The Yellow Door Bindery

At the end of August, I moved back to London to take up a job in a bindery. In some ways it was a hard decision to make. Having run my own bindery for two and a half years, how would I cope with working for someone else? I hadn’t left London under the happiest of circumstances the first time – having grown tired of the hustle and bustle and of the life I had been leading. Now, having had time to reflect on it, I know it was the right choice to move back to London. I have found a great place to live in a beautiful part of town near friends. I have a quick, stress-free commute to work each morning. The job is good – nice people, interesting work, paid holiday and copious amounts of squash for me to drink. (As someone who doesn’t drink tea or coffee, that’s more important to me than you probably think.)

I’ve decided to try something new at the bindery….. Friday Fun! (It’s not that Fridays weren’t fun before but now they have more capital letters and an exclamation point and everything… anyway, I digress). This afternoon I made some books for no purpose other than to make some books. I tried out some different styles and ideas, played around and had some fun. Some worked, some didn’t but I learnt something new from all of them. With no set end product to aim for, I could experiment with the process and techniques. that’s enough of me rambling…. Here are some pictures of one of the books I made.

This box was commissioned to showcase the paperback book contained within and the lettering specifically designed for this. The box colour was chosen to harmonize with the book.

I was looking through some photographs on my computer today and came across the following images taken as I was finishing a recent sketchbook. I always have a sketchbook in progress as I collect a large amount of ephemera wherever I go – for example postcards, images from magazines and books, discarded tickets and flyers. I also take many photographs of things that I find visually interesting and these usually end up in my sketchbooks too.

The lovely folks at Get a Grip asked me to make ten notebooks for their new shop. They provided the paper and the screen-printed covers and I went to work! (These are currently also for sale via their online store).

Here are some images of a portfolio box I made recently for Start Today Illustrations (aka Chloe Cook). The brief was fairly simple – she required a portfolio box to showcase her illustration work. The box needed to be durable and simple so that it drew attention to the work inside rather than the box itself. I used a hard-wearing buckram bookcloth which has a coated surface so any marks can simply be removed with a damp cloth. The inside is lined with a plain white bookcloth.

Chloe also needed the box to be a specific size and this was easy to accommodate due to the nature of making everything from scratch. I started with the internal measurements that she provided and built the box out from that.