The Village Behind the Book... Pirates Press

Heather Jacks
Dec 4, 2015
2 min read

As Ben and I embark upon the adventure of creating our Art Style/Coffee Table book, it should be known that it takes a small village to put such a thing together. Often that village of talented artisans remains behind the scenes, out of sight, but this project could not be done without them.

Recently we visited Pirate’s Press, here in San Francisco. MJ, from the Press, worked tirelessly with me on my first book, The Noise Beneath the Apple®, which ultimately won an Independent Book of the Year Award. Ben and I got to sit down, pore over various tomes and discuss the vision for our upcoming book, which will be about the SF Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. I thought I would share some of those ideas with you.

Nothing says professional, like foil stamping; but what is it? Foil stamping is the application of metallic foil to paper using a heated die. In our case, we will have a custom-made die created for the project.

When we are ready to use it, the die is heated and, under pressure, foil is fused onto paper. Foil stamping is often used to bond design elements to the cover of books, which adds texture, highlights and shimmer to an image. It typically comes in silver or gold; although other colors are available, but it is a one color process; meaning you choose one color for the foil, and that's it. Our stamp will only used for the titling, as foil stamping an entire image does not enhance the vision of this project. Ben is capturing such stellar images,and one of those will surely be the cover. However, foil stamping is awesome and adds a subtle layer of exquisite elegance. With my previous book, we created our own color for the foil, which we named after one of my favorite bands. Can you guess who that band is?

Have you thought about paper? I mean, really thought about it? From size to weight to grain to finish and beyond, there are literally hundreds and hundreds of choices. Each option has pros and cons, and ultimately it comes down to a personal choice. What do we like? How is the art going to be best showcased? What feels right? After much discussion and debate—(there will probably be more coming)—we did make a couple of decisions.

We like the 12” x 12” book size. It’s big and feels luxurious.
We also decided to do our first run, which should break down like this:
250 Deluxe copies, which will be hard cover, presented in an elegant slipcase, be signed and have other exclusive details.
The next 250 will have hard covers sans slipcase, signatures and extras.

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