One of the evening sounds that I have taken comfort in over the years has been the sound of a pair of resident nighthawks as they dive and roll across the sky in their dinnertime play. For those who do not know the sound of a nighthawk’s dance in the air, it is a whoosh and a hum and a buzz and it says Summer evening in the same way that a cicada’s whine says hot day.

I was up on the roof of the print shop recently, just checking to make sure all was in good order, and I was startled by the sudden rise of an adult nighthawk. She jumped up and came down a short distance away dragging her wings in an obvious attempt to get me to come after her.

Instead, I looked around and found, sitting right at my feet, these two chicks looking as much like a gravel roof as two fluffy, feather-clad birds could possibly look. 

I look forward to listening to these two frolicking in next Summer’s post-print-run evening air, above me and the print shop and an end-of-the-day beer.

When I was in second grade, and was first learning to write, I violated all the rules of the solid line, dashed line, solid line format that we were asked to follow while practicing our letters. I opted instead for letterforms that, in retrospect, had much more in common with art deco display faces than they did with the samples we were given to emulate.

The long ascenders and small, geometric bowls of my early handwriting marked me with both rebellion and regression. Looking backwards (and out of the box) is a perspective which I have found comfort in over the years. Combined with my love of letterforms, this world view in retrograde has left me in the comfortable possition of being a letterpress printer.

I had my first exposure to letterpress printing in high school, learned a bit more after graduation on a solid oak lever press, and, after a stint at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, I started my work in earnest working for Coffee House Press at Minnesota Center for Book Arts when they first opened (25 years ago).

In 1987 I started The Nomadic Press. Working out of a basement (and a garage) worked fine for a while, but when my friend (and wife) Emily and I wanted to start a family something needed to change. After looking for over a year we found a building on the West Side in St. Paul which suited our needs.

The brick building we found was built in 1914 and it sits on a large lot with a nice big yard. Trees offer shade and the upstairs apartment provided a comfortable home in which to start our family.

Oh, and the print shop fit nicely on the main floor.

We now have two kids and own a house about a mile away from The Nomadic Press. Emily’s business (Aldrich Design) now operates out of the upstairs of the print shop.

At this point you may ask why I am telling you all this. Well, the reason for this rambling history of letterpress printing and friendship is to share some exciting news.

This last week we made the final mortgage payment on the building that houses The Nomadic Press. We now own it free and clear. And we owe a great deal of thanks for all the help and support we have received over the years from our families and our friends. As well as all of you who have seen fit to hire us now and again. Thanks.

As my grandfather said, its ours, now we can kick it. Brick, mortar and all.

And I say, kick it letterpress.

While the movement focused on an examination of esthetics, with an eye open toward identifying a Black sensibility in arts and crafts that was distinctly separate from that of the current White culture, some of the great works of art of the 20th century were created.  During this period painting, music and literature underwent dramatic changes.

Publishing was not immune from the enthusiastic energy of change. Many of the most powerful works of African American writing were produced during this period and the printers of the time were not without their say. A number of works were produced using black paper and printed with white ink. 

This was, perhaps, an idea that was technically ahead of its time.

Although lithographic printing using paper plates was invented in 1914, the bulk of printed matter was still produced using the relief (or letterpress) process. With the letterpress process it is difficult to print effectively with either white ink on black paper or to print a flood of black ink with the type dropped out.

Perhaps this is an experiment that is worth investigating again. With the sophistication of offset printing and the advent of direct-to-print computer processes, as well as the invention of the digital book, a firmer technical foundation exists today to play with the relationship between black and white on the printed page.

Weather the paper or the ink is black or white, the strength one takes from the contrast between the two is undeniable. This business card designed by (and for) Kristin Krantz is fine example of the dynamic that is highlighted by the simple use of these two , I would say, primary colors.

The press performed well on its first outing and, even then, I could anticipate many decades of serviceable work coming henceforth from its jaws.  

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.

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.

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.)

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.

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?

A couple of winters ago I was reading a pretty good book. As I finished reading a page I would tear it out and throw it in the fire. This meant that I was always reading just the top sheet of a book and I never had to hold the tome open (one of my pet peeves is books that are printed with no space in the gutter, thus forcing the reader to exert constant effort just to keep the damn pages spread apart).

This winter I decided to finally finish Homer’s “The Iliad” and finish it I did. I shredded my copy of it and built a display case for the leavings. I know, one might say that this puts things back into the world of the museum.

Rather, I consider it more of a object for a cabinet of curiosities. In any case it was fun to make.

Next on my reading list, the burnt ashes of “War and Peace” in an urn. And I’ll try not to set the Nomadic Press print studio on fire.