As I had now produced an initial sequence for my photobook I began looking into printing. I produced the first dummy book using the University’s print facilities; the cover was printed on 300gsm munken smooth card, whilst the inside pages used the 100gsm stock paper from the digital press printer. This book was perfect-bound and consisted of around 10 double side A5 pages. For a first attempt I was fairly pleased with the outcome, although there were still significant improvements to be made.
I amended a lot of these during the production of my second dummy book, which primarily altered the placement and size of text as well as the image sequence. With this iteration I attempted to slow down the sequence of the book, often featuring spreads with single images to give the reader more time to contemplate these photographs. Furthermore, I would often place these pages before the more populated spreads to avoid the sequence from feeling overwhelming.
Now I was satisfied with the appearance of my book, I began to determine the paper I was going to use for the inside pages. I wanted something with a slightly glossy appearance, whilst also being thicker than the stock paper I used within the dummy books. As I was not too fond of the paper selections offered by the university’s digital print centre, I looked at sourcing my own paper from an external print company. G.F Smith (https://www.gfsmith.com/) features a substantially large and varied selection of paper types available for purchase, therefore I initiated my search here. After scrolling through the myriad of paper formats I decided on a purely white coated paper called “Heaven 42” which was described to have strong colour reproduction and high opacity. I felt this was suitable for the representation of my prints and ordered 30 A4 sheets. This was my first time sourcing paper externally, although through G.F Smith the process was fairly simple and I am pleased with the quality of the order. I would confidently purchase paper from here again.
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