Our Visit To Acme Bookbinding

Outside Acme Bookbinders in Charlestown, MA

HEY BLOGGERS!
This week the Visual Arts Colloquium class took a visit to Charlestown to visit Acme Bookbinding! Acme is one of the oldest and largest bookbinders in New England. They're also in Guinness Book Of World Records for binding the largest book—which is 5 feet tall and 80 inches wide. To hold this book together, they used screw posts. Our tour guide, Pete, was very humorous and we thank him for taking time out of his day to show us around.

Pete, our tour guide, shows the “largest book in the world” to the students. He explains the printing and binding process that went into crafting it.

We learned that Acme was formally known as J. G. Roberts, and was founded in 1821. Pete opened the tour with a story of how the president of Acme, Paul Parisi, quit his job and founded Acme on the same day his son John Parisi was born, which is how they remember the company's age. Acme is a family company, so his son John also works there too, as head of manufacturing. As Pete took us around Acme, we were able to see some new equipment used to bind books, as well as some older ones. It was cool—they use a lot of unique materials for their books, such as leather and goat skin (sorry to all the animal lovers). 

Acme Bookbinding provides edition binding, library binding, textbook rebinding and other products. They use glue and sewing to bind books together, and when the machines finish sewing, or the glue is dried, the books go through a machine with a double sided blade, that is placed at an angle and it cuts and trims the book to the desired size. It was pretty amazing to watch the machines work. One of the fancier machines was the Hp indigo press 5500. One of our classmates (HALI) sketched up a picture of it for us. Their projects can take up to one weekend to a couple of weeks. Their motto is "never turn anything down" which may be the reason why they are New England’s favorite! :)

First Class Trip: Dynagraf

Everyone say “Dynagraf!”

Greetings,

The Visual Design Inquiry Group went to a printing company their first class trip. We went to visit a very successful company known as Dynagraf Inc. Dynagraf has been around for many years and has won many awards. More recently was the Sappi Fine Paper North American Printer of the Year award. They were awarded $20,000 which they will use to update their equipment and put towards marketing.

The printing process starts with pre-press. Pre-press is mostly done on computers. In this step, designers and other like employees will look at the files and make any color adjustments or layout tweaking that may need to be done. This digital department makes sure everything is ready to go even before anything has started to print. When everything is ready to go, they will then proceed to print off about 100 copies and then do a check to make sure all the colors are accurate and everything is in order. A representative from the company who hired Dynagraf for their project will inspect the work and if they're satisfied they will give the okay to start mass printing. In the next step, there is 3 cylinders used to create the prints at 12,000 sheets per hour. A project will typically take a few weeks or a few months from start to finish. Dependning on the type of material used and how many copies are required.

It was a successful first class trip, Heather didn't get us all killed! We all received multiple gifts from the company and learned a lot about the printing process.

Visual Arts Colloquium kick-off!

Curry faculty Iris Kumar presents her recent work.

“Quiet Chill” by Prof. Laurie Alpert

The Visual Arts Colloquium class kicked off with demonstrations by Curry Fine and Applied Arts faculty Laurie Alpert, Iris Kumar, and Heather Shaw. Each faculty member presented their work to the class on Thursday, Sept. 2, 2010.

The students—called the Visual Design Inquiry Group (VDIG)—asked many great questions and engaged in a dialogue with the faculty about their methodologies and approaches to their personal and professional works.

The Visual Design Inquiry Group (VDIG) are first year students who have expressed an interest in Graphic Design and/or Visual Arts. The Visual Arts Colloquium class is designed to inspire and engage the students in the arts through class trips, visiting lecturers, and workshops.

Visual Design Inquiry Faculty:
Laurie Alpert: www.lauriealpert.com
Iris Kumar: irismorehousekumar.wordpress.com
Heather Shaw: www.heathershawdesign.com