Complete Lyrics by David Berman was designed and produced by Brandon Langley. It’s a special edition run of just 44 copies that Brandon sent out during the 2019 holidays to friends and collaborators. It is a striking design and an excellent use of a white foil stamp!
David Berman was an influential artist and musician who died in August of 2019. He was known for his rock band the Silver Jews, then later, Purple Mountains.
Special Edition Printing and Binding
Brandon designed this special edition of Complete Lyrics to commemorate David. The lyrics are printed black ink only on 100-lb. white uncoated stock. It’s perfect bound and cased in with a pearl linen antique black case with blue and white headbands
The showstopper is the foil stamp that includes an image of Berman singing, shown above. There is also a white foil stamp on the spine and back cover. Brandon sent PDFs of his design and we consulted with our cover preflight and hardcover production departments to be sure they would work, and also how many dies we’d need to manufacture.
With a large-area foil stamp, we need to balance the cost of ordering one versus multiple dies against the area and pressure required for a clean stamp. The larger the stamp, the more detail we can lose, and just applying more pressure brings its own issues. You can learn more about our foil stamp parameters and guidelines here.
This special edition also includes printed endsheets on Rainbow sky blue, shown below. Brandon numbered each edition of the run after receiving them.
The final touch were slip cases Brandon produced separately! (Unfortunately we’re not able to produce slip cases at Bookmobile.)
From Brandon,
Bookmobile is genuinely one of the best companies that I’ve ever worked with. This was my first time working in book creation, so I had many questions regarding different options for binding materials, paper stocks, foil stamping, die creation, etc. I tested out most of the popular POD services using their stock options for a single book print, but the quality was always lacking. I wanted to customize many of the details for a higher quality design.
Their customer service representatives are among the most helpful and honest that I’ve encountered. They quickly and thoroughly answered all of my questions about every option and provided multiple quotes so that I could easily compare the effect of different combinations on the cost. I never felt like they were trying to ‘upsell’ any option. They were straightforward and honest about what would work and what may not work as hoped. They also provided stock samples and even an example book bound in the linen that I was considering.
The quality of the books I ended up receiving were incredible and far exceeded every expectation. Every detail was consistent across every book and exactly as discussed and requested. They knew I was on a tight schedule, and the books even shipped out over a week earlier than was originally scheduled.