Tour Book

Front cover

When I worked for an entertainment company, I was the one that was in charge of putting together the "Tour Book." The Tour Book is a handy distillation of all of the necessary information regarding transportation, housing, and daily itineraries.  Since I will be departing on my own tour, I decided to make my own Tour Book for my travels.

I have found these screw post bindings very useful. Because you can vary the depth of the book, being able to add and subtract pages as necessary is very helpful. For mine, I decided on a black book cloth spine so it wouldn't show dirt while it was being handled on a daily basis. The decorative paper on the front and back covers is a gold and silver metallic flecked Yuzo paper from my travels to Japan.

The end sheets are a crane paper done in the same color palette. I decided on this paper to bring luck to the tour as the upward flying crane symbolized good luck.

End Sheets

The book is divided in sections with each section dedication to a stop on the tour. Within each section there will be the train/flight schedule, local map and hotel information (including reservation number and hotel address).  Each divider is scored one inch for the left margin in order to allow for easier turning. Also, on the back of each divider is an envelope to hold the loose pieces of paper associated with being on tour (e.g., receipts, meal tickets, plane tickets, etc). The envelope is stapled to allow for easy removal once the tour is over and receipts need to be processed for an expense report.

Divider

Handy Envelope

The above divider is the section divider to indicate the beginning of the trip. The remaining dividers are tabbed for reference purposes and indicate each stop. The beauty of this type of book is that you can rearrange the sections by moving the older sections of the trip to the back of the book and this way you will always have the current stop on top of your book. If you don't want to go through that trouble you can simply leave the book as is until the tour is over.

Tabs and Dividers

This is one of my favorite book structures because you can add/remove pages as necessary. I also carry extra pages to add as I collect memories along the way. Since I deal with paper products, I put all of the pieces of paper into my tour book. Tickets, menus, cards, postcards, etc. all get added to my book. I usually carry rolls of washi tape to temporarily adhere these pieces onto the page until I decide permanently use them. I usually use the rolls of washi tape that I don't like for this purpose since many times it will be thrown away once I decide how to I want to use the paper pieces later. I hope to share more of my tour book as the tour progresses.

Countdown: Three sleeps and then I am on the road.