Thursday, January 21, 2010

Custom Guest Book

I've been meaning to blog about my guest book that I had made last year. I had visited Kent Ambler's studio a while back and was impressed that he had made a book showing his woodcut printmaking process. This made me want one. I too wanted to show process photos as well as finished work. After thinking about the book for a while, I decided to make it a guest book as well.
I used a printing company called Blurb, and was impressed with the user friendly software. It did take me a while to get all of my photos in order and make sure my design was nice. They offered many sizes and formats as well as hard cover, soft cover, and hard cover with a jacket.
The book only took about a week to get here and cost around $50, including shipping.
I get a lot of comments on this book. Other artists seem very impressed and ask if I mind if they use this idea. Are you kidding? Please, please, please use this idea (that does not mean steal the design). I love seeing artists that have their sh*t together and that can present their work seriously and professionally.
Below are a few sample pages from the book. Left pages are for names and addresses and right pages are photographs.

artist statement on first page








back of book

Interested in being on the mailing list for real tangible postcards? Send me your address at carpenterpottery[at]bellsouth[dot]com.

16 comments:

-Rob, Simple Circle Studios said...

My wife & mother in law used that Blurb site-program-thing to make a wedding album. Apparently it is quite versatile. Never thought of using it to make a guest book, though. Looks good!

Kari Weaver said...

Nice looking book. I think you should teach a seminar for those of us who are trying to get our sh*t together and present our work seriously and professionally.

brandon phillips said...

genius. stealing it.

Nelle Fastman Pingree said...

Fabulous. Thanks, Kyle.

Tracey Broome said...

Stealing it too! I have iphoto for my Mac and can email my photos right to the Mac store and get a book for around $30. Have done this for family photo/gifts but this is a great idea!!!! The photos are great. Nice keepsake, good gift for potter friends also. Thanks!!

FetishGhost said...

Learning to create the content for our studio books was one of the things that pulled me towards blogging. We were creating the content, but only the people in the same room as the book could leaf through it. Customers really react positively to holding something like this in their hand. I know they seemed to look at me in a much more serious manner... and as a clay artist working a nitche, this helps a lot.
Now that it's done, are you going to offer to sell any?

John said...

Kyle - I happened to be browsing the Blurb website (we used it to make a catalogue of a student show at school) and ran across your book - probably about 2 months ago. I meant to write you - I thought it was awesome! So glad you posted about it!

Sandy Miller said...

Just finished mine on Blurb.com and had it out at an opening!
Installed the show on a Friday and had the book for the opening the next friday!
Plan to use it as a marketing tool when approaching other galleries.

cookingwithgas said...

wonderful idea!

Lori Buff said...

Brilliant idea. I'm stealing it too, but using iPhoto. It's good to be a mac user.

Emily Murphy said...

Fantastic idea! I love the idea of combining a guest book with process photos.

favorite line from this post: "I love seeing artists that have their sh*t together and that can present their work seriously and professionally."

Yes!

Linda Starr said...

beautiful book Kyle, thanks for sharing and showing us.

Anonymous said...

Beautiful! Afraid I'll be stealing this idea too... Thanks for posting and for the link. You should work out a way to get a referral fee from blurb. :-)

Miri

Bulldog Pottery said...

Great Idea Kyle. Looks great. Mind if we borrow the idea?

Bulldog Pottery said...

Ha Ha. I guess I should of read the whole post before I comment! Thank, For sharing the idea. It is a fun one.

Kyle Carpenter said...

I want people to use this idea. It makes us all look gooooood!

p.s. Walgreens offers a 2 inch book on it's website for like 5 bucks or so. These could be good "freebees" for the serious buyers. Just one of many ideas that I think about all of the time.

Thank you all for commenting!