Printing Moleskine books on iPad

About a month ago FiftyThree added a highly requested feature to their award winning app Paper — the ability to print a book. Being a graphic designer I was curious to see the quality of these custom printed Moleskine books first hand. Using a small sampling of my PaperFaces portraits I ordered¹ my first book two weeks ago along with a Mastering Paper book I’m still waiting on.

Journal to custom printed book

Before I get into my impressions of the physical books, I want to discuss the book making process. As expected it is utilitarian in design and fully integrated into the iOS app. The only problem I had was whittling down hundreds of PaperFaces portraits into a collection of 15 favorites to make up my book.

If you haven’t watched any of the Book videos or seen this lovely set of drawings describing how to make a Book in 5 steps, then here’s how the process unfolds — pun intended.

Select your journal

Taking my favorite PaperFaces portraits and consolidating them down into a smaller journal became the basis of my first Paper book. I’m still waiting on the second book to arrive that features some unpublished Mastering Paper cheat sheets from upcoming tutorials…

Choose fifteen pages

As noted earlier, I struggled with selecting 15 pages to turn into a book. I suppose when you have over 550 pages of portraits, narrowing them down to 15 is no easy feat. Maybe next time I’ll organize them all into 40 volumes² and print my own encyclopedia set of PaperFaces to line a bookshelf.

Cover image

I think the best option is to go fully custom with a cover. What I did was create a sketch for each of my books, and then assign them as journal covers. When you choose to Print a Book from the share button, Paper pulls in this cover by default. You also have the option of selecting a black leather texture that mimics the Classic Moleskine notebook.

Order the book

If you don’t have an account you’ll be prompted to create one and then verify via a link sent to your email. The ordering process is what you’d expect if you’ve ever shopped online before — enter your name, shipping and billing addresses, and payment information.

After ordering you can check a book’s status by tapping Order Status from within the Print a Book option. Doing so opens a tab in Safari displaying your order number, status, and shipping method. I would assume selecting one of the expedited options provides you with a tracking number for the package, but I went with Standard Shipping so I can’t verify that.

Printed book and packaging

Two weeks later your book(s) will arrive in a small cardboard parcel with a pull tab. Tugging on this rips through the protective packaging to reveal a book wrapped in a protective sheet of paper.

If you’ve ever owned a Classic Moleskine notebook a few of the details printed on the inside front cover and first page should be familiar.

Color faithfulness

The real question is how well have my Paper drawings been reproduced in printed form? Pretty damn good if you ask me.

To my eye the color is almost an exact match to what I see on the iPad’s screen. It’s not as bright because the paper stock printed on is warmer, but it’s clsoe enough.

Paper quality

The paper stock printed on is thinner than what I was expecting, which is a slight bummer. I suppose it’s hard to gauge from the promotional videos alone how thick they’d be. By no means a deal breaker, but something to be aware of if you were expecting something more.

Accordion fold

I personally like the accordion fold and how each of the pages are glued together into one continuous strip. If you’re using a Book to tell a story in 15 pages, this style of binding helps enhance that. It also mimics the way you interact with pages from within Paper, which is a nice touch.

Cover and spine

As noted before, the cover isn’t as thick as I had hoped for, but it’s not super thin either. To further protect it from scratches and stains, I’ll be leaving it in the paper sleeve it shipped with. I’m particular like that…

Justifying the price

Yes, $40 for a 15 page book³ is bit on the expensive side. Especially when you can print a book from any local drugstore for half the price. But what you won’t be getting for that price is a custom, handmade, accordion folded book, all within two weeks time.

Not to mention the finished books share the same 4:3 proportion as your Paper creations so there won’t be any funny bleeds or crops.

What you see in Paper is what you get in real life, straight down to the elastic band and rounded edges. The fact that these little books come baring the Moleskine name, instantly adds +100 hipster cred points to your work.

If you’ve been holding out printing a book with Paper, I’d encourage you to give it a try at least once. I believe they’re most effective as gifts to share with friends and family. Why not get a jump on the upcoming holiday season and create a book now?

If they’re as popular as I predict them to be, it might be a good idea to get an order in early to beat the rush.

Mastering Paper reference book

When my second book didn’t show up at the same time as the PaperFaces one, I started to worry that it was lost in the mail.

I had ordered them at the same time and received shipping notices within seconds of each other notifying me they were on the way. But all is well and the other book finally showed up.

For this book I took a few of my Paper “cheat sheets” and adapted drawings from my Mastering Paper series to fill all 15 pages. If you look closely you’ll notice teases for upcoming tutorials I’m writing now. I’ve also embedded a video flip-through for your viewing pleasure.