Another book folding alphabet – and a new idea!

12/12/2015 by UKMA 50 Comments

Note:  The lower case e was missing but it’s now there!

So I got a request for an alphabet the other day.  Easy enough to sort out.  It’s called Black Chancery and is available from DaFont.

I made a PDF of all the characters (a-z, upper and lower case) plus the numbers and some groupings, like st, nd, rd, and th.  I also added a & and a heart.  You should be able to use it to create your own words, by cutting and pasting, either digitally  or with actual scissors and glue. You can grab that here.

As I was doing this, I thought again about how to enable people to make their own templates.  I had played around with creating a sheet of just lines back in May, when I first started playing with this, thinking people could use it to “fill” a font shape, or convert it to a fill pattern for PSE or somehow make use of it. In the end, it just seems too hard to explain, especially given all the different programs people might have access to.  As I was working on these, it occurred to me that you really didn’t need to fill the font.  You just needed the lines.  So I went a different way.  I created a sheet of lines with the idea that you could print your word, in black, OVER the lines and use the black part to determine the folds!

All you need to do is create the word you want to use.  Determine the HEIGHT of it and don’t mess with that – if you have an 8 inch book, a four-inch to five-inch high word is what you need.  Then, however you do it in your program, s t r e t c h  it widthwise so each letter will cross more lines. In my sample widthhwise in top to bottom, cause I oriented it as the paper goes in the printer.

The sheet of lines has just over 160 lines. Print it – it’s A4 size but should be OK on US letter for many words. Grab it here.

The gaps you see are actually red lines – I added them every 10th line to help with the counting.

Print your font on the sheet of lines.  

Basically, you are going to slip the template into the book, exactly as you would as explained in the original post. Line up the lines with the edge of the page.  You will then use the black of the font to determine the fold lines.  I’ve marked all three fold-points on one sheet – obviously you don’t do that, but I just want you to be able to see what I mean.

You can either mark the line on the template after you’ve folded it, or if you need to step away, note the page of the book the line corresponds to, so it’s easier when you come back to it.

If you have a super complicated word, with lots of multi-folds (like the S above, which has 3 areas that must be folded one per book-page, in sequence, top, middle, bottom) then you could print across multiple sheets, a couple of letters on each sheet.  The sample font is not actually a very good one for this sort of thing.  Pick your font wisely!

MAKE SURE you read the post that explains the basic steps, and especially calculating the number of pages by sheet (not by number printed on the book!) so you don’t waste your time.  But I think it will work,  I just haven’t had a lot of time (or an appropriate book) to test it out.  I might need to pack the lines closer together, so the word doesn’t need to be stretched, but I fear that may make them harder to focus on.  Anyone want to give it a go and let me know?

{wink}