Labor of Love; Prints, Prints, Prints!
Early this year, when Andre and I took a trip to Spacebar Zine in Bangkok, we talked about how cool it would be to someday consign our own creations at one of the coolest stores we’ve ever been to.
Fast forward to the season when the coolest people in the world celebrate their birthdays (Libra season), Andre returned to Bangkok for a conference, this time bringing with him the zines we had turned from a vision into reality.
Creating has always been something I deeply enjoy. I’ve always been fond of making things for for my own pleasure. However this time, it was different. there was an actual audience, a set number of copies to produce, and, if we’re to put it professionally, a KPI to meet.
My first-ever zine project turned out to be a true labor of love.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS
The whole process of conceptualizing and executing it overlapped with the busy season at work, so this project eventually became my 5-to-9. Every night after work, I would make adjustments to the cover for printing and run test prints for embossing—which, mind you, takes quite a while.
I also needed to secure approval from Andre. And to do that, I had to take photos that truly captured the essence of the embossed design.
Adjusting the placements of the embossed elements was quite a challenge in itself, but the real challenge lay with the binding process.
The binding process, in particular, took me a while to figure out. I had to ensure that every page was perfectly aligned and secure enough so none would fall out. On top of that, I had to make sure that the spine’s scoring was perfectly aligned to make sure it could fit the thickness of the pages. This entire process took me around ten crash-outs to finally get it right—not perfect, just right.
THE ACTUAL PRODUCTION
The most challenging part of creating something with actual KPIs, for me, is the feeling of casting pearls before swine. As much as I genuinely enjoyed this project, it also had me on edge—especially with the fact engraved to my brain that this is for retail, in another country no less.
Time wasn’t exactly on my side, and it’s partly my fault.
I wrapped up the sample late, leaving me with just under a week (my birthday week) to get everything produced and it was just me darting between machines; crafting the bookmarks, printing the insides, embossing the cover, aligning layouts, and binding pages until the vision was finally put into reality.
It might have been the most exhausting project I’ve done, but I’d do it all over again especially for my award winning author, Andre.