What are metal cornered boxes? Almost daily, I’m asked the question, “Norm, show me something that’s different.” That’s what these emails are about: give you ideas! Near the top of my list of what’s “different” is metal cornered boxes. In the U.S., most archival boxes have these corners. We have produced hundreds of letterhead and business card boxes with these…
Read moreWhat is button and tie (aka ‘button and string’)? Button and tie is a simple method to close (or tie shut) the face of a book, the lid on a box or a flap on a portfolio. And there are endless other applications. Success story What our client wanted: Shiny (not matte finished) gold rivets Pink-coloured heavy string Colour-matched grey…
Read moreNITRAM manufactures quality charcoal drawing tools for artists. We worked with a graphic designer to produce a set of cloth-wrapped product presentation boxes to house the company’s products, which include many charcoal drawing devices and sharpeners. This particular box is one of the largest we’ve produced at 17” wide x 14” deep x 4” high. The image below shows…
Read moreWhat is box stitch binding? A box-stitched book is one in which the cover is stitched directly to the book. The goal is to show off the box stitch as a design feature, rather than hide or ignore the stitching. A box stitched book can look vintage, professional and funky. Mini history lesson Until about 20 years ago, all boxes…
Read moreWhat is Japanese Binding? A quick online search of Japanese binding results in finding dozens of tutorials of Do It Yourself Japanese Binding. There are as many as 12 binding styles that are similar to Japanese binding, like Coptic binding, Belgian binding etc. The Japanese style is by far the most common and, also important, the least expensive! While you…
Read moreWhat use Mylar tabs? Why, you ask, is Norm talking about Mylar tabs? Aren’t they old school? In with buggy whips and VHS? No! A picture is really worth a thousand words! The use of Mylar tabs has probably dropped 95% in the past few years. Why? Simply because of the internet—there’s less paper printing and because of that, a…
Read moreWhat is a boxed LCD screen? LCD stands for “liquid crystal display” screen which we have built into a presentation box. The LCD was needed so that sales and marketing people could show videos during client presentations. Why design an LCD presentation box as marketing collateral? A well-designed, customized LCD presentation may be the most convincing and cost-effective one-on-one sales…
Read moreIt’s marketing collateral! A graphic designer offered us a challenge. Design and produce 1000 presentation pieces to be couriered to high net worth donors to vividly display and draw in donations for a new building expansion of a museum. The piece had to be functional, unique, highly visual, easily couriered without damage, produced within budget and … very memorable! Our…
Read moreWhen a book is side-sewn, it means the text block consists of individual pages, as opposed to individual signatures. It’s also not a saddle-stitched book! The line of stitching is usually about 1/4” to 3/8” from the binding edge. We can extend the threads beyond the book so they are loose and we can run 2 or 3 lines of…
Read moreMost often, a case bound book (sometimes called a hard cover book or edition bound book) has four distinctives: Cover is hard or stiff Covers are “wrapped” Smythe sewn sections Two end papers (inside the covers) There are two exceptions: Pages are perfect bound rather than Smythe sewn and then bound into a hard cover Some covers—but very few—may be…
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