First Men on the Moon: A hand made, hand bound photobook

I’ve created and published quite a few photobooks in the past but I’ve always wanted to make the process easier, cheaper, quicker and much more predictable and repeatable. All that and to have them embody a hand-made and crafted/artisanal quality. After a lot of trial and error; a lot of false starts; a lot of tests, learning and experimentation, I’ve finally created my first such book: First Men on the Moon.

It’s based on the adventure of climbing through a skylight onto the flat roof of a student flat I lived in with a couple of close friends in the early 1980s. The images are from a couple of rolls of film for which I had contact sheets but I don’t think I ever produced more than one or two small 5 x 7 darkroom prints back in the day.

I’d always wanted to do something with the images and to give copies to my two friends who were up on that roof with me. I’ve been working on a much bigger book project using images from this era around the same group of people but that project is big and is taking a lot of time and work. A hand-made book of the ‘Moon’ images would be a quick way of getting something out in the meantime, and a good way of testing out all that I would need to learn to make a crafted photozine.

I won’t lie and say that I kept it simple and didn’t overthink each aspect of the book because that’s exactly what I did.

Software

The software to design it was new to me as I moved to Affinity Publisher from InDesign for reasons of cost. Medium learning curve but I’m very happy with Publisher – it’s inexpensive and highly recommended (and I’m very picky about this sort of thing). I spent a lot of time making sure what I was doing with this book would be a template for future ones. That meant a document template, and page masters for each of the different types of page in the book (five I think).

Paper

I bought paper sample packs from Hahnemühle, Awagami, Fotospeed and Innova and spent a huge amount of time printing a test image with a wide range of ICC profiles and print media settings. And in the end settled on simple 170gsm inkjet paper. This was based on simple economics – some of these papers were very lovely indeed but they’re also quite expensive so I decided to save them until this first one was completed.

Cover design

Cover stock was easier as I wanted a splash of colour and here my choices were more limited (thankfully). But I did decide to jazz up the cover with a ‘tipped in’ image. This is essential sticking an image on the cover which solves the problem of not being able to print an image onto coloured card but it does introduce the challenge of how to glue paper to card without wrinkling. The answer is to use solvent based fabric glue rather than water based paper glue. I also decided to blind emboss the cover image into the cover card because I had access to a press, and a piece of copper of the right form factor. The result is truly lovely!

Binding

I wanted this book to look hand made and to exude craftsmanship so I decided on Japanese stab binding which is much easier than it looks and exquisite to behold in the finished book. It might be straightforward to do but you do need a single hole punch and the right waxed linen thread. More stuff to source. I hugely enjoyed the binding process. It’s the very last part of making the book and is, as you can imagine, enormously satisfying.

Page design

Here I really did keep it simple and stuck to a very small number of individual page layouts, and because they are each based on page masters in Affinity Publisher, changes and modifications cascade through the book automatically.

Anything else?

Oh yes, each page, cover and all, was scored with a scoring frame. This provides a more natural feel to the book when turning the pages and helps reduce the strain on the binding. I also used a proper wheel-based guillotine to cut A4 pages down to the A5 size of the book. But in order to get a guillotine with an edge/sizing guid, you have to go big (and expensive). another one off purchase of a lovely bit of kit that makes the job or accurately cutting paper so much easier and reproducible.

The whole thing, pages and cover and cover image, was printed on my fairly unassuming Epson ET-8500 printer.

I’m very happy with the resulting book and with the decisions I made in making it happen. I’ve learned a lot of new skills and obtained a lot or new kit that now put me in a place from which I can make more books. My plan is to make similar books based on my current photography projects and offer them for sale via my website.

“First Men on the Moon”, Evershot Road, Finsbury Park, London, 1983. A5, waxed linen thread stab binding. Tipped in cover image. Pages 170gsm, cover 300gsm. 26 pages. All images digitised from hand developed Kodak Plus-X 35mm negatives, and include digitised vintage silver gelatin contact sheets. Printed on Epson ET-8500.

Get in touch if you’d like any more info on any aspect of my processes, hardware or materials (or the Affinity templates).

I’m on Insta and I also have a website.

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