Book Work

Dee in Vienna 2008
Antiquariat Books
Weihburggasse 16

Creating a book is an art form, and a specialty of Heritage Associates.

After researching a subject for months, collecting interviews and organizing data, the book work begins. Writing, re-writing, copy editing, inserting and blending; then line editing and rewriting again. Images are accumulated from the start, but now comes the process of sifting through photographs, ephemera, illustrations and examples.

Ideas come by poring through old books, noticing fonts, dropped caps, title pages, appendixes. The heft of a book, and how it's meant to be read is considered. Will the reader be sitting at a table with room to spread out, or will this book be tucked in a backpack to be read on an airplane? The weight and size is critical so it will be comfortable in a reader's hand.

Our graphic artist marries the text to the artwork with incredible composition skills: scanning, cropping, experimenting with margins, designing chapter layouts, spacing the images and connecting them to the story. Captions are added. Paper is chosen by judging weight and glossiness: what will show off photographs the best, without causing glare and eyestrain. The file is finally sent to the printer who creates a prototype for binding.

With the finished book in hand, a die-cut is created for the cover and title. Decisions about the binding are finalized: three-quarter leather, full leather, embossing, color, and the spine lettering. Hand-made marbleized end-papers are chosen for special presentation copies. For one book, actual blueprints of the featured building were used. The book makes the exciting trip to the bindery, where it will become a real book at last. This is an art Heritage Associates is known for.