FMP (BA): Quick Experimentation - Gold Pen & Bookbinding Cloth

I'm still in the process of creating my final product so I decided to take the time to try some little experiments in the meantime. 

Gold Pen

I recently purchased a gold pen as recommended from my friend as it had a very fluid flow, and resembled gold foil. I took one of my test prints of my front cover to practice on so that I could get a general idea of how it would look on my book.

Thoughts

I used the gold pen to cover the darker areas as I knew that it would be a shade darker than the one printed, so it would look weird to use it for the lighter areas if it was darker than the shaded parts. I felt that this worked quite well but it might be a bit too dark... This might be because the printer had run out of ink so the lighter areas could be a bit more visible than what's shown here, so it could work.

I wish that the pen was a bit thinner because the strokes are quite thick in comparison, which is another thing that shows that this pen might not be ideal for the design. I could perhaps reduce the amount that I use it and probably just use it in a few areas so that it doesn't appear so dense... Maybe only in the darkest of dark areas?

Nevertheless, it's quite hard to tell her because of how light the ink is. I might have to try this again on an old prototype where the ink was much clearer.  

Bookbinding Cloth

Luckily my bookbinding cloth finally arrived so I decided to use that and replace the mock-up I had done with card. I used the card one as reference so that I could get accurate measurements in terms of width and length. 

The cloth was a lot easily to use because it was a really soft material and self-adhesive, so there wasnt a visible raise against the covers. I used a fabric pencil to make some small dots so that I knew where the 'edge' of the cloth would be for the front before folding it around.

Thoughts

My fold-around didn't go as smoothly as I thought so next time I think I shall take extra care when doing this, and will possibly not take the backing off right away but gently peel it off as I fold it around the spine. But in general it worked really well and created that authentic "book-feel". 

I then went over this prototype with my gold pen much like my previous experiment.

Reflective Thinking - Summary

The gold pen works really well - it's fluid, and went I bend the cover the gold reflects off the light and creates that gold-foil effect. It makes the cover look as if it's very valuable and "royal", and together with the bookbinding cloth it does have that authentic appearance about it.

The bookbinding cloth definitely produces a professional outcome and I'm glad that I did purchase it in the end as it definitely works better than black card/paper. There isn't a visible raise where it rests atop of the card and is perfectly flat. Like I said before, I shall take care when sticking this down so that there aren't any bumps and so that it could be as straight as possible.

To do this I could use a scalpel and lightly make a crease so that the material would fold easily, and then use the fabric pencil to make some marks just in case. 

I'm still a bit unsure of what to do with the gold pen as it's a bit too dark and thick against the ink. However, like I have mentioned before, this might be because the ink had run out and so the lines weren't printed properly. I shall give this another try before attempting it on my final. 

I'm glad that I made sure that I had plenty of time to carry out a few more experiments! Now I just need to get my final bound and posters printed.