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Aster House Books

Book production

Some books are meant to be made once.

Cover, interior, typography, illustration and print production — made as carefully as the words. Including private and institutional editions produced to a specification rather than a template.
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The work

Four things that decide whether a book feels made.

Cover design

Two or three considered routes, never twelve. Designed to work at 40mm in a retail listing, at three feet on a table, and in the hand as an object.

Interior design & typesetting

A text face chosen for the book, a measure set for reading, margins that survive binding, and running heads, folios and part openers that behave for three hundred pages.

Illustration & photography

We commission and art-direct illustrators and photographers, plan page turns against the text, and edit picture sequences before anything is placed.

Print production

Print-on-demand or offset, paper specified by weight and shade, matt or soft-touch lamination, foil, deboss, spot varnish, cloth, head and tail bands, slipcases.

Bespoke books

Editions of sixty. Editions of one.

A bespoke book is specified before it is designed: format, extent, paper, binding, finish and print run. Then it is made, proofed and delivered as an object that will outlast everyone involved.
  • Family histories
  • Memoirs
  • Corporate histories
  • Institutional publications
  • Photography books
  • Art books
  • Architecture books
  • Commemorative editions
Discuss your project
Cover of Meri Dilli!, a photographic record of Delhi — brush-lettered title over a collaged street scene with an auto-rickshaw and the Red Fort.
Cover of Nani's Red Trunk — an illustrated hardback showing a grandmother and granddaughter looking into an old red travelling trunk.

Sample editions

Production, demonstrated.

Each specimen names its format, paper and finish, because those are the decisions that make a book feel like one.
Cover of Meri Dilli!, a photographic record of Delhi — brush-lettered title over a collaged street scene with an auto-rickshaw and the Red Fort.

Sample edition

Meri Dilli!

Photography

A large-format photography book. Duotone proofing, offset print run.

Cover of Nani's Red Trunk — an illustrated hardback showing a grandmother and granddaughter looking into an old red travelling trunk.

Sample edition

Nani's Red Trunk

Children's

A picture book. Illustration commissioned and art-directed, colour proofed on press.

Sample edition

A Life in Letters

Family & Legacy

A private edition of 60 copies. Cloth, foil, slipcase.

Bespoke

Tell us what the book has to be.

Family history, corporate record, photography monograph or commemorative edition — start with the specification and the print run, and we will work back from there.

Create a bespoke book
Cover of Meri Dilli!, a photographic record of Delhi — brush-lettered title over a collaged street scene with an auto-rickshaw and the Red Fort.