PEOPLE OF THE PRESS: LUCY HOLTSNIDER

Name: Lucille Marie Holtsnider

Year of graduation: 2011

Major/Minor: Art Studio major, minor in Sustainable Deviance in the Southwest

Where are you from? Littleton, CO

How long have you been working at the Press? 25 years

Briefly describe what you do at the Press:
My time at the Press is primarily spent designing and printing posters. In addition, I am currently working on my thesis exhibition. My show will be a collection of letterpress prints and other treasures.

What brought you to the Press?
I was drawn to the Press by the good-looking, educated people who congregate there to drink coffee and discuss their plans for world domination.

What keeps you coming back?
The coffee.

How has working at the Press enhanced your overall education at Colorado College?
My experience at Colorado College was profoundly enhanced by the Press. I was lucky to discover this superior art form early on in my time at CC during my sophomore year. I had grown frustrated with media such as painting which required little technical skill in comparison to letterpress. A rhinoceros in a zoo can paint a picture, but only the most clever of humans can properly register a two-color polymer plate.

How would you like to see the Press grow and change in the future?
In the future I would like to see the Press acquire a pet. Preferably a small mammal, such as a baby baboon or a lynx. Letterpress can be an extremely frustrating hobby, and having an animal present would be a calming and fun addition to our family.

A BRIEF REVIEW OF FIVE HUNDRED YEARS OF BOOK DESIGN BY ALAN BARTRAM

A Brief Review of Five hundred years of book design
By Alan Bartram

In his book, Five hundred years of book design, Alan Bartram performs a critique of the canons of typography, aiming to “look at books a fresh through the eyes of a 21st century designer” (9). One of the first things a reader scrutinizes when reading about book about book design is the book itself. The book is tall and narrow, typeset in Monotype Fournier and published by Yale University Press. Bartram emphasizes over and over in his essays the importance of deliberate use of space and consequently leaves generous margins around the text body on three sides (surely not intended for marking up with notes?) The book is pleasurable to hold and easy to visually digest, and provides a unique and snarky commentary on the history of typography.

Bartram briefly describes the history of printing and then proceeds to launch into a cynically disdainful critique of famous printers, typesetters & designers. Bartram displays a photograph of a book layout on each page, describing its designer, location, year and size and then opens fires on its obvious shortcomings. Sometimes he applauds small details, but more often than not, various page layouts are, “dreadfully dense,” “downright ugly,” “full of follies,” “unexpectedly poor and…wretched” and even goes as far to say that typographer W A Dwiggins “seems unskilled in the use of space – rather a handicap for a typographer” (182). Oh snap! He states in his preface that printers in history have ignored form and function, careful layout, and a plethora of “baffling lapses in judgment” have occurred (22). Essentially, more mistakes were made than that of the entire freshman class at drag ball.

While Bartram does lay it on thick, he provides unique insight on typographical errors in a practical sense. As a student of book design, rarely do I ever come across examples of blatantly poor design. In a field where skills develop based largely trial and error, and one must cultivate the elusive “informed intuition” its helpful to see textbook examples of what NOT to do. As soon as Bartram points out the error, it becomes obvious and visually agitating.

Bartram also brings up the important point about the role books play in our society and the split between books that are meant to be read, versus book that are meant to be held. The industrialization of printing in the early twentieth century meant that books could be prolifically and cheaply manufactured and were merely “texts whose purpose is communication.” He writes of the split between mass-produced books and fine-press books and that, “It was disconcerting that the most highly regarded designers of the early twentieth century devoted their time to creating books which were primarily visual toys” (121). Private presses were becoming “self indulgent exercises for wealthy patrons” recycling primarily old texts. These are books that are “not for the working man” despite the inherent hard work involved in printing books (112).

This commentary makes me question why I am involved letterpress printing in the first place. Although I have no conclusive answers, Bartram convinced me that printing should be integrally tied up in the dissemination of important information that is clear, concise and elegant. Printing should have integrity as integral to the information as it is to elegance, fluidity and aesthetic value. (Best get out of the greeting card/wedding industry ASAP…) Alas, Bertram ends the book with a solid quote from Benjamin Franklin,

“If all printers were determined not to print anything till they were sure it would offend nobody, there would be very little printed” (184).

Bartram, Alan, Five hundred years of book design (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001).

PROFILE OF TYPOGRAPHER JAN TSCHICHOLD

Jan Tschichold is the only typographer in Five hundred years of book design who Alan Bartram doesn’t aggressively criticize, and lets his designs “speak for themselves.” (184, Bartram) And for good reason! Jan Tschichold’s beautiful design sense immediately captivated me, and page after page of consistently dynamic layouts proves him a master of the trade. Jan Tschichold was born in 1902 in Leipzig, Germany and was a book designer, typographer, teacher and writer who revolutionized typography in the machine age. He was greatly influenced by the Bauhaus school, and not only designed type but created a manual for designers called Die Neue Typographie, (The New Typography), recognized as a definitive manifesto on graphic design in the machine age. Here are some beautiful examples of his early work:






In this book, Tschichold emphasized elements that reflected the machine age: dynamic energy, implied movement, as well as balance, asymmetrical placement of contrasting elements, flush left headlines, and layouts based on horizontal and vertical underlying grids. Rectangles, rules and bars enhanced structure, balance and stress. The essence of New Typography was to clarify information and communicate it in the most direct and effective manner possible, looking for inspiration first from the text itself. One of my favorite elements of New Typography is the emphasis on contrasting and vibrating colors. Type becomes symbolic of meaning as well as a visual code for translation, and those symbols “bring letters together to make a new form, or illustrate the product” or better yet, both. (110, Tschichold.) Initially, Jan condemned all type faces except for san-serif.

New Typography was a direct response to the disorder in European typography in the early twenties, and consequently rationality and functionality were of paramount importance. Tschichold was reacting against the old typography, whose objective was beauty and ornament and whose superficiality could not “produce the pure form” and “the degree of logic we now demand.” (66, Tschichold) Specifically, type design up until then was characterized by a central axis, type placed on a page (as opposed to the page being part of the layout) and emphasized a rigid form for plugging in text. Jan thought that typography should “not be an expression, least of all self-expression, but perfect communication achieved by skill.” (64, Jong) Its main objective should be to develop its form out of the text, not from any preconceived notion.

One of the most significant aspects of Tschichold’s contribution to typography was its integral connection to politics. Typography then carried a symbolic weight that indicated political opinion and consequently, Tschichold and his wife were arrested and labeled “cultural Bolsheviks,” accused of advocating “un-German” typography (22, Jong).

Although Tschichold advocated san serif typography in The New Typography, he later rejected his own philosophy in favor of returning to traditional and symmetrical typography he had so aggressively condemned ten years earlier. At a seminar in 1959 he wrote,

In light of my present knowledge, it was a juvenile opinion to consider the sans serif as the most suitable or even the most contemporary typeface. A typeface has first to be legible, nay, readable, and a sans serif is certainly not the most legible typeface when set in quantity, let alone readable….Good typography has to be perfectly legible and, as such, the result of intelligent planning. The classical typefaces such as Garamond, Janson, Baskerville and Bell are undoubtedly the most legible. (63, Jong)

To say the least, this did not please the cult followers of his previous school of thought, but he claimed that he “detected most shocking parallels between the teachings of The New Typography and National Socialism and fascism. Obvious similarities consist in the ruthless restriction of typefaces…and the more or less militaristic arrangement of lines” (21, Jong).

In the latter part of his life, Tschichold went on to re-vamp everything published by Penguin Books, and created a new set of rules known as The Penguin Composition Rules. Technology was allowing for color plates and pictorial covers, which functioned as “attractive collectors items for the general reader.” (278, Jong). During his career with penguin he re-designed some 500 books, sometimes one a day. Beautiful in a different way than his earlier work, Penguin books employ centered titles, strict adherence to letter-spacing, and a color-coding system and patterned bounding around many a cover. Here are some examples of his work for Penguin - you can see here he is using a centralized axis and serif fonts again:





In terms of my own letterpress practice, there are many nuggets of wisdom to steal from Jan. He writes that there are no set rules for anything – a good typographer is constantly adapting his design not only to the message he intends to communicate, but also to the conditions of the time. Practicing designers must first and foremost listen to the texts and their logic. “The typographer must take the greatest care to study how his work is read and ought to be read. It is true that we usually read from top left to bottom right – but this is not law” (67, Tschichold) He encourages designers to employ the “liveliness of asymmetry” and “employ contrast to create unity.” ( 70, Tschichold) He suggests using three to five sizes of type, and emphasizing the intention of negative space of the page as a deliberate component of layout.

In particular, Jan encourages using abstract forms only if they are relevant to the communication of the text. I am guilty as charged on this account in a few of my poster-press projects – coming up with a design simply for aesthetic reasons rather than communicating the essence of the event. He holds photography to be the most effective tool for illustration, because it eliminates the chance of misinterpretation and possesses “intrinsic objectivity” (31, Jong).

So, has the import of typography in our society changed since Jan's time? Do we have anything as strong as Nazism to react against symbolically? Going back to Bartram’s point, we must ask ourselves constantly, Why does this print MATTER? This idea made me think of Aaron’s post regarding “the return of the democratic multiple” about screen prints made recently during the protests in Wisconsin. Printeresting describes this as a “living breathing example of print being employed for the cause of the day.”

Lastly, one of my favorite warnings from Tschichold is to avoid using historical type-faces without a specific purpose, “for they are foreign to our time.” To illustrate this metaphor he asks, “Can you imagine an airline pilot with a beard?” (83, Tschichold) Well, Jan, you might be a typographical genius, but maybe you just need to think outside the box, or shall we say the axial grid…?


Bibliography:
Bartram, Alan, Five hundred years of book design (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001) 184.

Jong, Cees W. de et al. Jan Tschichold: Master Typographer: His Life, Work & Legacy (New York: Thames & Hudson, 2008)

Tschichold, Jan. The New Typography. Translated by Ruari McClean (California: University of California Press, 1995)

CULTURE, SOCIETY, AND HISTORY: CULTURES OF THE BOOK (5)

Each group wrote texts to go with their images, to provide background information about their subject and to explain how their image represented that information. Due to space and time constraints, we set a limit of 150 words. After some proofreading and revisions they began to set their text in lead type. Each group used a standard line length of 35 picas (because they all had to fit in the same amount of space) but each group chose their own typeface, in either 12 or 14 pt. Then they began to set, and of course when you have that many beginners all setting at once, and a teacher still figuring out the studio that they are working in, interesting problems arise. One group, writing about the Warring States Period in China, ran out of capital Q’s (the word Qin was used repeatedly in their text). We did some rewriting around the capital Q, but it wasn’t quite enough to get us all the way through. They were something like 2 or 3 lines away from the end, so we just decided that we would print the first section, then reset, and print the second part. Had I known at the time that we would be doing that resetting at 10 PM, after a full day of printing, I may not have been so keen to suggest it. But I’m learning a lot too, mainly about logistics.

Some interesting solutions also came up:




That one made me particularly happy.

One of the fascinating things about teaching a process this particular and specialized is that you get to see each student’s personality emerge in their relationship to the process. Some are hurried and frantic. Some are careless and easily distracted. Others are intently focused on getting it right. Calm, quiet, stressed, chatty—each person sets type in a different way.

WEDDING INVITATIONS

My sister got engaged this past summer! Having just taken a letterpress class here, in this very press, I thought what better wedding present could there be than hand-printing the invitations? My sister needed 100 invitations, rsvp cards, and thank you cards. I soon realized the immensity of the project I had taken on. 

During the fall I experimented with different fonts, designs, and layouts. It took me much longer than I had anticipated to find a suitable type. I finally settled on Bembo font, size 12-point, 24-point, and 16-point for the head of the rsvp card. Over winter break I discussed different designs with my sister and had her draw the 'and' with her awesome calligraphy skills. She drew about 100 until we got the perfect one. When I got back to school Aaron helped me choose a slightly off-white paper (somerset velvet, which worked beautifully!) and also helped me letter-space the all-caps type, which was my first experience with the joys of letter-spacing.

Block of type for the invitation

I then edited my sister's 'and' and some birds I had drawn in Adobe Illustrator, with Aaron's help, to get them ready to be made into photo polymer. I ordered the negative and made the plate (my first time making or using a photo polymer plate!). To compliment the birds I drew a feather to put on the thank-you cards and carved it out of linoleum. With my type set and my paper cut I was FINALLY ready to start the actually printing.

The printing went relatively smoothly. I did the invitation text first, the polymer and linoleum in purple after that (it took me a while to mix a nice purple that matched the fabric sample my sister had given me but I did and it matches so well!) and finally the rsvp and thank-you text. The only stumble in that part of the process was the 10 or so rsvp cards I printed with one of the 't's being the wrong font. Luckily  I noticed the mistake before I had printed very many. 

Some of the process: the linoleum block and polymer plates and negative on the left, some fonts I had experimented with and my to-do list at the back, some of the 'and's my sister drew below that, trying to figure out the ink color to the left of that and various proofs scattered around.

 The first perfect invitation print!

After the invitations were printed it was time to cut them down. Unfortunately the guillotine, which we use to cut large stacks of paper, was not being friendly. It kept cutting slightly off-square, no matter what I tried. I ended up drawing in the cut lines that I wanted and matching them to blade, which worked quite nicely. Thank goodness.

The final product

I'm really happy with the way they turned out and I learned lots of letter-spacing, photo polymer, and guillotine skills along the way. Success!

KEEP EXPLORING

This semester I got to print my first poster, ever, at the press. (!) It was for Steven Hayward's literature class in Canada this summer. I printed seventy posters (with some extras) in four runs using three colors. I set 'KEEP EXPLORING' in wood type, which I'd never used before but always wanted to. I set it to touch the edges of an 11x17 inch poster. The rest of the text I set in lead type, Times New Roman and Goudy. To keep the ink levels consistent I printed the large type in one run and the small type in the next run. To frame the text from the top and bottom I used a reduction linoleum cut mounted on wood. Using pictures of Canada mountains I carved two mountain skylines, printed them in blue, then carved the skylines of Toronto and Montreal and printed them in green.

I used the Asbern press, the smallest one we have. It caused some momentary stress when I started printing the green skyline and realized the packing (which backs the paper as it runs through the press) was dropping off an inch before the end of the poster...you can't actually print all the way down the press bed on that press because the packing ends well before it. I fixed the problem by cutting the block with the linoleum in half (it was originally mounted on one block of wood) and moving the bottom block up by about an inch. The poster ended up being a little shorter than I had planned, but it's not very noticeable and doesn't really take away from the poster as a whole I think.

First and second runs

Third and fourth runs

Final poster, linoleum cut, original sketch

If I could do the poster over, I would switch to a bigger press and definitely set the chunks of text moving from left-aligned gradually to right-aligned to better activate the inside space of the poster. I would also use less fonts. I think it went well though, for my first poster. I'm excited to do more!