What you need to know about binding

As a "newbie" graphic designer (it often still feels like that anyway), there is still a lot I need to learn - a lot of which I need to teach myself... So when I am presented with something new, like binding, I go online and research.

To make things a little easier for you, let me share what I have found - then you don't have to scroll through tons of websites. You're welcome.

The two most common types of binding, and the ones you should know about as a designer, are "perfect binding" and "saddle-stitching".

The former is used for most magazines and some books. Pages are essentially glued to a spine (it is therefore punchless). The minimum thickness for this is 10mm, and the maximum is 25mm. When designing for this bind, bear in mind that the margin in the middle needs to be a bit bigger than on the outside.

Saddle-stitching entails stapling or stitching. There is no spine, and the magazine or newsletter can be laid out flat. In this instance the margin in the middle doesn't need to be as large. It is recommended that publications using saddle-stitching should not have more than 48 pages.

So those are the important ones. There are many more, but as long as you know these, you should be fine.

Others are:

The typical wire binding or coil/spiral binding - we all know this well from our uni days. A stack of papers is bound together by a C-shaped wire or coil spine. If wire, the coil is squeezed into a round shape using one of those special machine thingies (I recently did this at the office and it was easier than it looks/sounds). The coil (most often plastic) is wound into punched holes along the entire spine.

Both the wire and coil options are an affordable way of binding copies for home or office use.

(Thermal) tape binding is a system that wraps and glues a piece of tape around the base of your document. A tape binding machine system is used for this process and it activates the thermal adhesive on the glue strip.

Hard Cover (case) binding is used for hardcover books. The pages are arranged in batches and then glued together into a textblock. The textblock is then attached to the cover or case. It's exactly like  perfect binding just for thicker books (exceeding 25mm in thickness). It is also known as cloth binding or edition binding.

Comb binding uses a rectangular hole pattern punched near the bound edge. A curled plastic comb is fed through the slits to hold the sheets together (so similar to wire/coil binding but with a comb - duh).

I found this great image to better show some of these types:

Source: http://wftprintpm.wikispaces.com/Perfect+Binding

Life without Facebook

I am entering week 2 of no Facebook. And I must say it feels good.

Yes, at times it does still feel like I am experiencing a withdrawal - I grab my phone then quickly put it back, reminding myself that I shouldn’t. The little devil on my shoulder shouts, “Do it!” Sounds almost like a drug addiction which, if you think about it, is kinda scary…

I have become so dependant on Facebook (and Twitter, but the latter doesn’t have such a negative effect on me), I used to check it every day, starting in the morning with my first cup of tea.

Over the last couple of months, Facebook has made me feel - as we like to say in SA - kak, about myself, about my life. For someone going through a quarter-life crisis - not good. We compare ourselves to others, and more so than usual.

Friends are buying houses, cars, getting married, being promoted, going on extravagant holidays, etc. And me - well let’s just say I am not. And even though I know I shouldn’t compare my beginnings to somebody else’s middle, I can’t help it. And Facebook makes that worse. Even though many of you probably wouldn't admit it, I am sure you share these sentiments.

There have been several studies already proving that Facebook makes people feel crappy about their lives, it makes them envious. If you search on Google the list is endless:

One of the articles states this, and it’s what I am getting at here:

"Another group of researchers has suggested that envy, too, increases with Facebook use: the more time people spent browsing the site, as opposed to actively creating content and engaging with it, the more envious they felt. The effect, suggested Hanna Krasnova and her colleagues, was a result of the well-known social-psychology phenomenon of social comparison. It was further exacerbated by a general similarity of people’s social networks to themselves: because the point of comparison is like-minded peers, learning about the achievements of others hits even harder."

So yes, the ‘cleanse’ has been good for me, but I don’t feel well-informed anymore - about what is happening in the world, not in terms of my friends but design- and events-related. I am experiencing some serious FOMO.

Perhaps a solution would be to remove all so-called friends and merely follow groups and pages for informative purposes… What do you think? I might just test this theory. At least until this quarter-life crisis is over.