Kevin Ayala's ePortfolio

We were on a field trip to Book Arts on 28 W 27th St. Durring the time we were there, we were given a small tour of the process of how novels are made. There are two parts to making a novel, the process of binding, and the process of printing. At first, we were shown the difference between how printing was back then compared to how it is now. Back then, it was more complex to print letters on paper for a book, since it was done by using stamp like stencils that had individual letters on it. With these stencils, each word and sentence were spelled out by each individual letter on the stencils. after the explanation of printing, we were given time to roam the exhibit they had in the building, showing different pieces of book covers and combining art with words, giving a purpose or meaning behind the piece. After the small roaming around the class did, we were then given a brief explanation of how a book is binded, or held together. there are different types of ways of binding books, one of the two we were shown was an exposed bind, in which the material that is holding the books and pages together can be seen outside of the book. and the other one we were shown was a glued bind, which is the most commonly used bind today. A glue bind is when the bind and the pages are all glued together down the middle of the book. He also explained very briefly about accordion binds, which is where one long page with writing is folded in such a way that when it becomes unfolded, it comes out like an accordion. Afterwords, we left Book Arts to go to a museum to learn a little bit about Modern India, and how pieces of art and sculptures show the development in the area and how their culture se’s the rest of the outside world compared to the rest of us. Overall it was a rather interesting experience and it was fun to say the least. i feel there was a lot to learn from the experience and what we saw.