Material Gallery

We depart from the world of classic cover materials and introduce to you some of our favourite materials. The puristic and natural Jeans Label Material can be found among the best hits on this list. Furthermore, you’ll be able to check the latest materials from the fashion and design industry as well as the brandbook lab. Be inspired.


 

brandbook Innovations

bb Hot Metal

Metallic Artificial Leather 

Metallic, smooth mirror surfaces tinted in copper, gold, silver, or blue and turquoise. Both smooth and soft at the same time. Like a material from the future. As a matter of fact, it comes from Italy and is currently used in the newest fashion collections, including handbags and accessories. The materiality and mirror effect work very well on flexcovers with convex back spines.

Characteristics

  • Origin: Italy
  • Colours: metallic tones and trend colours
  • Grammage: 630 g/m²
  • Effect: fine and trendy
  • Texture: smooth and soft

Manufacture

  • Book type: flexcover
  • Finishing & print: silkscreen print,
  • all debossings
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bb JLM

Jeans Label Material 

Visually, it comes across as leather, but it’s manufactured like paper – an extremely robust paper. After all, this material is also used for the labels on Jeans, and thus has to be able to survive even a stone washing process. Its great durability, its natural haptic, and last, but not least, its eco-friendliness, make it one of our favourite materials. And the best thing is: it gets even more beautiful with use!

Characteristics

  • Origin: Germany
  • Colours: sand, warm grey,
  • natural white, black
  • Grammage: 0.5 mm
  • Effect: very natural, purist
  • Texture: slightly rough and flexible

Manufacture

  • Book type: Flexcover
  • Finishing & print:
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bb Lefa Natur

Premium Bonded Leather 

Bonded Leather consists of finely chopped vegetable tanned leather scraps, latex and tannins. Lefa Natur is the base material for Smooth Bonded Leather and many other leather imitations. But we like its finely smoothed grain so much in its original form that it has become one of our favourite materials.

Characteristics

  • Origin: Italy
  • Colours: anthracite, light beige
  • Grammage: 0.4 mm and 0.6 mm
  • Effect: very natural, leather smell
  • Texture: soft pleasant touch, develops natural patina with use

Manufacture

  • Book type: hardcover, flexcover, sketchbook
  • Finishing & print: silkscreen print, unique contrast with blind, colour, and foil debossing
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bb SBL

Smooth Bonded Leather 

The properties of Smooth Bonded Leather can be compared to real leather. This includes its pleasant soft texture and high durability. At the same time, Smooth Bonded Leather stands for a conscious use of resources because it is made from the left-over scraps in the leather punching process. It is exclusively produced and dyed for us in Italy while adhering to the highest environmental standards.

Characteristics

  • Origin: Italy
  • Colours: all Pantone colours
  • (minimum order 500 copies)
  • Grammage: 0.4 mm and 0.6 mm
  • Effect: matte, fine
  • Texture: soft and velvety

Manufacture

  • Book type: hardcover, flexcover
  • Finishing & print: silkscreen,
  • all debossings
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bb Canvas Print

A Soft, Elegant Linen – Customised Print 

Linen is inherently a standard bookbinding material. So it’s nothing special? This linen is something special: Its texture is pleasantly smooth, printable with an offset procedure, and the best thing is: it doesn’t fringe at the aligned cutting edges when used as a flexcover. If you’re missing your desired colour, we can have this classic covering material printed in any corporate colour of the Pantone palette.

Characteristics

  • Origin: France
  • Colours: custom print
  • Grammage: 130 g/m²
  • Effect: classic elegant
  • Texture: substantial and soft

Manufacture

  • Book type: hardcover, flexcover
  • Finishing & print: offset print,
  • silkscreen print,
  • all debossings
  •  
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bb Silver Mirror Effect

Supreme Mirror Effect 

A special material with outstanding reflecting properties that lead to extremely sharp images in contrast to other mirror materials.

Characteristics

  • Origin: Germany
  • Colours: 200 g/m²
  • Grammage: silver, gold, copper
  • Effect: high gloss effect
  • Texture: like glass

Manufacture

  • Book type: flexcover
  • Finishing & print: silkscreen,
  • all debossings
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BB Fluid Chrome

Futuristic Space Look 

A silver, holographic reflecting imitation leather that looks like liquid chrome – extremely futuristic. It leads to an interesting light refraction when the material isn’t lying flat, but is bent at the spine of the book. In combination with holographic book edges, the book doesn’t look like a book, but like a flexible metal block dipped in chrome.

Characteristics

  • Origin: Italy
  • Colours:
  • Grammage: 630 g/m2
  • Effect: spacy-futuristic
  • Texture: smooth, soft, and flexible

Manufacture

  • Book type: flexcover
  • Finishing & print: silk screen print,
  • all debossings
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bb Foil

Holographic Depth Effect 

A holographic foil that is applied to the book’s edges and makes the book appear like a thick plate of glass with all its reflections. The material of the book block becomes indiscernible. The foil is applied with a special technique. Even book blocks with rounded edges can be finished with this foil.

Characteristics

  • Origin:
  • Colours:
  • Grammage:
  • Effect:
  • Texture:

Manufacture

  • Book type:
  • Finishing & print:

Takeo Satogami

Japanese Premium Paper with Textile Effect 

Satogami has a slightly rough surface and is imbued with fine bamboo fibres. The effect and texture is reminiscent of a very fine suit material. An ideal covering material if you like it subtle and elegant. Combining it with a glossy hot foil debossing leads to amazing contrasts.

Characteristics

  • Origin: Japan
  • Colours: broad palette of subtle, muted colours
  • Grammage: from 116 g/m² to 198 g/m²
  • Effect: fine and elegant
  • Texture: pleasant to the touch

Manufacture

  • Book type: hardcover, flexcover, notebooks
  • Finishing & print: offset print, silkscreen print, all debossings
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bb Plank

Perfect cover plates for real sketchbooks 

You shouldn’t bend cardboard, you shouldn’t expect it to pardon kinks or moisture. We have been searching for an alternative, and found this 2.6 mm thick sketchbook cover material. The plates are made of recycled leather. Small inclusions make the material attractive so the optics are far from inferior to the appearance of high-class cardboard. The material is nice to touch and yet resistant.

Characteristics

  • Origin: Italy
  • Colours: anthracite
  • Grammage: 2.6 mm

Manufacture

  • Book type: sketchbook
  • Finishing & print: silk-screen printing,
  • debossing and hot foil stamping

bb Textiles

New elastic bands, bookmarks and headbands 

It’s often the small, textile extras that turn on the charm of notebooks: the elastic band closure, bookmark and headband. Besides skilled manual quality and functionality (you wouldn’t enjoy a too lax elastic band closure in your daily use) it’s the variety of colours and designs that count and make the difference. The individual productions for our clients are mostly a perfect match of elastic band, bookmark and headband according to the Corporate Identity colours. For those who love the unusual and eccentric, we are also happy to search for specific ribbons, that you will not find in other binderies. Innovative textiles from herberdashery and fashion like this lovely bookmark, that we found from a Parisian fabricator.

Characteristics

  • Origin: France
  • Colours: wide colour range
  • Texture: woven cotton

Manufacture

  • Book types: all book types

FAQ on cover materials

  • Which material is ideal for letterpress motifs?

    The handmade paper mill Gmund, which is located at the beautiful Lake Tegern, has developed a cotton series with high-volume paper made of 100% cotton, which feels extra delicate and soft like a cloud and thus has excellent debossing characteristics for the letterpress process. Extensive and multi-coloured debossing motifs can be printed amazingly accurate. With a thickness of up to 900 g/m², Gmund Cotton is very well suited for sketchbooks of the premium section. It comes with a small, but fine choice of colour from pale grey to shiny cream, which we like very much.

  • What makes papers with fine structures so special?

    Fine papers distinguish themselves not only because of their high-quality composite base, but paper manufacturers often further refine them with fascinating surface structures. The Surbalin series, for instance, is especially beautiful with a Seda surface, Napura with a fine wood structure called Khepera, and the F-Color series is not only available in smooth textures, but also in handmade paper, fine linen or metallic textures. In general, fine papers are particularly interesting, because they can be used as cover material, as well as for front- and end leaves.

  • Which cover material offers the largest colour range?

    From the English manufacturer GF Smith we obtain the paper collection Colorplan – a particularly high-quality imbued paper with an impressive product range: 50 colours that can be combined with 25 surface debossings and 8 basic grammages – this adds up to exactly 10 000 possible variations. The colours do not only perfectly harmonize with each other, they also have very beautiful titles, such as Sorbet Yellow, Powder Green, Bitter Chocolate or New Blue.

  • How do you achieve a soft touch feeling on the book cover?

    Soft touch surfaces have a soft and comfortable feel when being touched and, in contrast to sleek surfaces, they have a better grip. This surface coating has been developed for the automotive industry, for car fittings and other surfaces of the car interior. Nowadays, there are also household items and mobile phone- and tablet covers with soft touch surfaces. Thus, it seems just logical that we’d like to offer you this effect for your book production as well. The soft touch surface feel can be achieved through different ways: (a.) Laminating the surface of the hardcover book with either one of the well-known soft touch materials, such as Senzo or Mano, (b.) The print sheet is subsequently sealed with soft touch cellophane, or (c.) Those who want to use the effect just partially, can settle with a soft touch varnish. Too complicated? Just give us a call, and we’ll be happy to advise you on the optimal technique for your book production.

  • Which cover materials enable the deepest and best debossing results?

    With blind or hot foil debossing many fine papers and synthetic leathers already show fantastic results, yet, thermo-reactive materials can even outdo this. The cover material changes its colour tone-in-tone through the heat impact during the debossing process, so that the debossed motifs are displayed in high-contrast and with sharp edges. Thus, even delicate letterings and motifs show convincing results. In regard to paper, we recommend Napura – a natural and strong paper that is drawn through with fine, bright fibres, and when it comes to synthetic leather: Vivella – a comfortably soft and voluminous thermal material.

  • Which natural cover materials can you choose from?

    Black and leather – this is usually one of the first associations when it comes to notebooks, but it could be so much different. You can choose between wonderful natural paper and cardboard, such as the exceptional Bier Papier from Gmund processed with real draff – very earthy, vivid and authentic. Or undyed natural linen with a structure that reminds you of fine jute. The brand new cover cardboard with the beautiful name Heidi, also produced at the paper factory Gmund near the beautiful lake Tegern, validates this trend. Our suggestion: Make an exclusive impression with a subtle metallic debossing in copper or bronze.

  • Which alternatives does brandbook offer to classic linen?

    Linen does not equal linen. There are surprisingly many variations to discover: Buckram Canvas with acrylic coating that is extremely durable and scratchproof, linen with glitter effects, coloured linen made of rough canvas material, linen made of fine-shimmering rayon, smoothed fine linen, canvas with changing double-colour effects, undyed natural linen, water-resistant linen, naturally-mottled Dubletta linen, Chromo linen with matte-metallic sealing. And when it comes to a specific colour, we also dye linen individually for you.

  • Which are the alternatives to real leather?

    More and more customers distance themselves from book products made of real leather. It doesn’t surprise us, since it’s completely in line with the current trend. Bonded leathers provide a beautiful substitute to real leather. Made of a recycled leather blend, they have a very similar surface feel and a pleasant smell. The selection of covers is large: from the natural product made of beige or mottled anthracite to classic black matte or silky glossy surfaces up to fine or rough shagreened leather qualities. Starting from 500 copies on, we can dye our bonded leathers exactly according to your corporate Pantone colour.