This guide is meant to help students learn how to make simple artists' books or zines without access to a lot of materials and supplies.

Here's our guide to zines and minicomics.

If you'd like a quick intro to Basic Book Anatomy, take a look at this site.

Deviant Art has a good overview of different bookbinding types. 

An artist's book is a work of art in the form or a book or a book-like structure. It is not a book about art but a work of art in its own right.

Artists' books can be one of a kind, produced in limited editions, or mass produced. They can be hand-made or made by machine. 

They can be made out of traditional book materials such as paper and cloth but also out of unconventional items. Our friends at the MassArt Library in Boston have artists' books made out of vinyl records, a pill bottle, a carton of eggs, and paper napkins, to name just a few. There's even a book made of processed cheese!

Image: Heidi Neilson, Uniform Paper, Godine Library

A huge thank you to Greg Wallace at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design for allowing us to reuse elements of his LibGuide on making books at home: https://massart.libguides.com/ab2020