Review: New Uglybooks With Perfect Binding

 

First six books on the left have Uglybooks' new perfect binding; last three are the original saddle-stitched binding.

A few weeks ago, I received a surprise package from Uglybooks: sample packs of their colorful A6-ish and A5-ish sketchbooks with a startling change – perfect bindings! GASP! As a huge fan of saddle-stitched (stapled) sketchbooks and a very unhappy camper of most perfect-bound sketchbooks I’ve tried, I was shocked, appalled, horrified and dismayed! How could they take a perfectly good sketchbook design and make it – perfect in a bad way!?

Knowing what a dedicated user of Uglybooks I have become, the New York City notebook maker invited me to try its new design. The implication was dire: It seemed unlikely that the company would carry both saddle-stitched and perfect-bound notebooks . . . was it time to hoard all the stapled books in its current stock?

Filled with dread, I ripped off the shrink wrap and examined the books. I had to concede that the perfect binding looked head-and-shoulders better than stapled books. Standing on a shelf, they would look like “real” books with neatly squared-off spines rather than the rounded spines of saddle-stitched books.

Appearance isn’t important to me at all compared to performance, though, and where most perfect-bound books fall short is when the books won’t open fully flat. You know the type I mean – the binding is so stiff that even when opened with force, there’s still a large gutter gap. That’s the first thing I do when I examine a sketchbook that’s new to me – open it to a middle page to see how flat it is – and most get no further in my testing before I reject them.

Opening a pocket-size Uglybook with trepidation, the first thing I noticed was that each page was scored – something I rarely see in a sketchbook. As I turned each page, it folded with a sharp crease at the gutter instead of a rounded gap. Hmmm . . . interesting (and again, visually very attractive).

In addition to the annoying stiffness of most perfect bindings, another issue is the shadow that appears on one side of the gutter when a page is scanned. The gutter gap prevents one side from lying flat against the scan bed, causing the shadow. I made a couple of sketches across the gutter, one in the first spread (where the gap is often the worst) and another toward the middle of the book (where the gap tends to be less pronounced). In both cases, the scans below show very little shadowing. Huh!

Each page is scored (slightly visible here on the right-side page), with the gutter coming together tightly. Almost no shadows is visible from scanning.

No shadow is visible at all near the center of the book where it is usually worst in perfect-bound books.

With stapled books, it’s usually the opposite: A slight shadow may appear in spreads near the covers while no shadows appear closer to the middle. To compare, I scanned sketches made within the first few spreads of stapled Uglybooks, and they show more of a shadow than the perfect-bound book. Double huh! That degree of shadowing hasn’t bothered me in the saddle-stitched books, but I really like that there’s almost no shadowing with the perfect binding. What a surprise!

This saddle-stitched book's second spread shows subtle shadowing on the left.

This saddle-stitched book, also scanned within the first several spreads, shows shadowing on the left.

Sketching these dogs from photo references did call out for me one other issue with perfect bindings: The spines do not lay flat on the desktop, so the page can rock back and forth. That is definitely an issue that stapled books never have. Since I rarely use Uglybooks at a table, it’s not a deal-breaker for me, though I can imagine some Uglybooks customers being annoyed by this.

Of course, the most important test for me is how a sketchbook performs when I’m standing out on a sidewalk. Sometimes when I’m not sketching across the gutter, I will fold the cover and the side that I’m not using backward out of my way. To test that, I folded the cover back, and it got creased against the sharply squared edge of the spine. It’s not pretty, but it doesn’t affect the sketching area of the inner pages.

Folding the cover back caused a crease to appear where it hit the hard, squared-off spine edge.

The spine makes a handy "handle"!

Holding the book to sketch, I couldn’t easily fold the unused side back, so I had to keep the spread open. But that was another surprise: The stiff spine formed a “handle” that made the book easier to grip! An unexpected benefit!

Perfect-bound book with sketch made on location

Same sketch scanned... almost no shadow!

Whether or not Uglybooks eventually phases out saddle-stitched books, I’m relieved that I don’t have to hoard them, since the perfect-bound editions are perfectly satisfactory (at least for my needs) – and they look great, too. (They are quite a bit higher-priced than saddle-stitched, though, so maybe that’s one reason to proactively hoard. Not that I’m enabling or anything – just wanted to mention it. See ya at the checkout stand!)

Edited 7/30/24: If you want to try a single Uglybook instead of springing for a 3-pack, Notegeist is now offering the new perfect-bound edition as well as the stapled books, both types as singles.