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ZAUM Sonoma State University's Literary Magazine | |
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Return to current zaum Blog post Book Binding Under the Influence of Senioritis April 23, 2010 As many of you may know, book binding and book making is a huge part of the zaum class experience. So I decided to blog about the different type of books that people can make while dealing with an immense amount of senioritis. For the sake of this wonderful entry I am going to define senioritis as either an "I am over this" and "I don't care about this, rather be in bed" attitude or it is feeling immensely excited to leave the educational environment with a big bang. Why is this important to book binding, you ask? Well, it's because the binding and structure of a book should mirror its content (and in case I am confusing the heck out of you, the content is basically senioritis). For example, if I had written about nature then I could shape my book as a leaf and bind it with a flower stem (the stem could be a green pipe cleaner that swirls around the edges with a flower in the end). So I guess you can say that the first thing about book making is to reflect the context through the books image. Now let's say my contents deals with my first definition of senioritis (which was "I don't care about this, rather be in bed" attitude), meaning that I am going to make a book that is decent enough for a good grade without having to put immense effort into it. For instance, for a book about home decor we would make a cover that would illustrate a home. The cover could be made from cardboard wrapped around with some type of cloth (like the ones used to cover textbooks in high school. In case you were deprived of that, what I mean is any type of cloth that is really stretchy). We would then get out a ruler and a permanent marker and draw the front of a house, and on the back cover you could draw the back of it. This would symbolize that we are going to be learning about the feeling of a home because the reader can see the house and feel it on the cover. Now to bind it we would just have to get a string that is the same color as the cloth cover (so you won't see it), place three holes in the center of the book that go from top to bottom and sew it together. If you are simply crushed by senioritis then get construction paper and draw a house and staple the book together. You can choose to make any type of book cover you like, but just remember that you can get as creative as you allow yourself to. Let's move on to our second definition of senioritis: "I am so excited to be graduating that I am going to make this book my best project ever." To make an extraordinary cover and binding you first need to decide what that means to you, and for me that's thinking out of the box in a dynamite way. In order to make this the best project ever let's say my context is specifically about my excitement about graduating. So my book would be shaped as an accordion, and my book cover would be my actual graduation cap. How can this be made, you ask? Easy, I would write my greatest accomplishments and goals on each of the accordion arranged pages and leave a couple blank on one of the ends, so that I can paste it into the inside of my hat. The pages would be accordion style but shaped as my graduation cap, and the book would tumble out of the hat and hang there. I could also just bind a book with chopsticks because ever since I heard that was possible I have wanted to try it. Well, now you know that it is possible to bind and create books very easily and creatively, even if under the deadly influence of senioritis. - Elizabeth Oseguera Questions for the author? Want to comment on the blog? Email us at nicolais@sonoma.edu and we'll post your questions and comments. | |
