OUGD404 - Studio Brief 2 Final Thoughts

Although I received some positive feedback from my final crit, I feel as though the production of the book has let me down slightly. I feel the main thing here was inexperience with the majority of techniques with my book.

I accidentally cut a page too small, but I didn't know what I could have done (as I already spent £16 printing my book), so I just had to bind it in anyway:

Another thing I didn't feel quite happy with was how loose my binding was. The pages would slide around and the book its self is quite hard to handle:

Again, this is just down to in-experience as I've never bound a book before and it wasn't a simple technique to try on my first proper go.
I'm also still unsure of the cover of my book, as I originally wanted it to be white. I still feel like I should have made it white, then created a black sleeve for it, but I made a spontaneous decision which didn't really pay off in the end. A lot of people seem to like the book cover black, which I understand as it's more practical, but it wasn't really the image I had in my head for the finished book. 

If I would have had more money for this project, I would have created a test piece and practiced the binding, tried out different stock and probably used a textured, off-white stock. As my print went wrong the first time, I just used the stock from the print room - which was good stock but again, not what I had in mind when I set out to create the book. I would have also screen printed the design on the front onto lots of different coloured covers to see which one worked the best, and I would have also created a sleeve to cover the book when it isn't in use. 

I feel like I have met the requirements of the brief, and I'm happy about that, but I just don't feel 100% happy with the work I have produced. The main issue was probably inexperience, as the final product just didn't really turn out how I thought it would.