"Happy Gardening Leave." That is the whole sign off on the opening spread of Koibird's lookbook, beneath one line announcing that the Marylebone concept store is "getting their hands dirty" this season. The photographs carry the joke from there. A model in a pink flower cropped top stands between two clipped hedges in terracotta pots, and later another lounges at a village show of giant prize winning vegetables, a carrot almost as long as she is. Small italic credits name the designer pieces in every shot. We printed it for Tom, the graphic designer at Koibird, as an A5 stapled lookbook: a gloss laminated 300gsm gloss cover wrapped round 20 pages of 170gsm gloss, in full colour throughout.
A5, with room for the whole outfit
An A5 page is tall enough for a full length look from hair to heels, and opening the booklet gives you a landscape spread of 297 x 210mm for the wider scenes. The mower stretches right across one; a washing line strung with a pink camisole, a red dress and a pair of heels crosses another. Koibird liked the size enough to keep it. When their next season's file arrived set up at A4, we rebuilt it as A5 so the new lookbook would sit beside this one.
170gsm gloss, for hot pinks and potting soil
Inside, the choice was between gloss and the softer, chalkier uncoated sheets that many brands now pick. Uncoated suits quiet, earthy fashion, and plenty of lookbooks wear it well. This shoot is neither quiet nor earthy. It is hot pink, mower green, tomato red and crystal sparkle, shot against bright white studio paper, and gloss holds every one of those colours up at full strength. Weight counts too: at 170gsm a full colour picture printed on one side won't ghost through the white background behind it, and each turn of the page feels closer to a magazine than a leaflet.
A cover that shines like a sunburn
The cover is a close crop of tanned skin with the Koibird K left pale as a tan line, a crystal pink bikini string and a corner of pink check tailoring. Laminating the 300gsm board in gloss makes that skin glow, deepens the shadows and protects the cover from fingerprints as the lookbook passes from hand to hand. A matt or soft touch laminate would have calmed it down, and calm was never the brief. Months later, discussing a postcard order, Mike put it plainly: "The gloss cover was a big winner and the photographic styling was awesome too!"
Twenty four pages, two staples
Twenty inside pages and the cover add up to 24, which divides by four and sits comfortably inside the 8 to 72 page range for stapling. Perfect binding was never an option at this extent, because a square spine needs at least 32 inside pages to reach 3mm. Staples also suit the photography. A stapled booklet opens flat, so the washing line and the mower read as single pictures across the fold, and you can see the two staples sitting neatly in the centre of the spread. If you are designing a short lookbook, plan your widest shots as spreads; stapling is the binding that shows them off best.
Single pages and a strip of bleed
The whole setup fitted inside one Friday. Tom rang in the morning, our quote went out mid morning and, just before two, his order arrived with the PDF and the working InDesign package. Seven minutes later Mike replied with two fixes: single page PDFs in place of the two page spreads Tom had exported, and bleed missing from the bottom edge of pages 8 and 13. Ten minutes after that, new files landed with a note: "Looking forward to seeing the results, very exciting." The proof followed within the hour. Tom was out of the office the next week, so he had already copied in colleagues to keep things moving.
Once the boxes arrived, Tom wrote back: "the quality is amazing and we are very happy!" When Koibird ordered postcards from us later, he was still calling them "so good". The next season's lookbook came to us on the same spec. For a recycled, uncoated take on the format, see the Stella McCartney Sport lookbooks, and our guide to silk, gloss, uncoated and recycled paper compares all four finishes. Once the next collection is in the can, price it through our lookbook printing page and ask us which stock flatters the clothes.
PaperbacksA5, 44 pages, perfect bound£246for 100
