Kerry Martin—senior design editor over at Clarion—sent me all kinds of goodies from the print production of The Famous Nini!

Here are proofs and f&gs.

Proofs show all the spreads from a book.  A spread is two pages side-by-side as they appear in the book, like Pages 14/15.  The printer provides these so the art director may check them for color.

I don’t have one here to show you, but the actual press sheet is big enough to show 8 pages on each side, adding up to 16 pages, or a signature.  Two press sheets equal 32 pages, the typical number for a picture book.  When you see a press sheet, the pages appear not to belong together:  Page 1 will be next to Page 16, Page 2 will be next to Page 15.

F&Gs—folded & gathered—are the press sheets that have been cut into 2-page pieces then scored and folded.  These are gathered together in sequence (Pages 1 through 32) so you can see how they’ll read as a book.  At this stage it suddenly makes sense that Page 1 and Page 16 should be next to each other.

F&Gs have not yet been stitched together or bound into a cover.

Kerry also generously sent me one of the few hardcover copies—Nini won’t be in stores til June.  More info on book production here.