Just recieved imagewrap books...

Ive just recieved 20 copies of my architectural portfolio, done in imagewrap hardcover at standard landscape size.  And I am absolutely delighted!

 Having trawled through these forums searching for some answers to doubts I had before I ordered, I thought Id just make a few comments so that people thinking of a similar order and who have similar doubts to the ones I had can have some reassurance.

 As an aside, I did order a single copy of the book as a softcover previous to this order, and was left sorely disappointed, the covers curled ridiculously due to the heat applied over laminate (the cover paper weight isnt nearly heavy enough to stand up to full colour printing and a gloss over laminate, blurb should know better). 

I was a little dubious about using blurb after the poor quality of the softcover book, but the prices offered at other sites are much much higher. So I decided that with time running out (ie not enough time to print another test) that I would just have to take a gamble and go with imagewrap, and im very glad I did….

1)The imagewrap is awesome, they arent lying when they say its real book store quality.  Being an architect I am a real stickler for craft and quality and was not disappointed, I also own loads of big "coffee table" architecture books and can honestly say that the quality of the imagewrap books matches those on by big publishers such as phaidon, thames and hudson etc.

 2)40 pages is more than enough to make an imagewrap book work.  I was worried that it might look rather odd with so few pages and such thick covers, it looks fine, and the covers give the book a really nice weighty feel.

 3)The image on the cover does appear darker than it will on your screen but you should expect and make allowances for this as its a matte print.  And the matte cover feels great by the way.

 4)I saw some comments regarding the way that the book is bound, and it not feeling strong enough etc, Ive got no such concerns, it seems well bound and sturdy enough to withstand a lot of use.

5)The image quality inside is excellent, very sharp, even on my architectural drawings that have very fine line weights.

6)They arrived in "almost" perfect condition, there is some slight crumple at the tops of some of the spines but ive seen images of other peoples orders and mine was in no way as bad, I hope that blurb are looking into this as it seems to be a common issue.

I am planning to go for an image wrap book, I can’t wait to have my book produced to a professional standard. I am a little confused though, when the book gets produced where do Blurb put the extra white pages and secondly when designing the book do I design it in page order (1,2,3…) or spread order )1,56,2, 55 etc) And you portfolio does look great, I’m thinking of doing my portfolio using Blurb if this book looks good.