I received the proof copy of the exhibition catalogue today. To give you an idea how excited I was – the parcel came at exactly the same time as my new iPhone, and I opened the catalogue first!

First impressions: good! It looks really professional. The paper stock is decent, pretty much like a newsstand magazine. The colour reproduction of the photos is faithful. It felt oddly thin at first, but it is only 24 pages and so a lot less than an actual magazine, and I got used to this quickly.

There are some things I will change for the final version, mainly things I couldn’t have seen without a physical print but one little thing I need to check in InDesign to see if I made a silly mistake.

The issues and planned changes are:

  • The gluing in the gutter is tighter than I expected
    • Increase size of margin on insides of page spreads
  • The solid colour I chose for the spine bleeds over onto the back (probably because the catalogue is very thin
    • Line up the front and back images to meet, no spine strip
  • Copyright line on back is not central, it’s misaligned to the barcode
    • This is the one thing I think might be my mistake and I will need to tweak in the software

Other than these tweaks (and needing to write the closing essay) I’m pleased how close the proof is to my visualisation of it.