McNicol Dean 2025 Award - Form and Rules

It's that time of the year again where everyone heads out with good intentions of getting the competition book done nice and early but ends up rushing in the last week to get it finished!!! (or is that just me).

Well to get everyone going we have copies of the competition text for this year, War of the Worlds, by H. G. Wells. I'm particularly happy with this typeset and the images contained therein. It is printed on Mohawk Superfine 118gsm paper and includes 4 additional sheets for creating endpapers. The entry form for the Traditional Bound competition can be found here for printable or here for a fillable PDF.

This year we have clarified a few items for judging. You will find the full rules on the entry form but a few things to be aware of:

1. All books need to have a Title, either on the spine or the front cover. To help with this we are dedicating bindery days to practicing tooling. Come along and practice on leather or bookcloth! Remember that the title doesn't need to be done in hot foil. There are a million ways to get a title on a book cover. Have a look at the runner-up from last year or some of the entries from earlier years with printed covers. There's a lot of ways to get this done.

2. A box, while encouraged, will not form part of the overall marking. Of course every nice book should come with an appropriate box. The Judges may even comment on the boxes which is always very helpful. They will not however form part of the judging.

I also want to encourage people of all skill levels to join. First of all a very well made book in the style of the beginner course would certainly have won in certain years. A book doesn't need to be in leather with gold all over it to win. Winning aside though it is a great opportunity to get some feedback from a world class bookbinder. Fred will comment on each book and provide really constructive feedback to help you continue on with your journey. So please, no matter how experienced or inexperienced we would encourage you to enter a book.

This book has some beautiful illustrations so I am looking forward to seeing what everyone can do with their book. Meanwhile I am absolutely getting started right away on mine!