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HEY

A really good designer has a crazy amount of REALLY GOOD FONTS available for free.

The most they're asking for is a follow and it's worth it for ALL of these.

ORIGINAL POST: https://twitter.com/yuta_ptv/status/1818558025185013903

ACCOUNT: https://twitter.com/yuta_ptv

LINK TO FONTS: https://yutaone.booth.pm/items/2890872

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Ask An Exec (The Magnus Archives)

Ask An Exec by @shinyopals takes on all five seasons of The Magnus Archives from the point of view of an innocent definitely-not-Ask-A-Manager career advice blogger, who starts getting some interesting queries from a certain archivist...

The entire story is told through blog posts, featuring Jon's terrible anonymized situations, Abigail's attempts at providing genuine advice while also going "WTF?", and many commenters who are also saying WTF while also encouraging Jon to unionize. Shinyopals is masterful at pulling out the true horror in TMA: poor corporate management. It's hilarious but also heart-twisting as the seasons progress, and somehow, somehow, you start caring about not only Jon's situation from a more personal point of view, but also various OC commenters and their attempts at trying to help Jon without having a clue about what's actually happening.

Because this fic is very heavily based on Ask A Manager, I leaned into a self-help tradpub design.

The interior design is not so tradpub-y, but leans into the sterile graphic design of many advice blogs. :D

As mentioned, the fic is formatted like a series of blog posts, which the author did an amazing job of emulating on AO3 (seriously, check it out! A true feat in wrangling code!). It was interesting seeing how much of the comment threads I could preserve while flipping pages, but hopefully it worked out! The fonts, colors, and general design were specifically chosen to mimic the current version of the Ask A Manager blog.

(TMA SPOILER) There's a certain shift change for the epilogue, so I took cues from the author's AO3 coding and changed the design accordingly!

This took almost a year of leveling up in LaTeX to typeset it efficiently; thank you @shinyopals for your patience in receiving this! I hope you enjoy your copy, and seriously everyone, even if you're not in Magnus Archives at all, please read this fic. It's WONDERFUL.

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Free Book of Dragons Typeset

This next typeset is for The Book of Dragons by E. Nesbit, and was suggested to me by @goodnightmoonvale. I hadn't heard of the book before, but I love dragons, and getting to use all my fancy dragon drop caps was an opportunity I couldn't pass up! I tried to make the title page reminiscent of those old YA fantasy novels I'd always borrow at the library, but then I went a little over the top with the chapter title pages. I included all the incredible illustrations of the book, but please note that the pdf is sized for half letter (letter folio), and the scan quality I found of the illustrations was pretty poor, so the illustrations unfortunately had to be shrunk down on the pages for some weird looking margins. I made them as large as I could, and left them on full pages for now, in case I can find better quality images in the future and just drop them in. There were also some formatting issues with the text when I imported it, so if anyone finds any errors, feel free to let me know! Anyway, this typeset is FREE and is available here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1S2wl_PuxCupofnDpqGuk7VjMHYFMWC6g?usp=sharing

Please consider leaving a like or reblog if these typesets are helpful, and you can follow this blog for future free files! If you use any of my typesets, feel free to tag me! And let me know if you have any suggestions for future public domain works I should do.

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The Special Design That Makes Library Books Indestructible

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Free Christmas Carol Typeset

So I finished up and posted the last chapter of my fic yesterday, and thought I'd get back to doing some typesetting. Thus, here is A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, with the original 1843 illustrations by John Leech. Not imposed, sized for half letter (letter folio). Kept the title page relatively simple. I wanted to do something similar to the original 1843 title page.

Free typeset can be found here:

If you use any of my typesets, feel free to tag me! I love seeing what people make. And if any of these were helpful to you, please consider dropping a like/reblog if you can! You can also follow this blog for any future free typesets. (If there's any typesets you'd like to see for other public domain works, let me know! I'm always looking for suggestions. )

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publishing companies will be like ~ooh this is a hardcover oooh it's so durable that will be $35~ and then you see the actual book and it's like. "perfect"-bound with endbands glued on crooked and a completely plain paper cover under the dust jacket. my dudes this shit is a mass market paperback with delusions of grandeur

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What is a typeset? Basically, a printable version of a text for bookbinding/reading/whathaveyou. Soooo, currently I have twelve free typesets of public domain works available! 🎊 [Edit: As of 5/27, up to 14!] Twelve was a soft goal for myself (though I have no intention of stopping just yet), and I've had so much fun making these and sharing them all! Here are each of the interior title pages lined up together, from top left to bottom right in order of when I made them. Anyone have a favorite so far? I enjoyed making all of them, though the Jekyll and Hyde one is a particular source of pride. All the files for these books are available in the google drive: drive.google.com/drive/folders/1S2wl_PuxCupofnDpqGuk7VjMHYFMWC6g Everything is sized for letter folio, except for Jekyll and Hyde and The Call of Cthulhu, which are sized for letter quatro. Most of the art/images are from canva or rawpixel. All of these typesets are free for your personal use, but please like/reblog if you can!

And a big thank you to everyone who has stopped by this blog, dropped a like/reblog/ or even a follow. It is greatly appreciated! ❤️ Guys I'm just so happy to have an even dozen in my folder. Twelve is a nice number. (The alternates kind of throw me off though...😆)

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Free Pride and Prejudice Typeset (Illustrated)

*Collapses.* It is done. I present to you, Pride and Prejudice! By Jane Austen, and Illustrated by Hugh Thomson! Use it for reading, bookbinding, or whathaveyou, the unimposed pdf is sized for half letter (letter folio). And oh god this one was tedious uh, fun to do! All the illustrations are included in this typeset, PLUS all the dropcaps! See below the break for more interior shots, and details about making it. Edit: I FORGOT THE LINK! Here it is: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1S2wl_PuxCupofnDpqGuk7VjMHYFMWC6g?usp=sharing Also, as always, please leave credit if you use this typeset! It is free for personal use, just consider leaving a like/reblog if you can, and follow this blog for more free typesets! You can also support me on Ko-fi!

So I kept the title page simple for this typeset, since there's so many beautiful illustrations going on by Hugh Thomson. Just look at this! There's even an illustration for List of Illustrations!

...the list was it's own pain, and a lot of the illustrations had to be manually added in 😅 Twas a fun morning of cross referencing pictures and page numbers. I really loved the drop caps in this book, so I had to make sure to include them all! Each one was unique, and there's a ton of fun detail in these drawings, but the pic quality in the scans was a little rough. Here's hoping they translate okay in the pdf.

I just really love how this one turned out overall. I tried to have most of the illustrations at the largest size I could fit within my margins so that they could be properly admired. The original peacock version is so gorgeous, and of course Austen's writing is always an absolute joy to read. Anyway, here's hoping this typeset was helpful for folks!

Any errors, feel free to let me know! There was a lot of lines and files that needed to be manually placed and formatted, so some stuff might have gotten bumped around as I adjusted. If you've made it this far, thanks for stopping by!

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This is the picture book that has been in print the longest, now happily public domain as of this year. This is a badly stitched little prototype using cereal box cardboard, I plan on making some changes and then releasing the pattern as a Pay What You can. A one signature version to be done as a pamphlet-bound little paperback and a two signature version that can be Coptic stitched if you're nasty.

Necessary fixes under the cut

1) did just a single signature because I forgot Coptic binding really requires at least two. I need to lay out the two signature, but I will keep the single signature so I can do it soft cover

2) add enough border to the refresh of the cover so that I don't need to put other paper under it when I'm binding it this way

3) also make a longer version of the cover so it can be cut as part of the pamphlet-bound soft cover

4) ditto to a larger piece of the end paper

5) I put a little note about it being in the public domain and that I laid it out on the old copyright page, I need to clean that up so it's actually visible when printed at this size.

6) improve the cut marks

7) adjust a couple of the pages so that the two page spreads fit smoothly.

8) possibly add page numbers so it's easier to fold

9) possibly add punch spots in the spine

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I made this zine last year to teach Japanese stab binding. It's a technique that every artist should know—with just a few tools, it's so easy to bind your own sketchbook or to make a physical version of your art/writing/etc. Download the PDF version (with bonus photos & tips!)

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I decided on a whim a couple of days ago that I needed to get into bookbinding - so here's my first try at a coptic bound notebook made with things I had lying around the house

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Happy Edible Book Day!

Was fortunate enough to hop over to @epitomereally's yesterday for some social (and productive!) crafting - was able to distribute a couple of the book cookies I made this year. Highlight was witnessing @justheblueberry pop one of the minis in her mouth exactly as I had pantomimed to A when describing my objective of the project. Success! 🙌*

The books don't hinge, there's just a number of them baked in various degrees of 'open' - but some of them had a pinch of text

* I've never made this type of icing before, never worked with edible wafer paper before, and it's been a long time since I've made a basic sugar cookie so learned a lot this round and will be better equipped for future years

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Good job! It looks like it turned out great!

A few weeks ago, I decided to learn bookbinding. I watched a couple tutorials on youtube, gathered whatever basic materials i had in my house (printer paper, a cereal box, scrapbook paper, an old scarf), and got to work.

I’m super proud of the final product and i’d say my first attempt was a success!

[dumpsterbooks]

Experimental bookbinding!

A couple of years ago there was a conversation in the Renegade discord about books styled after corsetry, and I thought it would be cool to model the actual construction after corsetry, not just the aesthetics. So,

Book pages are often held together by being sewn onto cords or tapes, which are then glued or tied to the cover boards

What if they were laced to the cover boards instead?

In this notebook, each section of folded pages is sewn individually. The sewing creates channels to thread the lacing through.

It took a couple of lacing attempts to get it to work. On an actual corset, the lacing would alternate being threaded out to in vs in to out, so that the corset would be able to lace completely closed. When I laced the book like this, the pages didn't stay in place--I needed the lacing to pull the pages towards the outside edge of the board at every pass through.

The pages are made of onesided graph paper, so they're blank on one side and gridded on the other. I plan to use this as a bookbinding planning journal. Technically, one could unlace the pages and replace them with a blank set when it's full.

The flat-felled seams and boning channels on the cover are purely decorative.

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Wood Engraving Wednesday

Here are a few delightful wood engravings from a recent gift showing the various processes that go into binding a book. This little pamphlet is entitled A Short History of Bookbinding and a Glossary of Styles and Terms Used in Binding … .printed in London at the Chiswick Press for the bookbinder Joseph William Zaehnsdorf in 1895.These images were probably printed from metal plates that were made from the original wood engravings. The engravings are not attributed, as was the case for most commercial engravings.

Click or tap on the images to see the definitions for these activities as provided in the booklet’s glossary. 

View more posts with wood engravings!

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'lito lattine' by mirella bentivoglio, 1998 in the book as art: artists' books from the national museum of women in the arts - krystyna wasserman (2011)

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A year and a half ago, I made a post about @renegadepublishing launching their code of conduct. I’m pleased to report the community has been thriving, and is abuzz with even more growth!

Over the past year and a half:

The Discord size has doubled.

The membership has skyrocketed to nearly 200 members.

Our events have also doubled in participation!

We’ve started four brand new events!

We’ve launched 12 satellite servers with 414 members!

All this, and yet, there’s more to come! I’m pleased to announce yet another massive undertaking has finally come to fruition…

THE RENEGADE BOOKBINDING GUILD WEBSITE!

Renegade has grown so much and still remains such an incredible, vibrant community, and this step forward will only enable us to do so much more. There is still more work to be done, but it’s absolutely amazing how far we’ve come. I can’t wait to keep building this community with all the wonderful people in it! 🎉

We’re currently kicking off Binderary 2024 with a bang, with 34 workshops planned for the month of February, all completely free and community-run!

If you’re waiting for a sign, this is it! Come join us, and start your fanbinding journey!*

*Discord is 18+ only!