Integral binding. Types of book bindings. Covers for binding

Although e-books are becoming more popular day by day, traditional paper their relatives do not give up their positions. At the same time, most publishers understand that because of their high cost, printed paper literature is considerably inferior to electronic versions. For this reason, the printing and interlacing technologies of books are constantly being improved. So, one of the latest innovations in this area has become an integral binding. What is it and what are its advantages over other ways of designing books? Let's find out.

What is a book cover?

In order to better understand the uniqueness of the integral way of interweaving printed materials, it is worthwhile to understand what a binding is and why it is needed.

As is known, the book (in its modern form) consists of a set of paper pages, fastened together. Frames their book cover, which is sometimes also called the cover, although this is not exactly the same thing. This device serves not only to secure the pages, but also to protect them from damage, as well as to inform about the contents of the publication.

Sometimes the word "binding" is also called the process of creating a cover. However, in this sense it is more correct to use a different name. This "bookbinding".

History of book binding

The exact date of appearance of the tradition of using binders for books is not known. Scientists believe that this happened in the 2nd century AD. E. However, it took another two centuries to perfect the binding, making it look like a modern one.

Originally its main function was to secure and protect the pages of the book from damage. For this reason, the bindings were made of strong rigid materials like wood or leather. In the same period, a tradition arose to decorate books with precious metals and stones, which made them very expensive and inaccessible to the majority.

With the invention of printing, manufacturers of printed products began to look for ways to speed up and reduce the cost of production of binders. In this regard, books in the leather binding for several centuries were replaced by cardboard and tissue analogs. After that, they ceased to be a rarity, and their covers began to perform not only a protective function, but also informative. They began to write information about the title and the author of the work, as well as about the publishing house, less often - about the owner.

Since the XVIII century among the wealthy people around the world, the fashion for compiling their own libraries is spreading. In this connection, for each holder of such a "collection", a unique binding design was developed, often using the coat of arms.

The quality and luxuriousness of the decoration of books now depended on the financial capabilities of their owner. For example, Pushkin was not rich, so the design of bindings in his library was very modest, but he was strong. At the same time, many landlords in the Russian Empire, who collected books just to please fashion, economized on the quality of the bindings to please the appearance.

In the twentieth century, with the development of industry, all stages of the production of printed products were automated, and human participation in this process was reduced to a minimum. Moreover, with the advent of paperback paperbacks, leather-bound books have become a lot of history. Although today you can order such design for a gift edition, made by the master manually. However, it will cost, as in the old days, very expensive.

What is the book cover and how does it differ from the binding

Often the cover is equated semantically to the word "binding", and although both of these terms mean the outer cover of the book, there is a difference between them. What is it? Let's find out.

The cover is called a paper or cardboard outer cover of a book, notebook, diary or some document. At the same time, the binding is almost always made of more dense types of cardboard, covered with paper, film, cloth or other materials.

Structurally, these two concepts also differ between themselves. So, there are no fly-sheets in the cover and, as a rule, it is an all-piece piece. While the traditional binding for a book can consist of several parts, glued together. There is also an integral version of it - an integral binding.

Due to the prevalence of soft-cover editions, it is often confused with binding. You can distinguish such publications by the presence of the fly-leaf. If it is, it's a paperback. If there is no end of book, this is a bound edition.

What does the binding consist of?

The traditional binding for any publication consists of several elements. First of all, it's a cover. In fact, this is the same as the cardboard cover. It serves as the main protective cover for the entire book. This detail is found in two types: composite and one-piece.

The classic composite lid is made of cardboard parts, covered with fabric, colored cardboard or plastic, less often with artificial leather. It contains three parts: two sides and behind (a strip of cardboard, covering the place of binding of the pages of the book - the spine). Deepening between the parties and the back is called a hem.

In the whole-carbon version, all this is one detail.

Regardless of its kind, the lid is attached to the book block (the pages collected in the notebook) with the help of the flyby.

The other three sides of the book, which are not attached to each other, are called cutoffs: front, upper and lower.

The ribbon-tape, pasted to the binding, is called the liasse.

What materials are used to make covers for binding

After the use of wood was stopped in the production of books, for many centuries the lid for the binding was made of cardboard of various thicknesses.

However, since the second half of the XX century, plastic became a serious competition for cardboard. Covers for binding from this material are more reliable and are not afraid of moisture. Today they are quite often used in the printing industry. By the way, one of the main advantages of plastic before cardboard is that covers of this kind can be not only of any color, but also transparent. However, this innovation has a notable shortcoming. The fact is that plastic covers can be harmful to the environment, since this material itself does not decompose and needs to be recycled.

The tendency of using plastic for interweaving books is more concerned not with fiction or gift editions, but with binding for notebooks, diaries, notebooks, abstracts, theses and reference books.

Also worth noting is the growing trend in the manufacture of covers of notebooks and notebooks of silicone.

Hardcover and its subtypes

It is widely known that there are such types of bindings: hard, soft and integral. Each of them has its own subspecies.

Depending on the coating of the cardboard base of the hard cover, there are such options.

• 7BTs (cellophane) - the lid is sealed with sealed laminated or lacquered paper.
• 7T - cardboard is covered with a cloth. It can be sealed, lacquered, dyed or processed with embossing.
• 7B - by the method of processing this subspecies is similar to 7T. However, in this case, the lid is not covered with fabric, but with various materials like artificial or natural leather, bumvinyl, balacron, etc.

BSC and SCS

Considering which types of binders are common in the modern printing world, it is worth paying attention to subspecies of soft binding. There are two.

• КБС - adhesive seamless fastening. Unlike the hard binding, in this version the pages are not stitched, but only glued together. The cover is made of a sealed and laminated one-piece sheet of paper or paperboard with a density of not more than 300 g / m ² . This method is the cheapest and easiest to perform. At the same time, publications in such a binding can quickly break, because the KBS is not very reliable.
• ШКС - sewing glue fastening. This method differs from the BSC only in that the pages of the book block are not only glued, but also stitched. The binding cover is made in the same way as in the KBS. Books made with the help of ShBK, serve much longer than the KBC, however they are more expensive.

What binding is called Dutch

In recent years, the integral binding has become very popular. Sometimes it is also called "Dutch". He is the intermediate link between soft and hard.

Its peculiarity is that with this design the cover is made of a one-piece piece of laminated cardboard with a density of up to 500 g / m ² . Because of this method of production, this species simultaneously has the properties of both hard and soft bindings.

Features of an integral way of book cover design

What special properties does the Dutch binding have?

First of all, its production is cheaper and faster. Unlike a hard cover (for which you have to do several operations for cutting and pasting), making the book cover of the integral is simpler. It is cut from a single piece of laminated cardboard, which is scraped in places of folding and does not need additional processing. This Dutch binding is similar to soft.

However, unlike it, the cover of the integral kind turns out to be very dense and does not look very different from the solid one. At the same time, it is lighter (by weight) and less durable, but still surpasses the reliability of a soft SCS.

Reliability, cheapness and ease of this method of design of the cover of publications allowed him for several years to become one of the most popular in the world. In this regard, in some countries, it has become a tradition to print school textbooks not in a hard, but in an integral binding. Thus, the weight of books that schoolchildren wear in the portfolio has significantly decreased, as does the load on the child's spine.

Channel binding

In addition to the three best-known methods for designing book covers, there are several intermediate methods that appeared only at the end of the 20th and beginning of the 21st centuries.

First of all, this is a channel binding. Pages in this case do not stitch, do not stick together and are not perforated. On a special machine they are fastened with the cover and with each other using a U-shaped metal channel.

Thus, it is possible to bind papers with either a hard, or a soft or plastic cover.

Books and notebooks with plastic and metal springs

Among the cheapest and most popular ways of interweaving books is stitching with the help of a spring. It can be metal or plastic. The edition designed in this way lacks the spine - its place is occupied by a spring that is stretched through the perforation in the pages. For such an interlacing, a special machine is needed, which makes holes and sews them.

In this way directories and guidebooks are often drawn up.

Stitching with metal staples

If the book is a small volume and format, it is bound with a regular paper or cardboard cover (without the fly-end). As a rule, such publications are stapled with the help of two staples, very similar to clerical. This is the cheapest and most affordable way of interlacing books, although it is suitable only for small volumes.