User:Simon/Writing Machines

Writing Machines

Printed: 16.12.19
Dimensions: 139x190mm
Cover stock: Clairefontaine Trophee (white) 210gsm
Text stock: Laser 80gsm
Binding: Perfect bound, cold glue with book tape on spine
Pages: 148pp

N. Katherine Hayles' Writing Machines is a book that has a very particular materiality. Hayles worked closely with a designer to create the printed book, reflecting the concepts contained within of new forms of textuality in technotexts and cybertexts. I made a quick bootleg of this book, working from a PDF I found on Monoskop. It was only when the PDF was printed and bound as a book did I see the design come to life - particularly in the lenticular effect of the edge printing on each page, which when held at the right angle, reads the title; in one direction "WRITING" and in the other "MACHINES". Small discoveries like this often come up when printing a PDF - not just size, weight, and the haptic experience of the codex form but also other features that reveal themselves only when the book is printed and bound.

• 

  Front cover

• 

  Spread

• 

  Fore-edge text, visible when bent toward the back cover

• 

  Fore-edge text, visible when bent toward the front cover