March 4th, 2010
A long time ago, The Nomadic Press was hired to produce a letterpress book. The project called for the use of hand set metal type, wood engraved illustrations and hand binding techniques. But the tricky part was the use of marbleized paper for the end sheets.
Because the edition number was fairly large, it turned out that it was nearly impossible to get a quantity of marbled sheets made to spec.
So I learned to marble paper.
I gotta’ tell you that there are many things in this world that have been intentionally invented by people who have combined chemicals and processes with an eye open to a specific end result. Paper marbleing is not one of them. Ox gall (the bile of an ox) is used to spread pigments onto the surface of a mixture of water and carragheenan (a seaweed derivative used widely today to thicken milkshakes). The pigments are then spotted, swirled and combed into complex patterns before being transfered to sheets of paper that have been coated with alum.
Whew.
The first time that somebody did all this had to be some sort of freakish accident. Now it is simply beautiful.
Tags: Books, End sheets, Paper marbleing
Posted in Books, Miscellany | 1 Comment »
March 2nd, 2010
Ah Spring, or nearly so, and a young man’s fancy turns to, well, love.
Here is the latest letterpress invitation to be printed at the Nomadic Press. Produced for Wali and Kalisha, and designed by the groom himself, this oversized tri-fold piece is a 2 over 0 example of how to bring an invitation up to the size of the affection.
In designing and overseeing the production of the invitations to his own wedding, Wali finds that he has become a member of an elite group of men. In 20-some-odd-years of printing invitations at the Nomadic Press Wali is one of only 6 or so men who have been the go-to person, from the beginning of an wedding invitation project right on through to its end.
And this, I believe, bodes well for their marriage.
Posted in Invitations, Printing Projects | No Comments »
February 25th, 2010
Hot type is a retronym. When metal type was the only game in town it was just called type, but as more and different means of transferring ink to paper came into being a qualifier needed to be retroactively added. Hot type. Type that was once molten. Type that was once hot.
Foundry type, linotype, monotype are all forms of type that have been cast from molten metal. They are little pieces of sculpture carefully cast according to the strictly monitored vision of an artist.
Eric Gill (who’s art probably sits, in a derivative form, on your computer right now) was a sculptor. He worked in multiple mediums. He worked in stone, in a large scale, and cut beautiful life-like pieces from inanimate rock. He also used the same sorts of reductive processes when he engraved sensuous images of passionate lovers into boxwood and maple. And those images he printed alongside of his type.
His type, too, is sculpture. Cut to size from steel punches and then struck into brass matrixes, Gill’s letterforms were cast in the millions. Like the human figure, we know what a letter should look like and we can recognize a lovely figure when we see it. Gill’s type forms have stood the tests of time and, even more than Michelangelo’s David, are visited daily by multitudes.
Eric Gill once said that “letters are things not pictures of things” and, like his other sculptures, his letter forms are things. They are beautiful things. They are sexy things.
In their original form they are hot.
So perhaps hot type is not such a retronym after all.
Posted in Miscellany, Musings, Type | No Comments »
February 18th, 2010
In Edwin Abbot’s 1884 novella Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions, a story is told of characters who live in only one or two dimensions. The three dimensional world that we live in is, for them, almost impossible to imagine.
Most Graphic design for print is conceived of in a flatlander’s world. Side to side, up and down but no back and forth.
When designing for the letterpress printing process one must cast off the restrictive thinking of two dimensional existence and embrace the third dimension. The impression, which is one of the endearing qualities of relief printing is the third dimension.
The piece shown here is a nice example of three dimensional graphic design.
Printed on (into?) a sheet of 190 pound blotter paper, the first and lightest impression is of crosses inked with a transparent ink. The second, deeper impression, is of a separate group of crosses blind stamped into the paper (which is to say that they have been printed with no ink, just impression). The third impression, the type, presses even deeper into the paper. Finally, there is a single cross which is die cut out so that it passes completely through the paper.
Abbot’s flatlanders would be horrified.
Luckily there are graphic designers who are able to think beyond the surface and take their designs to a deeper level.
Posted in Business Systems, Musings, Printing Projects | No Comments »
February 15th, 2010
Kent, A.K.A. Dad. The large printing presses crank loudly as my dad stands by them and takes control. He pulls the paper out and hands it to me. I feel the indent in the words that sink into the paper, the solid red color that soaks into the thick paper.
That’s my dad; he printed this.
I remember the time when my dad stood behind me on the press and he let me control the press. The most fun thing of all is making stuff with him. We would build and build, then, we would have a problem. We would share our ideas. Then boom, we would come to a conclusion, and fix our problem.
His belief is to carry on hats and letterpress printing. He has favorite hats and hats he doesn’t like. but I’m pretty sure that by the end of the year he wears all his hats at least at one point.
Printing, he is great at it. No matter what, he loves his job. Plus, he comes homealmost every night with a great story to tell.
That’s my dad.
(This piece was written by my 12 year old son as a birthday gift for me.)
Posted in Musings | 1 Comment »
February 13th, 2010
Printed in two colors with a blind stamp of the client’s logo in the background, this business card is printed on 160 pound stock. The deep impression of the blind run lends the 3 dimensional air of Art Deco architecture to what might be considered a 2 dimensional medium.
The card is undersized by a little bit, it measures 3.5 by 1.75 inches, which helps it stand out in an understated way.
The client, Kenneth Kunkle offers legal services to creative professionals and he worked closely with The Nomadic Press to come up with a design that had both the look of a serious professional and a hint of artistic flair.
Posted in Business Systems, Printing Projects | No Comments »
February 11th, 2010
There seems to be a lot distressed wood type being used in the design of print ads these days. And when I say “seems to be” I mean that if you don’t look too closely you might mistake it for distressed wood type.
Let us look a little closer though. A case of type (not a drawer of type) contains many separate pieces. The nature of movable type is that copy is set from a case and used for the printing of a job and then, when the work is wrought off, the type is laid back into the case from whence it came. Some of the pieces of type are used more often that others. Some pieces are treated more roughly than others while some are treated more gently. Some type gets dropped, some type gets nicked.
Because of this, individual pieces of type have all lived very different lives.
When I look at mock-distressed type I am always a little irked by the similarity of the degradation of the letters. It is as though each piece has been abused in exactly the same manner and to exactly the same degree. Each one dropped, each one nicked, each one carefully roughed up.
In the end, what should be an interesting crowd of faces, with disparate scars and wrinkles reflective of their varied life experiences is, instead, a clownish homogenization of a rustic ideal.
Yesterday I placed a form of wooden type in the bed of a press and, as I printed the run, each face kissed the sheets of paper with its own intensely personal passion. The lingering impression of each kiss a poetic indication of a life well lived.
And I am always left wanting just one more kiss.
Posted in Musings, Type | No Comments »
February 9th, 2010
Matt board isn’t just for framing pictures anymore.
A wedding planner and a wedding photographer, who together run a business in Texas, recently hired The Nomadic Press to print their business cards. They wanted something very thick stock so we all decided to use matt board.
The color choices are a little limited when you use matt board but the results are a lot of fun. This card is printed 1 over 2 so the printing costs are reasonable. The thick edges are colored silver (I gave them a bid for gilding the edges with silver leaf but the cost was a bit prohibitive).
The design they supplied is tasty, and it is telling of the fantastic work that they both do professionally. If you are thinking about getting married soon, think about Texas.
Posted in Business Systems, Printing Projects | No Comments »
February 8th, 2010
It used to be that one would go visiting and leave behind an indication of having called. This was the calling card.
Usually it was imprinted with just a name and perhaps the name of the club that one was a member of. If the person you were visiting was not at home when you called, then the calling card was left on a silver tray for them to take up upon their return.
The position of the card’s placement on the tray, and the bending over of one or another of the card’s corners, held deeper meanings.
These days, the modern business card is printed with a persons name and title, the name, address and logo of their business, their telephone and fax numbers, email addresses, twitter addresses, and facebook and linkedin information. Whew.
In practice, there is so much information contained on a modern business card that it is a wonder that they have remained 2 by 3.5 inches in size and have not ballooned to the size of greeting cards.
The custom business card shown here is understated in its simplicity. Printed in one color, it has an abundance of white space which shows off the letterpress impression nicely and lends a calm and professional air to the image of this company.
Now where did I put my silver calling card tray?
Posted in Business Systems, Musings, Printing Projects | No Comments »
February 5th, 2010
Oh man, is the type on this card small or what.
The red type in this image has a lower case x-height of about 2.5 points. It works just fine in a body of text, but I would not wish this point size on my fiercest competitor in a line of stand alone type.
Photopolymer plates work amazingly well with small type, but lines of little type, all on their lonesome, seem to fare poorly. Especially the “dots” in email addresses which tend to suffer under the heavy impressions called for in modern letterpress printing.
Whenever possible, I have the graphic designers that I am working with boost the point size of the “dots” in the design of email addresses by at least one point. In the end it is not noticeable but helps everything hold up a bit better in the printing process.
Dotting your ‘i’s and crossing your ‘t’s has long been a euphemism for sweating the little stuff and for making sure that attention is being paid to the details. Here at The Nomadic Press, I am crossing my eyes and dotting my coms.
Posted in Business Systems, Printing Projects, Type | No Comments »
