Typeface

The lovely Mrs. Lestaret bought me a DVD copy of the documentary film “Typeface” by Justine Nagan (Kartemquin Films) on a pre-order that contains extra stuff and a letterpress print too. It wasn’t released until a few days after my birthday, and has took a while to get here. It was worth the wait.

The film is primarily about The Hamilton Woodtype Museum in Wisconsin, but is also goes into the history of the company, originally one of many, then the biggest and finally, the last of it’s kind. It also highlights the importance of keeping elements of tradition alive; with fewer people left who actually worked in the industry, very specialist skills will disappear. You may wonder why it is important that we keep some of these skills alive when woodtype is dead as a commercial franchise? Good question.

The young designers who have fallen under the allure of woodtype are a real point of proof. Web designers, graphic designers, marketing and advertising people, all under 25 (so they look) all seeking confirmation of their skills without the sexy Mac, Adobe Suites and infinite downloads. Getting inky, frustrated and pleasantly surprised by the time taken to set a simple line, excited at the variations in each print, the tactile qualities of the heavy imprint and the involvement in the kind of manufacture that they are detached from in their day-to-day lives.

It is also a plea for help. Places like Hamilton do not make huge amounts of money and rely on volunteers and the remains of an almost depleted workforce. As a graphic designer who was originally trained in typography using old letterpress equipment and now returned to the craft after 25 years in the ‘digital wilderness,’ as well as a lecturer who is still trying to relate to the old skills whilst accommodating the demands of the Awarding Body and the design industry, as well as pandering to the clamour of student expectations where the computer is the only tool, I recognise the value of such important specialisms, and the difficulties they face maintaining levels of income, funding and support.

The film bears the legend “great characters, both wood and human” on the cover. A better description could not be found. There are some really quirky old boys (and girls) who had made their lives around the company (see Norb, above), as well as those who have given theirs to keep the museum going. It’s interesting, enlightening, amusing, sad and inspirational. The cinematography is excellent too. Nagan has created a documentary that is artistically and aesthetically appealing to the kind of audience it has been made for, without being dull or (as I expected it to be) overly sentimental and maudlin. Yet it is both of these to some extent, but Nagan has captured the enthusiasm of individuals and groups for printing with wood type, the preservation of the museum and it’s facilities (there is mention in the film of how many other woodtype factories ended up simply burning their stock) as well as those responsible for its ongoing viability. There are some interesting facts and follow-up notes during the final credits that give the film some elements of closure, but one can’t help wondering…

Buy the DVD, watch the film and see what I’m going on about. You won’t regret it.

Checkout these “Typeface” links:
Hamilton’s site
Typeface Film
Facebook
Eye magazine review
Trailer (youtube)

No Ctrl+Z

The last post about printing was full of excitement and glee about the Adana 3-5 and how much fun I was going to get out of it. Well, something happened to bring things to a temporary halt; after cleaning up the press, much oiling and fettling (boy, those adjustment screws were gummed up!) I got all set up for some trial prints only to find out that I was missing a crucial part. Well, four really – a set of roller runners for the new set of rollers – little round ‘wheels’ that hold the rollers at the right height to ink the face of the type!

I was a bit disappointed that I hadn’t spotted this before, but I hand inked a few small blocks because I was SO eager to do something. Just  few postcards using the postcard block I bought earlier this year from Portobello Market. I sent one to Christian (the press’ real owner and damn fine fellow – looking forward to having you back at College soon!) to mark the first printing from the press, but haven’t included it here.

So in the meantime, I thought I’d do a little typesetting in preparation for when roller runners come. I had found a small print-related piece of text on the web and decided to set it using the first metal fount that I bought - 10pt Univers Medium.

So line-by-line I pieced it all together:

I must admit, I wasn’t very proficient in my setting – if my old print tutor saw me he would have exploded and grumbled something in an unintelligible Scottish twang! (Sorry Mr. Kirkwood!)

I set up three or four lines at a time and transferred them between some wood strips and a hand clamp for safety. I didn’t want to bumble them out of the composing stick by accident, or knock them over whilst setting the next part!

Eventually, I got all ten lines set.  Now for the tricky part – getting them arranged into the chase and locked up into a forme.

By now, you may have wondered why this post has the title it does. It is because at this point I did something stupid. I had all but three lines set into the chase, but only loosely whilst I fettled with the last couple of lines. Instead of sliding the chase over to where I needed it, I picked it up. Yes, you read that right. 

No Ctrl+Z. No undo. No quick fix. B****r!

Luckily, not all was lost, but a fair bit had simply dropped out:

Of course, it wasn’t as simple as just picking up the text in order and slotting them back in. I was so hacked off by making such a stupid mistake, that I clumsily began to reset it and sent most of it clattering across the table and onto the floor.

The air turned a shade of blue that would have made a corpse blush, and I put the kettle on and made some VERY STRONG BLACK COFFEE. A bit later, and all was restored (my mental stability and the type), and locked into a forme:

As much as I was frustrated, I was still pleased with the end result. I am still quite in awe of the visual power of set type and always try to recall the old adage about “twenty-six soldiers of lead”  by Benjamin Franklin, or was it Karl Marx? I can never remember which. This then gave me an idea for the topic of another post, but whilst looking for the text to include here I found an excellent post here that goes some way to exploring the origins of this often misquoted quote.

As I sat back and sighed, I cast a glance over at my workspace and thought it looked, well, right. There is a great sense of satisfaction on completing a time-consuming and frustrating task, especially one that you have made more difficult for yourself. No Ctrl+Z – oh yeah! Bring it on!

Just a close up for you get a sense of scale, before pulling a test print by hand to do a right-reading check:

Ah.    Well.    Erm.    Ok, so I still had some work to do; correcting the mistakes and getting everything flattened and tight. I’ll need to do some ‘spotting up’ too when I get to print properly. I have also set up a second forme with the title to print in a second colour, but more of that text time.

And finally…

I have been quite busy with a CD design job that is almost complete and will be posted here soon – and very digital it is too! A real return to vectors!  I’ve also been linocutting too, and printing the base colours for some greetings cards. I will be printing the design in a  second colour next week and you will see them all in good time. It seems like a while since I posted anything other than metal type and printing, but expect to see some new ceramic work appearing over the next month or two…

It’s also the time of year for my second year students to get busy on their final major projects and consequently, their end of course exhibition. I too will be busy over the coming months, producing work for the exhibition, and may post a little less frequently for a while. I still hope to post something each week, and may also feature some student work for the first time on this blog. Keep calling back, won’t you?

The Message Is The Medium

When I bought my little press a few weeks ago, I posted a bit (!) about it and the box of goodies that came with it. Now that I have the press up and running, I’ve turned my attentions to what is in all those little boxes. Yes, I know it is type, but what sort?

These little ‘pin’ boxes were elegantly labelled in a fine copperplate hand, each containing between three and eight characters in both upper and lower case. I was using a little ink stamp pad to get an idea of the style and quality of the type. Although these are pretty scruffy, they appear to be still quite sharp:

There were also a lot of old matchboxes, some marked and I guess that the other markings had rubbed off along the way.

I went through each box and re-labelled them. Incidentally, there were two matchbox designs; the ‘Pioneer’ one above, but the majority were all these quaint ‘Punch’ brand:

Each box contained a similar number of characters as before, but instead of upper and lowercase there were two sizes of caps:

I don’t know if this is just saving on storage space or whether these were deliberately put together to form a small caps fount. There is a tell-tale angled serif on the apex of the cap A – I’ll send some prints to whoever identifies it first!

One of the boxes was chock full of spacing too.

There are also four wooden type cases, again labelled in a fine hand.

Two cases of caps and two of lowercase. I can’t tell the difference between them yet as they are very small and the labels have been amended and scuffed, so I will need to get some samples set up and print them off.

The ink stamp prints were not great and didn’t help in identifying the fount, but it’s a start!

I suppose I shall just have do some printing then. Ho hum! First off, I dug out one of my larger blackletter founts – I have three – and this one probably the most formal of the three. I don’t know what the fount is called. I have tried to match it against a number of samples, and it is similar to Wedding Text and a bit like Festival Text, but exactly either of them. I have put out a request for help on Briar Press (honestly, those folks are truly letterpress experts – if they don’t know, I think I’m stuck!) and also checked out the Script Font Identification Guide on Bowfin Printworks excellent site, but still left in the dark.

Anyway, I set up a headline and then used the tiny type from the little round boxes I showed you earlier.

It didn’t look in great condition as I was setting it; quite well-worn in places. These shots were taken just as I finished setting them and were thoroughly cleaned prior to printing. I like the quality of the images when te type is grubby!

Well, with the press inked up with Prussian Blue, I got quite productive. I used far less paper in setting up than I did previously, indicating that I had learned something from the last print session!

I was still a little heavy on the bottom right, and I was right about the small type being a bit worn, but I like the contrast between the sharp, fine lines of the blackletter script and the rather tired roman.

I went on to set up another forme almost immediately afterwards and decided to try out a couple of other, as yet, unused founts, namely this rather handsome Rockwell Bold Shadow and Univers Bold condensed italic. I also put in some nifty little border characters across the top, and a solid bar beneath.

Again, I love these close-ups showing many years of grime and stubborn understains!

And there you go, this time in a very dark grey (I must get some more colours!)  These were printed about an hour ago – still have ink on my fingers!

I got a few decent prints too. The lines are crisp and sharp – I am more impressed by this press every time I use it!

I also ran quite a few lightly pressed versions – the idea behind this one is that it is deliberately incomplete to suggest that it is actually ‘still loading.’

Intend to make these available digitally as wallpaper for desktops, as well as package them up as a series in little envelopes and leave them around for people to stumble upon.

The border characters were pretty successful too. Not bad for 4mm blocks…

These prints were done in a much more leisurely fashion, probably due to the confidence built upon previous trials and not worrying too much about the time I take. My approach this time was much more practical – I know that the press works and that it isn’t a mammoth task to get set up, print and clean up again, so I just went for it. Each print run last for about an hour, including setting up and cleaning afterwards, but not the typesetting – that took much longer because I tend to faff about too much and keep changing my mind.

Meet the Family #2

IS FOR PALACE SCRIPT

24pt Palace Script to be more precise.

It is in the same condition as all my other metal type; well looked after, but mucky after a long storage. It’s a full fount too, with ligatures and figures, as well as these nifty fractions!

Palace Script is originally from 1923 and appears to be owned by both Monotype, and Stephenson Blake, a Sheffield type foundry who were once a major producer of metal type. Most people will know this as the typeface of choice for invitations and anything that needs to look ‘classy.’  Monotype seem to be responsible for the continuing popularity of this script with their early digital version but there are many versions available on the web to buy or download for free.

Stephenson Blake also produced some very similar copperplate scripts, such as Imperial, Marina & Society Scripts,

I have never been a fan of scripts, especially this one. I have always found it to be a little too fussy for my tastes, and the fact that it is used as a ‘default’ script has stigmatised it for me. Still, there’s no denying that the actual physical cast type looks rather beautiful here.

The ampersand is especially nice though, with an elegant swash descender looping below…

These next images show how kerning with metal type is achieved; by creating overlaps and indents in each block, so that scripts like Palace can be closely and regularly spaced. The image below shows the overhanging part well – if you click on it to enlarge it, you get a better view.

I have also mentioned Stephenson Blake quite a lot in this post, and can identify this fount very easily by the ‘SB&Co.’ on the spacing slugs. This image also shows the indents on the body of the letters and the correspondingly shaped spaces and end pieces at the right and left:

ADDITIONAL

I’ve been digital for so long that I’ve forgotten just how fascinating this stuff is. I have to say, that as a student in the mid 1980′s I didn’t think this was fascinating – just a way for ancient and outdated tutors to exact their perverse revenge upon us for being young! There is so much information that I have forgotten, or didn’t learn in the first place, that all this has become a bit of an issue for me.

Most designers now think of type as purely digital artifacts, things that only exist when the ‘print’  button is employed, or the presses are rolling. Just think about this for a while; it is not so long ago when many, many men were employed to manufacture this stuff, in every standard size from 8pt to 72pt; thousands of tons of metal, precision cast to make beautifully elegant impressions upon paper, were shipped out from dirty, hot and dangerous foundries, to be arranged artfully and expertly by many, many more men (these have always been very masculine trades – unlike printing, where there is a growing history being uncovered of strong and influential female printers – often wives/widows and daughters of established tradesmen), proofed and corrected, and then inked and pressed into paper. And don’t forget the legion of apprentices who had the lovely job of cleaning it all afterwards and returning each piece of type to its compartment in the case - all made redundant and obsolete by phototypesetting and then, digital technology.

Ahh. I am enjoying the recollection of long forgotten facts and experience, but also the feeling of being a novice again. I have often said that “the moment that you stop learning is when someone else will get your job” but I am also enjoying the feeling of being an old empty vessel, newly repaired and filling up again…

Impatience!

I have stripped down the little press, cleaned away years of accumulated gunk and stuff, de-greased and re-greased, made bits move which had long since given up, got rid of a little surface rust and made a baseboard. I’ve also made new a new lay gauge but not quite got that finished yet. I took it into college today and showed it off to my students who were (possibly, just a little) impressed and had a pump at the handle to make the ratchet ‘ding’ on the ink plate. I had set some type up in the little chase too, ready to set up the bed with the adjusting screws…

Ok, I couldn’t wait until the weekend. I had to have a proper go – ink and all – even if I hadn’t got everything as ready as I wanted (there are still a couple of bits still not quite as ‘working’ as I’d like). I figured that a quick test print or two would help me in getting it set up properly, and see if the rollers were in good enough condition to print from.

So I inked up and had a go. Sorry, but I was a bit too inky to photograph the process, but I will next time. I didn’t get any good prints, but I did get some that were really promising!

The rollers seem to be ok for now, and I have got a decent level on the chase. A bit more ink next time too.  All I need to do now is to get my b****y typesetting skills sorted!

I can tell you though, that I have used 36pt Franklin Gothic Bold with 36pt Mercury Light. I can’t imagine what I will do with scripts like this – I have several, along with some copperplate scripts and a bunch of Frakturs… I will definitely have a play with them first!

Meet The Family #1

In preparation for some serious letterpress work, I have recently bought some founts and am beginning to catalogue them before I get to use them. I aim to share them one by one (or two by two if I’m feeling biblical) and hope to show prints as well as photographs as I get set up. Here is the first one…

IS FOR ROCKWELL

24pt Rockwell Bold to be more precise.

 

Upper and lowercase, with punctuation, numerals and a few ligatures. It is in pretty good condition, hardly used, but there are a few uncleaned characters here and there:

Rockwell is often a much maligned (and poorly used) typeface, but has some really elegant and uncharacteristic features, like the curved base tail with its subtle width difference. Rockwell has become a bit of a generic name for many Egyptienne typefaces - the Ford Fiesta of the the typeface world I suppose.

These images show the founts ‘as bought’ and will need a bit of a clean before they get used… Still they are certainly worth what I paid for them!

On Being a Blockhead

Today, a very kindly soul gave me some old printing blocks. Muchos gracias Pedro. They are pretty dirty and a bit beaten up, but they are kind of cool and make for good images. I may clean up one or two and get some prints off at some point. Actually I will print all of them, but I may only clean a couple, because I like these old blocks to retain as much of their accumulated grime; old printing ephemera shouldn’t look new as it’s part of their charm. The biggest of them (shown above)  is 74x80x24mm and as always, I’ve put in some close-ups. Enjoy.

That is some serious crud in there! I guess its just like bellybutton fluff; no-one know how it gets in there, or where it comes from, but you wake up one day to find enough gunk in there you wonder if some small mammal has been hibernating for the winter. Is there a technical term for this build up of grime? Hmmm. Press bellybutton fluff? Typographic earwax?

Another Christmas message, this time with the addition of some holly and candles and a rogue splash of red paint.

The script is quite elegant, in a cheesy christmas card sort of way, but the lowercase ‘e’ really stands out (sorry, pardon the pun!)

And I didn’t notice the damage to the ‘d’  until I reviewed the photographs.

‘

Another christmas greeting, this time with seasonal typography by Joseph Goebbels!

I can’t help thinking that this was made for a 1970′s heavy metal  album cover…

The last of the christmas greetings. I have run out of things to say about christmas greetings, so take a look at the swirl on the initial capital ‘S’. Very, erm, swirly.

I wonder how many cards these blocks have created during their working lives?

This smaller block (50x50x24mm) depicts a floral wreath with condolence card.

The little message on the card is just over 8mm across!

The detail is really fine – these flowers are around 5mm diameter.

The next block is a decorative ruled header, probably part of a set to make the borders for small press advertising, about 100mm long.

It isn’t particularly interesting, but has some nice qualities in the close-ups and should make a good print pressure tester as I’ll be able to refer to the quality of the lines when setting up.

All the blocks shown so far are alloy plates secured by rivets to blockboard or solid wood, but this one is a solid alloy block, making it significantly heavier than all of the others.

I’m looking forward to using this; it is clean with a deep cut and will give a good crisp print. It is so clean that it may never have been used before.

The last block is also cast, but the body is ribbed to reduce the overall mass. The pattern is only 5mm high with an overall length of about 125mm.

This last image is of a new addition to my type collection – a 10pt ’@’ symbol, sadly lacking in most of the founts I’ve seen on sale recently. I love the detail and now I can print my email address! I am such a geek…

Well, this is probably a very dull post for most of you, but I can be excused as I have a headful of the cold and my brain feels like its floating in snot.

Hot Metal!

Well, lukewarm anyway! I did a little printing again this weekend using some new metal type I had bought last week. I didn’t intend to do anything ambitious, just a little typesetting and proofing, just to get back into the swing of things; it was as a student in 1987 when I last handled metal type properly. I must say, I didn’t enjoy it very much. Even then, it seemed out of it’s time against the photomechanical typesetting operations that were prevalent back in the day. Apple were just making proper headway into colleges after taking hold within the design industry just a few years earlier, and I even I thought that was just a fad!

Ah, enough reminiscing! The brand new type came beautifully (functionally) packaged with a hand written label. I couldn’t help taking it into college the day after it arrived – mainly to show it off in its pack, all nice and clean! Sad I know, but look:

With not a millimetre to spare! I think this has a beauty of its own. Not in an artistic sense, but in the precision of it’s manufacture and its shiny newness, in anticipation of its inky future. Ok, here are the close-ups  I guess you expect from me now!

These full stops print just a fraction of a millimeter. In this image, they look a little like silver ingots. Or maybe not, but they are pretty cool. I guess this is just a bit of typo-porn for those of us who appreciate, ahem, specialist tastes!

I spent a couple of hours (!) setting a few lines. I had forgotten just how fiddly and frustrating this is. Just imagine how many people were working in the print industry, their years of apprenticeship training and the speed they eventually worked at! It truly boggles the mind. Here’s a shot of my workspace on completion.

On the right is my composing stick, generously donated by Christian and my trusty tweezers – I couldn’t pick up and place individual pieces!

This shot above is now my screen saver!

So what does it say? It’s a line from a book by one of my favourite authors Haruki Murakami and I just thought it would make a good first example of typesetting on the blog! Plus, it’s quite funny and a bit surreal.

Unfortunately I didn’t get many good prints. I was either over-inking, over-pressing, or both. I smudged them, half printed them, dropped them – the air was a shade bluer than the ink I used here, which was a mix of Prussian Blue and Opaque White Caligo waterbased inks. This print was to test the opacity of the ink on a previously rolled out black base.

You can see just how much pressure I used for this one – you can even read it from the back! I need to make a holding platform to support the paper next time (like I did for the last one - duh!) to prevent it from sliding off the type as I lay it over. I should be able to control the pressure a bit more too.

I also printed off a few woodtype prints using the blue ink, this time with a little more success. Again, just a few postcards, but when I’ve got the metal type printing better, I’ll overprint these with the Murakami excerpt in black.

This is a lovely print, lightly pressed and revealing the diagonal grain on the ‘R’ and the slightly odd shape of the lower part of the counter space of the ‘D:’

This is the cleaned up type. Sometimes when the gain is visible on the face it doesn’t print. I’m glad this does. It looks more ‘wood-typey’ I guess.

I picked up another letterpress block in Portobello market last weekend, this old post card standard. I thought it would be nice to letterpress my own postcards with this period design. It is a lovely thing in itself:

There are machining marks where the surface has been ground away by hand. But how does it print? Again, I didn’t have a great deal of luck getting the inking and pressure right, but got a decent enough impression to evaluate:

This is inked up ok, but over-pressed, but the detail prints clearly:

Like I said at the start, this was not intended to be a creative endeavour, just a little typesetting and paying around on the press. again, I’ve learned a lot about the techniques I need to use to get better results from the metal type and blocks, that my new inks mix well, and the opaque white is really opaque!

There will be another post soon of some ceramic pieces that have been recently fired, as well as some lino and wood cut printing as well. Keep tuning in, and if you get a moment, send me a lie…

Reviewing The Prints

Although I did 15 prints in total, I have included just five here for comparison. There were a few that were fairly consistent in quality, and these represent the variety of impressions taken. I’m not going to add any comments as I think they speak for themselves. Needless to say, I do prefer the slightly under-inked ones and I am always happy to hear your comments…

This last one was printed on a laid paper, hence the texture, but without re-inking the type from the previous print.

This is  a visual comparison between the block and the print of the first’R’ of PRESSURE. If you look closely at the bottom corner of the counter space, you can see a small ‘nick’ but the ‘lump’ on the top of the printed character  is just clumsy over-inking.

If anyone wants one of these prints, just send me an email with where to send it to…

ADDITIONAL

I ought to give Bethany Heck a mention here. I stumbled upon her website in progress Endgrain following some image links of some large wood type. Beth is a student at Auburn University in Alabama and a really dedicated wood typer. The website is a shrine to the subject and shows a genuine passion for the detail and uniqueness of wooden letterforms. There are some beautiful close-ups to moon over and a good set of links too. I stole respectfully borrowed the idea of including the large scanned-in block from her, but I think she does it much better than I – go check her out! Thanks Beth!

The Thrill Of The Chase…

I have had a good day today. The first of my students has got a university offer – well done James! I have been creative and productive. I have been listening to Arve Henriksen all night. Yes, today has been a good day. I spent an hour this morning preparing some first year work for a forthcoming student exhibition at the Greyfriars Gallery in King’s Lynn, and the rest of the morning in the workshop, finishing off some ceramic work I began last June, but couldn’t continue as the workshops underwent a ‘H&S transformation.’ I’ll post them when they’ve been fired – probably next week.

Following a good curry – no, a great curry, I decided that it was high time I got to grips with an early christmas present.

Having had a set of wood type since just before christmas, the urge to print with it has been steadily building, and waiting for the temperature to rise a little (the press is currently in the garage) and tonight was going to be the night. Ok, so did a little printing over the holiday – don’t shoot me!)

I composed my chosen words and packed out my chase with some strips of wood and scrap greyboard (in the absence of ’proper’ metal and wood furniture) and tightened it all up using some recently acquired quoins. The image above is from a high resolution scan. I have reduced it quite a bit for inclusion here, but it is still quite big – you may experience a small pause whilst it downloads, but wait for it – it will be worth it!

It was cold and wet tonight, and I just wanted to get stuck in, so there are no photo’s of the process to accompany this, just a few close-ups of the type and couple of the prints. I’ll scan them in when they are dry…

Lovely. The kitchen table is covered in prints of various quality, everything has been cleaned up and put away, and I’m still smiling. Yes, it’s been a good day.