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.

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.

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.

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.

Letterpress printing has always been about the cycle of use and reuse. Traditionally, metal type is set from cases into forms. Live forms sit in galleys awaiting their turn in the press.

After the prints are wrought off they become dead forms and are again placed in the galleys to wait for the time that they are laid back into their case.

Once back in the case, type is ready to be set once more into another job.

If the type has been damaged somewhere in the process then it is sent to Hell.

The metal type in this photo sits in the Hell can, waiting in Purgatory as it were, for the fire of the furnace to re-cast it. For its rebirth as another face.

At The Nomadic Press we hope that this last year has not been too Hellish for you, and that January brings you a fresh outlook on life, recast and standing with shoulders squared, ready to leave your impression on another year.

Metal Fonts

Using tin letters, like these that I found in a bin recently, is a fun way to easily apply official looking signage onto a building or fence. The more letters that are put into a line and nailed up, the more specific the message gets.

As with cases of movable metal type, I like the unrealized potential of this bin full of letters. If I had something to say and someplace to say it . . .

If I had a (tack) hammer.

As I child, I took it a logical step further and applied a coating of finger paint to the arrangement of plastic type which decorated the front of our fridge. Then, with the help of a friend, tipped the unwieldy appliance onto its face and onto a large sheet of construction paper.  Ok, not really, but just imagine.

One of the first things that appealed to me about letterpress printing was the way that the metal type looked as it lay in cases. In the larger sizes, the faces of the letterforms looked up and out of their well-ordered compartments with promises of infinite potential.

Although most of the printing that comes through the Nomadic Press these days is wrought from polymer plates which have been sired by computer driven graphic designers, I still love letters, be they here in the print shop or out in the world.

Wheather it is dilapidated signage hanging askew from rusted brackets, whispering ghost signage painted, decades ago, onto brick walls, or folk signage laying dirty and disgarded in the gutter. Letters that seem to have lost their specific purpose somewhere along the way hold a special place in my heart.

That said, these bins of lost and wayward letters caught my eye.

The cabinet that they were stored in presented a beautiful assortment of out-of-context letterforms.

Hand set license plates anyone?