge, one below, and then clamp them in place. This way the spine stays straight and slots into the cover much more easily. Once it's had a few coats like this we fold the cover so that it has a 5mm spine, load that 5mm wide space up with book binding glue and slot the block of inside pages in. After that we guillotine it on the side, bottom and then the top, and tadah, a copy of Backwards Burd! only 99 left to go...
These clips are really useful when making books.
Here are 5 finished copies with their sleeves on and postcards inside, I didn't take much role in the screen printing side of things this time, has I was just focussing on printing the pages. I think it looks great, we sold 2 for £10 each so far! We've a few made up so far, but our aim is to have plenty more made to sell at MCM. My dream is to do well enough to be able to pay ourselves for making them, but I don't know how possible that is, but it's more possible when they look this cool than it's ever been before.
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