Watching a guy at a garage sale in Toledo sort his books by printing method gave me a whole new way to organize my workshop

He was separating offset from digital and calling out the saddle stitch bindings, and now I'm grouping my leather projects by whether I rounded the spine or not and it's way easier to find my mistakes.

3 comments

3 Comments

ray_webb65d ago

Sorting by printing method is fine for books, but rounding spines on leather projects doesn't really translate the same way. Offset and digital actually look pretty different once you know what to look for, but a rounded spine is just one step in binding and won't show mistakes on its own. Might be worth checking if you're not just rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic there.

fisher.diana5d ago

So you're rearranging deck chairs on a sinking leather spine?

rowank695d ago

Diana and Ray, you're missing the point. It's not about the physical result of the spine rounding, it's about the process (the sorting itself). When I force myself to separate work by technique, I notice patterns I'd otherwise gloss over - like how all my rushed projects share the same sloppy spine glue-up. It's a diagnostic tool, not an aesthetic one. Ray, you're right that offset and digital look different, but the lesson there is about paying attention to the details that matter (the binding method) instead of just the cover. Cutting my failures out of the pile and looking at them together has saved me more frustration than any new tool I've bought this year.