Binding Production - The Gallery Calendar - Self-led Brief

I began the binding process but drawing out evenly spaced holes for the hole punch to match, meaning that the top would look neat and even. I also drew a line underneath the circles, ensuring that the hole punch would have a guide to keep it in position.

I invested in a single hole punch so I would be able to accurately punch the holes into the calendar and this seemed to go quite smoothly. Once the holes for the first page were covered, I then began a system of placing each page individually behind and punching the holes through the page, ensuring the holes were in the same place each time and would not be misaligned. This was a time consuming process with twelve pages to process in a accurate and precise way, however eventually it was complete.

I then aligned the holes together and carved out a dip between the two sets of holes. This was to make sure the calendar could be suspended on a metal hook. Again the dip was carved from the first page and this was individually repeated on all twelve sheets.

Metal wire was then wrapped around a pencil to create a spiral effect, this was then twisted through the holes for the bind. Unforgettably the wire was so tightly bound that the pages could not move freely behind each other. As a result, I the twisted the wire around a larger sharpie pen - with a wider circumference. This did mean is was more free to move but there was still some issues.

I then tried twisted the wire around a marker pen - this mean that the wire spiral was a lot larger but could move effortlessly. It was however perhaps less attractive. This again had issues as I the ends of the wire were very sharp and trying to alter their direction meant that the rest of the spiral would suffer damage. It was difficult to find a way which would create easy and free movement too.

Because the metal spiral was proving difficult, the calendar was beginning to suffer slight wear. For this reason I began experimenting on a stack of scrap paper in order to prevent injury. Having an additional loop at each end was trialed but this again restricted movement. 

I then considered doing single loops of wire to prevent the issues of how the wire ended on each spiral. Initially this looked like it could work so i molded seven metal hoops. But with further experimentation it seemed as if the hoops would hang in an inconsistent way from the holes - making the binding style look unprofessional.

In the end I decided to persevere with the spiral bind. This spiral is by no means perfect but it has been the most professional and consistent method so far. If this calendar was to be put in real production then it would be made using industrial processes and would therefore look more consistent. By using the materials I have available I have created the most consistent bind possible.