Greg White had his eye on us before he had a book to print. “Really excited to be in touch with you. I’ve wanted to use ExWhyZed for a while now,” he wrote in April 2025, the week after his collaborator Paul Rider introduced us by email. The book was DRAG: Greg’s photographs of the 2024 European Drag Championships at Santa Pod Raceway, with art direction and design by Paul and words by Tom Bothwell.
The cover announces the noise before you open it. DRAG fills the front in towering white letters, smeared and splintered as if they had been dragged across tarmac, with the three credits slotted vertically between them. On the back sits a single photograph: chrome exhaust headers curling against glossy orange bodywork. Greg and Paul’s emails steered this spec at almost every turn, so their words lead each section below.
“can the cover be a little heavier in weight?”
Paul had already printed the Laamb zine with us and posted Greg a copy so he could judge our paper for himself. Greg replied with a verdict and a single request: “The finish of the book is great, and I’d like to replicate that if possible. So uncoated finish; however, can the cover be a little heavier in weight?”
Laamb’s cover was 200gsm, so we priced 250gsm and 300gsm side by side, both uncoated with a matt laminate, and Mike added some paper geek notes. A heavier board makes the book weightier and more substantial to hold. At 200gsm a cover is nice and flexible; at 300gsm it becomes slightly harder for a reader to open, which made 250gsm the likely compromise. And because DRAG is the bigger book, its larger page would help it fall open anyway. Greg agreed that “the 250 gsm could be a great fit”.
You could use the same logic on yours. If a cover seems flimsy at a large size, go up one weight rather than two: the book gains heft without the spine fighting back every time someone opens it.
Grunge lettering on soft, uncoated pages
When the final artwork arrived, Mike’s reply began: “Ah this is a great book, the Carson-esque graphics are a big win!” The opening spread shows why. THIS IS DRAG RACING runs down a black page, DRAG stretched and warped between two lines of heavy slab serif, above a short history of the sport and its British home at Santa Pod. Further in, BLOOD SWEAT & TYRES is torn across red and orange stripes, facing a rear tyre lost in burnout smoke.
The pace never settles. Some photographs run full bleed over both pages: a funny car blowing fire from its exhaust, a grandstand packed solid with fans, crew walking down the strip under an enormous sky. Others sit in white frames scuffed with black paint, and on one spread a single brushstroke crosses the gutter to tie a Top Fuel dragster to its crew, mid jump, beneath the Santa Pod sign.
Uncoated paper backs all of this up. Ink soaks into the sheet, easing colour back a little and lending the pictures a dusty, filmic grain that suits tyre smoke and heat haze. The solid black pages come out deep and flat, with no glare. If your own photographs are gritty rather than glossy, uncoated stock will take their side. Mike had pointed Greg to the photo book breakdowns we send new photographers in his second email, and they cover the other paper routes too.
“Thanks for flagging!”
Our checks raised a few things before proofing. Mike supplied a ready made InDesign template with the 9mm spine through the centre, and asked Paul to resupply the interior in reading order as single pages rather than spreads. One image, the paint splash behind page 17, was low resolution. His quick fix is worth keeping: shrink an image on the page and its resolution climbs, so halving its size doubles it.
Then came the page count. The file held 119 inside pages, and a perfect bound book needs an even number. Mike suspected the first and last were really the inside covers, which also explained why half of one spread was landing on the back of its other half. After a quick phone call, Paul reworked the file to 118 pages with both inside covers left blank and sent it over first thing the following day, signed off with a cheerful “Thanks for flagging!” Blank inside covers need no artwork at all, so only the outer cover spread went on the template.
Greg and Paul approved the online proof, and when Greg asked about timings Mike told him the books would arrive the next day. His answer: “Oh wow already thats FAST!” When the boxes reached his studio, he wrote again:
“They’ve arrived! First one out the box is stunningly sharp edged. Perfect!! Thank you.”
Greg, photographer
One spec, carried into the next zine
About a year later Paul emailed about a new zine and asked us to price it on DRAG’s size and paper spec. A designer reusing a spec unprompted tells you it worked on the shelf as well as on press.
Planning a motorsport, documentary or street photography book? Start where Greg did. Hold a printed sample, decide what you like about it, then change one thing on purpose. Our short run photo books on uncoated paper start from exactly that kind of conversation, and the spine templates and set up notes for glued books save a round of file fixes. To weigh 200gsm against 250gsm with your own hands, send for our cover and text paper samples.
PaperbacksA5, 44 pages, perfect bound£246for 100
Product cataloguesA5, 28 pages, stapled£166for 100
