When I started Editions Ballard in 1996 in Los Angeles most of my business was in bespoke blank books. People would come to me with a wish-list of paper types and sizes and formats and I’d make them up. Now I can’t imagine having to make up any notebooks at all. Since then Moleskine has relaunched, Rhodia has expanded its types of paper and bindings to encompass everything I can think that I’d ever want, and I can refer my American and Canadian clients to Field Notes. I’ll just send my Australian clients to Notemaker’s online service and in Sydney there’s a shop in Surry Hills, paper2, that has an excellent collection.
My blank books are the R&D department for my publishing packaging business. I play around with materials — shellacked Kraft covers, brass spirals — and concentrate on making only those things I can’t get anywhere else.
Since first seeing the yellow engineer’s tracing paper in Los Angeles I’ve been wild about it. The tracing paper book is the only thing I think I’ll need to make because I haven’t seen it anywhere else, and when I do I can stop. The obvious immediate use that I can think of is in a semi-pocket size edition for architects to carry around for sketching in the field and at cafe’s.
But this paper is also sensual to write on, and I can imagine using it as a journal. Fountain pen ink dries immediately on it, without smearing, and the layers of writing showing through many pages is a fantastic visual effect.
What I like to do is take a concept and work through the manufacturing angles, how to cut the paper and put it together, what weight the cover needs to be, what features the book might need (this one will have a removable backing sheet, like old fashioned onionskin airmail paper pads had). This first one I’m making is 15cm x 21cm and will have 96 pages. If you have any ideas about sizes, and styles and features please e-mail me: details are in the “contact” box above the banner.
My projects exist in a mid-zone between hand-made and machine made objects. They’ve been described as ‘machine made by hand’, which I take as a great compliment. I work with materials that are too textured, slippery, or fragile to go through cutting machines easily, and I often want to print on papers that won’t go through printing machines for the same reason. What I try to do, with analogue machinery, is to streamline the cutting and folding and manufacturing process so that 100 or so books can be made with very few steps, rapidly, and at little cost.
