Hammering it Home

Jeff Holmberg has found an inventive way to use the metal type he bought at an antique store. Above is one in a series of wooden posters he produced using stencils, rubber stamps, paint, ink, and reclaimed wood. For a unique finish, he pounded the type into the wood fibers to leave a blind impression.

There are more photos of the posters here, as well as a lively comment thread on whether roughing-up type in this manner is a desecration. Why not weigh in?

Lego My Letterpress!

Perhaps you eagerly peeked in your stocking this year hoping for a brand new toy or two. Nothing beats the excitement of unwrapping a package and finding in it a toy that you know you'll want to play with forever and ever. In reality, "forever" lasts a few months, and by next year you're eagerly peeking in your stocking once again.

Via the wonderful NPR Picture Show blog comes a well-timed story about what to do with some of those abandoned toys. The Legos that have been gathering dust in your closet for years? Perfect for letterpress artists Sam Cox and Justin LaRosa. They've been using Legos to make some wonderful pieces, including The Fox (pictured above). Check out much more of their pixely work at Physical Fiction.

I Swept With Your Wife: A How-To

Over the summer we designed and printed the curling posters above. It was odd to think of curling when the mercury was pushing 90, but during the season there's not a lot of time to do projects like this.

The final product was made using a lino cut, wood type, and an array of inks, passed twice through the proof press. Here's how it went down...

First we drew the curler on a piece of paper, backwards:




Then we took white Saral transfer paper and carefully traced the drawing so its outline transfered onto the lino block:



Next, we inflamed our carpal tunnel syndrome by cutting out the parts of the lino block that we did not want to print:



Then we locked the finished block in the press bed, inked it up with a brayer, and printed it on the poster:



After that initial pass, we laid up the wood type in the bed of the press. After inking the type, we laid the paper back down and made a second pass with the cylinder. The various color combinations were created by mixing and matching colors as we went along. All in all, we created 20 posters.



Paper is from the French Paper Company; assorted wood type; handcut lino block; hand inked in 2 passes on the cylinder press. 12.5" x 19".

Test Sheets

At the start of any job, printers run a couple test sheets through the press to check registration, ink coverage, spelling, etc. This process is commonly called make-ready, and ensures that a good print will be made. Basically, we make sure everything looks swell before we insert the good (ie. expensive) paper and print the job. Since we reuse the test sheets from job to job, they tend to collect bits and pieces from many different projects.

Every once in awhile, it's nice to step back and evaluate these test sheets as individual design pieces, rather than just as purely utilitarian devices. Oftentimes they look like a random jumble of overlays, but sometimes they end up having a rather pleasant aesthetic rigor. Pictured here are some of our favorites from the past year. (Click on images for better view.)

Below is detail of the upper left sheet. If you look carefully, you can even pick out portions of jobs that we've featured on this blog. Recognize any of them?

Behind the Design

Hat-tip to James for this handy compendium of the design history of 12 brands, from the iconic Coca-Cola to the subversive OBEY campaign (pictured above). For the student of design, there are not a ton of surprises, but it still offers some interesting behind-the-scenes insights. One nugget we enjoyed: the Tiffany box has it's own Pantone designation: 1837. Why that number? That's the year Tiffany was founded.

Don't Skip It

If offered the chance, most people will skip Flash intros on websites, and for a very good reason: they suck. But this is one that I just couldn't bring myself to bypass.

As you probably guessed, the rest of the site is good, too.

Ampersand Book

Okay, we're sorta riding the crest of ampersandness here. Student Andy Mangold created a nice one-off celebrating a history of the ampersand. He used wintergreen oil to transfer photocopied layouts onto heavy, accordion-folded stock. I've never used wintergreen oil, but am starting to wonder about pairing that transfer technique with letterpress. Anyone know of a project that employs both transfer and letterpress? We'd be happy to be a guinea pigs for such a venture. Any suggestions for a project we can test it out on?

Doilies: A Word I Never Thought Would Ever Appear on This Blog

Our Aunt Dorothy has always had a thing for doilies, so I guess it runs in the Duckpin family.

A recent posting on the wonderful website FPO details the process behind creating the poster pictured above. Big whoop, right? Well, the beauty of the poster is that it was created using store-bought paper doilies that the designer, Bennett Holzworth, Xactoed, spray glued and mounted type-high. What a unique and resourceful way to create your own printing surface. The hands-on nature of this process is definitely more in tune with the whole letterpress-as-physical-expression vibe than designing something on the computer and having a poly plate spit out. Kudos for the handiwork and for sharing the process behind the print.

Perhaps Aunt Dorothy was just a little bit ahead of her time...