Tags
custom binding, Design binding, χειροποίητη βιβλιοδεσία, Εργαλεία βιβλιοδεσίας, δερματόδετη βιβλιοδεσία, καλλιτεχνική βιβλιοδεσία, leather binding, leatherbound, post apocalytpic, sci-fi, wedding book
Stowing the tins in her tent, pitched inside the Olympic stadium, Laila climbs to the roof and watches the sun fall past the horizon. Hundreds of feet below, the city’s constellations of streetlights start blinking into existence.
…
There are no humans left in London, but the city hums with activity, a hollow approximation of organic civilization.
Folks, there’s romance and there’s romance, and then there’s story-set-in-post-apocalyptic-world-for-our-wedding-book kind of romance – which honestly makes making everything else weak and vanilla by comparison.
Mister W. wanted a special binding for a story he wrote and will be displayed at his wedding. I happen to be a sucker for post-apocalypse themed stories and Mister W’s story was a small gem of a novel, so I went a bit beyond the original plan to do this project justice.
(Check my bindery’s Instagram account for a video presentation of this binding!)
My design was based on the excerpt at the beginning of the post. I wanted to capture a glimpse of Laila’s view of the city: alive and yet non-living, beautiful but at the same time cold and distant.
I used a map diagram to blind tool the outline of a central London area. Then I used metallic foils to inhabit it with the hundreds of machines, like driverless cars, drones, billboards, etc lighting up and moving about.
Since machines are optimized for efficiency I imagined they always arrange themselves in certain ways, move or settle in formations, and thus I created a number of “secret” rules I followed regarding the size, placement, number and color of dots. The result is a chaotic order, incomprehensible to us and seemingly random, but perfectly ordinary for the machines.
I also made a custom slipcase featuring an important element of the story.
I’ve had lots of fun making this one. Let it be put on record it’s among my top favorite bindings I’ve made and I’ll be really sad to part with it.
Last but not least, A6 size is amazing for design bindings. Everything feels/ looks neat and interesting! Dear clients, more A6s please.
I used my Bookbinding Stylus Set, Versatile Typeholder and Dot set to decorate this binding.
Dimitri's Bookbinding corner 