Clothbound is a cover dressed with cloth
Clothbound book with 2-colour hot-foil stamping
Notice the details on the cloth
Leather-bound is a cover dressed with leather (original or imitation).
Leather-bound cover with gold hot-foil stamping
In both cases, the beauty’s in the material. When using these materials for book covers we mainly want the texture to stand out. That’s why we shouldn’t overload them with details. The most common editing methods used on this kind of covers are: gold, silver, colour hot-foil stamping or intaglio printing. (As we mentioned above and as seen in the pictures, only a small part of the cover is covered with details.)
On the previous post, we described the best way to use hot-foil stamping. Same goes for intaglio printing. http://offsetvsgraphicdesign.blogspot.com/2012/03/x.html
Leather-bound book with intaglio printing
Leather-bound book with intaglio printing
Leather-bound book with gold hot-foil stamping
Leather-bound book with gold hot-foil stamping
As long as our imagination’s running, beautiful covers can be created either with cloth or leather or even plastic.
When making leather-bound or clothbound covers we usually make a jacket for them too. A jacket is a thin wrapper covering the cover, which is not bound on the book. It can be easily removed and let us admire the cover material.
Before creating a jacket, we should first speak with the binder or even better use the finished book and measure it, so that the jacket size will be correct.
On our page make-up program we create a single file including the flaps that will keep the jacket on the book, the front cover, the back cover and the back.
The wider the flaps are, the better the jacket will be held on the book. In any case, the flaps shouldn’t be smaller than 7cm wide.
Attention! The final dimensions on the file cannot exceed the maximum paper dimensions.
Clothbound and leather-bound book covers