Practical Printer

I ran into a situation on a two-color job where I needed to print a polymer plate and type at the same time.

Fortunately I was running the two colors in quick succession by using two presses.

Pictured above is the print, followed by Press Number 1 with the black plate; then Press No. 2 with the red plate and the ornament. (Note the rule cut away on Press Number 1 to allow the ornament on Press No. 2 to fit into the gap.)

All of this was an expediency caused by the fact that although the job looked lively enough on screen, the print itself needed some help.

Hadn't I been able to do this, I would have had to revise the original file, output new film, and make new plates.

In the past ornaments of this kind were available from ATF in Handipacks. And any job printer would have had at least one case filled with ornaments.

Today however, with many printers exclusively running photopolymer, one might consider outputting film of ornaments so that should the occasion arise one would have some “ornaments” available.

(Of course, my saying this, implies also that I still do some “designing” on press.)

A good starting place might be the wonderful selection of penline flourishes available in Minion and Poetica. Many are similar to the Civilité ornaments, which at one time were available in ATF Handipack 73.

Something that might be kept in mind is selection of size. It is not by accident that the size differential in foundry ornaments goes up by 6 or 12 points at a time, as this is a sufficient jump in size to allow for various applications.

Now you can create you own “Handipacks.”

nosh

Recently I applied for a grant, and in the process of assembling images, I was surprised to find so many that dealt with environmental issues.

So I decided to make that the focus of the application and came up with the necessary eight, one of which is posted here, done in 1986 with the assistance of Dean Lindblad.

I think that the selection of materials reflects the ambiguity of compromise involved in the potentially controversial aspect of a piece like this.

The plastic bag hangs from an industrial-grade stainless steel meat hook, which itself depends from a .25-inch by 3-inch by twenty-four inch aluminum bar fitted into a white pine box.

The paper is a handmade from Twin Rocker, with a brushed on, slightly thinned-out Lewis Roberts Venus Red.

The typeface is foundry metal 84-point Ludwig & Mayer Aurora Bold Condensed.

That is, in the making of the piece is there not a violation of the principle of the piece?

A little food for thought, perhaps, when next you find yourself perched at the bar with a raptor-like gaze.

Reprehensibly Perfect

Pictured above is a composing stick with three lines of eight-point Eurostile Normal, set to a measure of fifty picas

AND

all caps, letterspaced with copper spaces, and word spaced two points using brass and copper.

With all that spacing material inserted between every character the line becomes so springy, that when you insert that last quad (colorized red) the whole line may buckle and spring out of the stick.

To prevent this I use a six or 12-point slug tight against the line before I insert that last quad—for purposes of illustration I have shown the slug pulled away and also colorized.

Note that the stick resides in a kind of cradle. If, for want of space in a crowded shop, you have ever set a half-filled stick down against a galley or typecase, only to see it slip and dump its contents, you may want to make a cradle like this.

But wait! Why would anyone set eight-point type all caps when all you have to do is hit CAPS LOCK or command-shift-K?

Good question. Which I think is rather neatly addressed in a poem by Philip Larkin, entitled The Poetry of Departures, the last line of which I have used to name this post.

A neat skewering, I think, of the Romantic Thrust. Or, another nail in the coffin of the handpress.

Forthcoming

I thought I would take advantage of this last day of the year to announce two books that I will be completing early 2011.

The first to hit the press will be a book of the Scottish Ballad, “Edward,” and which follows the text as given in Thomas Percy’s Reliques of Ancient English Poetry (Volume I. London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1927 [as reprinted from the edition of Swan Sonneschien, 1885], p. 82-84); and which will also draw on some preliminary matter, elucidating the provenance of the text.

Set in American Uncial and printed on Rives BFK 180gsm, the book will include a drawing by the painter and master printmaker, David Rathman.

The second book, also set in American Uncial, is a story of my own making, entitled, “The Copyist.” It is quite short: 1500 words. Below is a proof of the first two paragraphs, and if you wish to read more you may download a pdf of the first two pages.


And were you to go to my post of Wednesday, June 30, 2010 you will see, put to another use, one of the galleys, already set.

Faux Faux Faux

I printed a few holiday cards this season. Two of them utilize techniques that may be of interest.

The first shows the creation of a fake deckle at the fore-edge of a card. By printing two cards as a work and turn, then folding, and tearing the long sheet in half, it is possible to fake a deckle.

Although the card shown here does not illustrate the possibility, one could print right up to the “deckle,” then tear. This is especially advantageous to those who print on the Vandercook.

The other card mixes laser printing with letterpress. Displayed is a compass rose that was printed on a Xerox Phaser 8560 laser printer, then blind embossed to give a faux “letterpress effect.”

As the Xerox 8560 holds very good register, I did not lose too many with the blind emboss. And I might say the same of the Epson Stylus Photo 2200 inkjet printer, which I have found also holds very good register.

(As for why I embossed the compass rose in the first place: anyone who has mixed inkjet printing with letterpress has noticed—and probably has been disappointed by—the flatness of inkjet against letterpress. The embossing goes a long ways toward meliorating this problem. And if you are still unhappy with the result, you might try adding a varnish to the embossing plate.)

Happy Holidays!
Philip Gallo at the Hermetic Press

Ethertalk II

Instruction Set (c. 1992). Letterpress from original 8.5x11-inch copier paper. After the text had been printed, the outline was sketched around the text; scanned, then scaled and transformed to fit tangent top and bottom, left and right, after which, the outline was printed in gold ink.

Edition of 50. On Lenox (9.5x13.25-inches). April 2010.

A Well-Punkt Remark

One fine Saturday evening, the dinner party winding down, all at table sufficiently-oiled, and the Pinot Noir giving rise to world-class solutions to world-wide problems, what should Pop Up ! but the noösphere, enjoining our thoughts to commingle.

Years since I had read Teilhard de Chardin, it was time for review.

Such a surprise to find that in this excellent translation of The Phenomenon of Man (Bernard Wall, tr.; Harper & Row, Revised English edition, 1965) that the French style for handling punctuation had been observed:

The addition of a full word space before some punctuation: viz., the semi-colon, the colon, the exclamation point, and the question mark.

I call attention especially to the exclamation point, which in modern typesetting—and especially in the case of sans serifs—is often set so tightly that the exclamation point reads as an errant “el.” A fault exacerbated with smaller point sizes, especially when digital type is converted to polymer plate for letterpress printing.

As a matter of fact, this is one of the “finer points” that Geoffrey Dowding outlines in his classic, Finer Points in the Spacing and Arrangement of Type.

Consequently when setting digital type for letterpress/bookwork, I routinely add two hair spaces (totaling 1/12 of an em in CS2) before the exclamation point or the question mark.* Character shape to the left and the right having such a strong influence on the relative placement of the semi-colon and colon, I adjust with unit spacing to the left and to the right.

Once you get used to the idea of punctuation as a thing unto itself, take a good look at the Bauer Bodoni or the Stradivarius exclamation point—or for that matter, the Futura Lite question mark, which looks like an upside-down capital “S” with a period centered under it.

Like good wine, they should be allowed to breathe.

*However, the prevailing style in advertising typography is quite the opposite—both the exclamation point and the question mark very tightly kerned to the adjacent character.