I often wonder about the ‘quality’ or refinement issue in making books by hand. It’s not about being lazy, but other people I’ve taught instantly made more squared-off and tidier-looking books than mine and I’m okay with that. Still, I keep coming back to the question of whether I should be trying to make them look perfect.
I aspire to keep learning more and more about this craft, but I’m most interested in these books as useful things first rather than art objects. They’re places for storing and retrieving ideas and plans — an invitation to think and dream. Plus, I think people really like the hand-made look. I’m honestly tempted to just make everything out of kraft paper!
Case in point: This morning during some hard drive data hell, I used my offline time to sketch out ideas for next year’s day-planner. Now that I look at them, though, I feel moved to use something just like them rather than “fix” them on the computer and make tidy, bland pastel versions of these pages.
