Fanbinding: The Devil in Us All
I joined @renegadeguild 's annual bound books exchange this year, wherein participants create a hand-bound book out of a fic or public domain work of their giftee's choosing. One of my giftee's choices caught my eye immediately with its summary description of double-sided unrequited pining, identity shenanigans, and Steve discovering that he is into kink while moonlighting as an artist for a BDSM magazine in order to make ends meet. Now that both giftee and author @sineala have received their copies, I'm pleased to share pictures of my creation.
Duo bookcloth in Blue Jean, with red foil applied using my trusty foil quill. Since Steve's initial moment of self- discovery involves a loving description of someone (who is definitely not Tony Stark, what are you talking about?) tied up, I leaned hard into the rope theme while designing this bind.
Red marbled lokta for the endpapers and Oxford hollow felt like the kinky underclothes to the subtle outerwear of "but we're just friends and teammates, and that's all we'll ever be."
I set both the text and the title in Lora, a typeface that feels modern and readable on the book page, with interesting asymmetrical details on the serifs at larger sizes.
Titles and drop caps were set in Ropest, which out of all the rope-themed typefaces I tried managed to strike a balance of elegance and readability while still being notably rope-looking.
Once I finished the two full-size copies, I decided I wanted a copy of my own after all, but didn't have enough of the red lokta left for full-size endpapers. I ended up shrinking down the typeset to fit a letter-octavo page instead of half-letter and am quite pleased with my bitty book, though the text is small enough that it won't be particularly legible when my eyes get older. It's such a satisfying size to hold in the hand.
The Devil in Us All is free to read on Ao3.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
