Folding paper

March 28, 2025 11:57 AM

One page to a booklet, no tools needed, maybe everybody already knows this. More ways of folding up paper to make a booklet, a zine, a letter, a trinket, something that's all of these:

Zines/artist books/folded bindings, videos from Columbus College of Design

A square that opens up sort of like a pinwheel

A square that opens up into a rectangle, a letterlock

Thread books were storage and pattern records in one; I can't find a source from closer to where they were invented. There are good English language instructions written by Ruth Smith who went to China to learn; lots of pictures of that in another bookmaking site.

More than a weekend's project, but in the lineage: a brass bound bat book

posted by clew (22 comments total)

Somewhere in my swamp of bookmarks, there's a web page where you can insert text and pictures and stuff, which produces an 8.5"x11" PDF with all the content appropriately placed and rotated for printing this way.

I made a few booklets like this before a trip last year, but I forgot to update the itinerary on them and ended up not using them. Still totally cool!
posted by wenestvedt at 12:09 PM on March 28 [3 favorites]

useful!, since imposition (placed and rotated) is KIND OF A PAIN when you aren't doing it by hand.

this looks right but I haven't done it myself
posted by clew at 12:20 PM on March 28 [2 favorites]

Ahh, the good ol' hotdog hamburger hamburger snip and squish!
I sometimes put out copies of various little zines into little free libraries this way.
(I only learnt those terms as an adult, but they have a certain utility beyond "lengthwise", which is technically ambiguous)
posted by SaltySalticid at 12:21 PM on March 28 [2 favorites]

The LaTeX thing clew linked has the right rotations and sizes, but is laid out for 16 pages. The first link in the post is for an 8-page zine, and only one side of the page is used. You can get 16 pages with those folds, but you have to make extra cuts.
posted by SaltySalticid at 12:34 PM on March 28

at some point I mean to get it all together and see if setting signature=8 will do what it ought!
posted by clew at 12:49 PM on March 28 [1 favorite]

oh boy, an excuse to share SPECTROLITE, a free (free!) app for Mac that does many varieties of zine-friendly imposition and risograph separations. An incredible resource if you can swing OSX.
posted by seanmpuckett at 1:13 PM on March 28 [11 favorites]

Had the pleasure of teaching someone the 8-fold method just yesterday!
posted by jy4m at 1:20 PM on March 28 [2 favorites]

I never thought about LaTeX for this; what a great idea.

The OG version of this that I remember was: "Pocketmod"...
https://www.instructables.com/Pocketmod-The-Most-Easy-Organised-Piece-of-Paper/ is screenshots like how I remember it, and
https://pocketmod.com/howto is the current live version that looks like it still works, but requires a login.
posted by adekllny at 1:21 PM on March 28 [3 favorites]

The Quarantine Public Library is a collection of one-page zines you can download, print, and fold at home. Their website seems to work best in Chrome-alikes, these days.
posted by Western Infidels at 2:01 PM on March 28

The first time you do this for a kid, it blows their little minds. And then they fill up all 8 pages with little doodles!
posted by Jra at 2:30 PM on March 28 [4 favorites]

and then you show them the secret inside-out-inside!
posted by clew at 2:38 PM on March 28 [2 favorites]

@adekllny as an alternative, the Pocketfold doesn't require cutting. From that page, a collection of things using it.

You could use the Pocketmod "designer" and just put the pages in a different order to print a Pocketfold layout. I like a monthly calendar on the front cover, year on the back, and then to-do lists for the rest of the pages and use it for slightly longer term reminders (short term go on my phone as reminders due in a few hours).
posted by hankscorpio83 at 4:09 PM on March 28 [2 favorites]

oo, the Pocketverter at that site, hankscorpio83, did the imposition for a fairly complicated pdf I uploaded. For the fold I didn't previously know.
posted by clew at 4:25 PM on March 28 [2 favorites]

adekllny: yes, YES! Pocketmod!!

(From the era of the HipsterPDA, natch.)
posted by wenestvedt at 6:54 PM on March 28 [2 favorites]

@adekllny, I used the pocket mod for years when I was a peripatetic Quality Auditor. Year calendar, month calendar, Production schedules. I inserted a plastic "credit card" into the folds to stiffen the rear cover.
posted by ohshenandoah at 6:55 PM on March 28 [2 favorites]

For those unfamiliar, the process of imposition is a great trick, and used to require quite expensive software to do at all.

Many people listen to the explanation, squint, and leave the room without speaking; others grin and begin making tiny paper booklets with careful page numbering.
posted by wenestvedt at 6:56 PM on March 28

I made one you can colour in: Patterns from Bourgoin
posted by scruss at 7:56 PM on March 28 [3 favorites]

The pocket almanac

Concertina-fold almanacs were made from long sheets of parchment, which were folded to create a concertina-like structure composed of different compartments. Cuts made in the folds would then form a pop-up mechanism, allowing the reader to access the interior of the almanac and the information it enclosed, without the need to unfold the whole sheet each time.

https://blogs.bl.uk/digitisedmanuscripts/2025/03/unfolding-time-the-medieval-pocket-calendar.html

https://www.lambethpalacelibrary.info/unfolding-time/

Letterlocking

Mary Queen of Scots frequently utilized letterlocking to protect important diplomatic messages. As she sat in prison the night before her execution, she wrote her final letter to her brother-in-law, King of France Henry III, and famously sealed it using a complex letterlocking technique. Mary cut a long, thin portion of the letter paper on the side, cut holes in the letter itself, and used the slip to bind the letter. The recipient would have to tear the wrap to open the letter, meaning any tampering would be immediately obvious.

The method used by Mary is called the “spiral lock,” in which the writer would weave the sliver of paper through slots created in the pages before being wet with a few drops of water. This would let the fibers in the paper swell to create an initial “lock.”

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20210616-how-the-forgotten-tricks-of-letterlocking-shaped-history

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letterlocking
posted by ohshenandoah at 8:40 PM on March 28 [4 favorites]

clew, this is the coolest thing ever and somehow a few hours have disappeared from my day. Thank you, I love this!
posted by ashbury at 9:10 PM on March 28 [1 favorite]

Yvette Ya offers bookbinding kits and courses that I really like. I learned about the Chinese Thread Book from her.
posted by Well I never at 12:02 PM on March 29 [1 favorite]

wanted more, so I was glad when insta recommended me this! Lots of variations on the simple 8/16-pager: @keet.creates.zines
posted by lokta at 2:29 PM on March 29 [1 favorite]

I meant a paper folding collection to get my hands off the devices but here I am still collecting imposition resources
posted by clew at 1:50 PM on March 30