Hard- and Soft Covers for PhD thesis

Random example of a PhD thesis

0.— Foreword

According to publishers, the sale of a book is based 90% on its cover; if it is appealing or not.

For a technical paper, not for sale, obviously it is a completely different story. Or not so. The printing and binding of a PhD thesis is the last step in the very long journey of one of the most important projects of your life.

1.— What we do NOT do: engraved covers

Aside from other discussion about classical of creative design (see below), what we never do is PhD Thesis with generic matherials that need to be engraved on top of it. This avoids its lamination and consequently they are unprotected . When you take one with a wet hand (i.e sweated) the stains remain forever in that cover. Over time, they end up completely deteriorated. In the video located at the end of the page, about min 2:19 we explain what are the differences between an engraved cover vs a high def lamidated cover.

2.—What we DO: laminated covers

Whatever they are, either soft o hard covers, all our covers are carefully laminated (matt or bright) and consequently are properly protected.. If you drop a glass of water, you just need a cloth to have it perfect again.

3.—Hard cover vs soft cover

To our knowledge, it is not mandatory to use hard covers to finish the PhD Thesis. In our years-long experince, just to times it was needed to use hard covers. The reason why most of the PhD Thesis are produce this way is because in the craftsman workshops where these jobs where done, they did not have the technology and knowledge to do personalized hard covers.

Even though the explained above, most fo the covers in the PhD Thesis that we make, do have hard covers, although everyday more a more people is starting to use soft covers for theis PhD Thesis. We make book for publishers and so we have all the technology and resources to produce editorial books that, as verybody knows, each has its own and personalized cover, either hard or soft.

4.— Classical vs creative design

Somo department, and specially, some directors, request from their students a classical finnish of their thesis. For us, technically speaking, there is no difference. In the examples page you can see all sort of designs according with the three examples that we detail as follows:

1. Absolutely classical design, as shown on the first picture above.
2. Classical design, but with modern elements, as shown in the second picture.
3. Completly free creative design, as shown in the last image.

The choice is up to you. In the following video, we show the details of some of the covers of the PhD Thesis and projects.

Even if you choose a classical design, we are not bound to use any specific matherial or determined color. In contrast, we can use the color you choose, plain or with background, print the titles silver- or gold-like. But oppsite to engraving, our systems are high definition, so the Univerity logos are printed with the appropriate definition, and obviously, in color.

In any case, as described above, all our covers are properly protected by lamination, so they do not deteriorate with the use. In the following video, we provide further details and show some examples, as well as some of the characteristics of the hard- and soft-covers together with the binding and is properties.