The Blog of the Press that is The Press at Colorado College

THE DENVER ZINE LIBRARY HERE NEEDS YOUR HELP!

2012-02-17T09:31:00.001-07:00

And Colorado College librarians Steve Lawson and Jessy Randall are here to tell you why the Denver Zine Library is a good thing:

Donate here.

And check out the DZL's website here.

TITLE, A METABOOK

2012-01-19T06:00:00.000-07:00

Open publication - Free publishing - More artists books

Title
A meta/historical book produced by
the History & Future of the Book class during half-block of 2012
12 pages, soft cover, pamphlet stitch
Letterpress printed from handset lead and wood type
Edition of 100

The History & Future of the Book class, which is ending today with a wayzgoose, was taught by librarians Jessy Randall and Steve Lawson. The class, as you might have guessed, dealt with the changing forms and roles of the book in culture, in the past and in our current time. The class also involved this project at The Press. As usual, the students decided the parameters of the project (letting them choose always gives them more ownership of the project and allows for a more significant engagement—they’re not just doing an assignment, but actually making something that they are invested in). They decided on a traditional codex book, but to explore and deconstruct that form by looking at its parts and qualities and researching and writing short texts about those parts. Their meta-text was then placed in the book where the pieces described would usually go. For research, writing, and typesetting the class was divided into pairs (it was a large class—24 students) based on what parts or subjects they were interested in researching. They were given total license as to what their text would be and what information it would contain. As you can see in the book above, some of the texts are straightforward descriptions, while others are poems or “notes” from the book itself. After the text was written, they set it in lead type, and then we printed the book in teams of four, working in shifts over a two day period. Yesterday afternoon we all got together and did the binding as a group.

Because the class was the history and future of the book, we also decided to add a digital component to the project, shown above. So the book exists both as a limited edition letterpress book and as a theoretically infinite edition, readable, shareable, and downloadable ebook.

Enjoy!

KNOWLEDGE/POWER

2012-01-18T08:44:00.002-07:00

Open publication - Free publishing - More artists books

INFORMATION!

OUR NEW MASCOT

2011-10-31T09:56:00.000-06:00

ENRICH YOUR LIFE! WITH LETTERPRESS!

2011-10-27T11:14:00.000-06:00

Over the summer The Press participated in the Enrich Your Life Workshop series, which is run through the Summer Session programs here at CC. We had a two-day workshop over a weekend, open to anyone—we even had one person come from western Colorado to take it.

The workshop was conceived of as being for absolute beginners, so we needed to cover all of the basics: history and context, hand typesetting, and how to set up and print on the presses. And of course we wanted it to be as hands-on as possible, with the students being engaged in the making of a finished piece.

This broadside, from a similar workshop done at the beginning of the Press’s existence, was hanging in the display case outside of our front door:

and it became the model for what we did. The students were divided into teams of two. Each group wrote a pangram: a text containing every letter of the alphabet. One of the most well known pangrams, often used for type specimens, is: “The quick, brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.” Then each group chose a typeface, and set the name of the face in caps, all of the lowercase letters in order, and then their pangram. One group added the figures in order to make their spacing/arrangement better.

After all of the type was set and proofed, each group worked on designs for the broadside, potentially incorporating images from blocks we had around the studio, and/or a title in wood type. After each group had a design we all looked at them together and came to a consensus. Then we chose paper and ink colors.

Day 2 was production day, where we set up the presses and ran both colors. Our 219 and Universal III are the same size, so we used those, which also gave everyone the opportunity to print on both an automatic and a hand-cranked press.

Setting up and printing went really smoothly, and we ended up with a really great looking type specimen broadside:

And at the end everyone signed every copy.

Teaching workshops is so much fun—there’s no academic pressure, no grading or evaluation, and every student is there because they are genuinely interested. This particular workshop was so much fun and so successful—we will definitely be doing more in the future, so stay tuned!

BOOK & BOOK STRUCTURE (5)

2011-10-26T14:30:00.000-06:00

After the big push on final projects, we ended the class with, of course, an exhibition and party. The Art Dept. here at CC has a nice tradition of holding informal exhibitions of all the student work from the various classes on the last Tuesday of every block, with a reception from 4 – 6 PM. So we got to participate in those events as well. The images below show some of the final projects (which was, essentially, an open project) and some shots from the show.

AMITAVA KUMAR: from BOMBAY-LONDON-NEW YORK

2011-10-19T10:51:00.001-06:00

Text by Amitava Kumar, from his book Bombay-London-New York.
 
The colophon, printed on the back, reads:

This broadside was designed and printed at The Press at Colorado College for the occasion of Amitava Kumar’s reading as part of the 2011 Visiting Writers Series. The footprints were made by our brave printers-in-training: Tara Mullin, Leeds Mallinckrodt-Reese, Patrick Lofgren, Michaela Davies, Rebekah Barnett, Emily Michels, and Sydney Minchin. The rest was printed using less pedestrian methods—photopolymer plates for the text and collagrpah for the white shapes. The typefaces are Palatino Linotype and Placard Condensed, and the paper is Rives BFK Heavy Cream. Designed and printed by Aaron Cohick, Printer of The Press at Colorado College, in October of 2011.

And there is an addendum to that as well: Alena Ede and Alexandria Romo assisted with the letterpress printing.

9” x 13.25”. Variable edition of 30. Signed by the author.

The price of the broadside is $10. To purchase a copy please send a check for $15 ($5 shipping), payable to Colorado College, to:

The Press at Colorado College 
Aaron Cohick
 14 E. Cache La Poudre St. 
Colorado Springs, CO 80903

Be sure to include what you are ordering and your shipping address. Questions? Email Aaron Cohick at aaronDOTcohickATcoloradocollegeDOTedu.

BOOK & BOOK STRUCTURE (4)

2011-09-27T10:06:00.000-06:00

And here are some action and still-life shots of the students working on their various projects:

BOOK & BOOK STRUCTURE (3)

2011-09-26T10:31:00.000-06:00

One nice thing about the Block Plan is that it makes field trips easy—students can take a whole day or more for trips and not worry about missing any other classes. Our book class went to Denver for a day, to visit Special Collections at the Penrose Library at the University of Denver, and the Abecedarian Gallery, which is in the Santa Fe Arts District in Denver. Abecedarian is one of the few galleries in the country that regularly shows artists’ books. It’s nice to have it so close & so accessible.

Here are some photos of the class looking at the massive pile of treasures at Penrose:

And the last image shows us inside of Abecedarian, and its proprietor, Alicia Bailey, addressing the class. Thanks Alicia!

BOOK & BOOK STRUCTURE (2)

2011-09-16T10:25:00.000-06:00

The first printing project that we did in our Block 7 Book & Book Structure class was a collaborative book involving every student in the class. It covered all of the basics of letterpress printing: page imposition, hand typesetting, locking up & registration, and printing text and images. And of course it had some chance operations driving the whole thing.

To begin, the students were asked to bring in a quote having to do with chance. We shared these quotes as a group and talked about the different aspects of chance that they brought up.

We also gathered a bunch of old image plates that we have at The Press, both random stuff that’s been collected over the years and plates used in older Press publications.

And then the class, using a system loosely devised by Robin and elaborated by them, performed a variety of chance operations in order to determine which quotes and images would be printed on which folios, the position of those elements on the individual pages, and the colors of the images (the text, it was decided, would be black so that it could be printed over the images if need be).

By far our favorite chance procedure was the use of plastic of jumping frogs. You can never go wrong with jumping frogs.

[A brief aside: The textbook for the class was Ellen Lupton’s Thinking With Type: A Critical guide for Designers, Writers, Editors, & Students, 2nd Edition, (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2010). You can see its brightly colored cover in the images above. It’s a great book, and it also has a great companion website.]

After the placement of everything was determined, everyone set their type and then we began printing in teams. Printing lasted two classes. The final step was for each student to take two copies of each folio and to make two books, one by simply arranging the pages as they were, and the other by adding new content of their choice. The variety of results in the books that they added to was pretty amazing. Unfortunately, we don’t have any images of those….

BOOK & BOOK STRUCTURE (1)

2011-09-13T11:04:00.000-06:00

The main event of last school year at The Press was our full class, Book & Book Structure, which was taught by Visiting Professor Robin Price. We bring in a different visiting faculty person every year, and thus the special focus of the class changes slightly every time. The special focus of last year’s class was Robin’s specialty: “chance operations.”

The class is officially an Art Studio, but in true Liberal Arts style, it includes many disciplines that intersect in the making of books: creative writing, literature, history, science, etc.

The class ran during Block 7. A great deal of ground was covered, much more than we actually have documentation of at this point. But we will do what we can. Better to begin at the beginning.

The class began with a get-in-there & get-your-hands-dirty & let-go & see-what-this-stuff-does & see-how-these-things-work exercise. Which is often the best way to start a class: by immediately throwing open the door to exploration.

To begin, each student was given a largish piece of Rives BFK, some india ink, and a variety of implements (brushes, sticks, silverware, etc.). They were told to make marks on the sheet with the ink, either with their eyes closed and/or with their non-dominant hands. After this initial marking (which broke the inevitable hesitancy before the purity of a clean sheet of paper) the students spent some time exploring markmaking with other tools and refining what they had done. After a certain amount of time, they had to stop and pass their sheet to the person next to them.

When they got their new sheet, the students were instructed to tear it in half, and then fold each piece in half to form two folios of an eight page book. Then they were given another medium, a warm, brown ink—“walnut stain” used for calligraphy. During this second phase they were supposed to begin ordering the book in response to the marks already present on the paper (not made by them) and the shape & order of the pages. They did this for a set amount of time and then passed their sheets to the person next to them.

They tore and folded each sheet in half again, in order to make a four folio/16 page book. And then they had to finish their books by bringing some sequence, order, and unity to the initial chaos.

BROWNIES!

2011-09-06T10:17:00.000-06:00

Carol Neel, Professor of History at CC and longtime friend of The Press, brought her Brownie troop in one evening for an activity. Apparently there is an actually a merit badge for “Visit to a Printshop.” As there should be.

The troop had been working on a book project. They all made collage self-portraits, and then those were color photocopied into pages, along with a collection of pictures of various activities that they had done throughout the year. We printed the covers here, and then they folded and bound the pages into finished books, one for everybody.

We also let them set, hand ink, and pull proofs of wood type. Most of them did their names, along with some sort of adjective, like “super!” or “cool!” They were also really excited about the hellbox. It was a great deal of fun. Definitely the most enthusiastic group that we’ve ever had in here.

FLASH FICTION (3)

2011-09-05T13:17:00.000-06:00

And the broadsides. All of these were printed on chipboard, in 4 colors, out of a combination of lead and wood type, and a photopolymer plate for the white solid. 7” x 16”. Each was made in an edition of 30. The last one, by Charlotte Salley, ended up on Rives BFK, because somehow we ended up short on the chipboard version.

Looking at them together, you can get a sense of how the “modular design” worked. Every piece had a general place, and then we played a bit with the composition on the press. Planned yet improvisational. It all actually went very smoothly—the only real problem we had was some badly damaged type that one or two were set with.

FLASH FICTION (2)

2011-09-05T12:56:00.001-06:00

And here’s the book. The covers were designed by Eleanor Anderson and were letterpress printed form photopolymer plates. The interior pages were laser printed. The paper was from the French Paper Company. All of the books were pamphlet stitched by hand by the class. We made 100+, so everyone in the class got five, and then the Press had extras.

FLASH FICTION (1)

2011-09-05T12:40:00.000-06:00

[Today is the first day of the 2011-2012 academic year here at CC. But I am still catching up on last year’s goings on….]

In Block 4 of last school year The Press worked with Aubrey Hirsch’s Flash Fiction class. Going in, we knew that we were going to make something, but what, exactly, would be up to the students. The Twiction project (see posts below) provided the bar. I personally really enjoyed the very public broadside aspect of that project, so I was thinking along those lines at the beginning. Another thing that made this class special was that one of our Press Deputies, Eleanor Anderson, was in the class, and her presence greatly expanded our Printer Power.

The printers were many, the fiction was extremely short, and our ambition was high, so we went big: 16 individual broadsides plus one book in an edition of 100. A week to print all these? No problem.

To make it all work we came up with a modular design for the broadsides, which would allow us to rapidly switch between different lock-ups, and would also (along with a consistent color scheme) help to unite the individual broadsides as a related group. We decided on doing titles and names in wood type (composed on press) and each student set their piece in lead, in whatever size and face they wanted (but in pre-determined line lengths).

And each student also contributed a different piece of text for the book. They decided on a title and theme and got to writing. Eleanor designed the covers. I did the page layouts, based on the design of the cover. And somehow we kept the whole thing moving and on schedule.

The professor, Aubrey Hirsch, did a broadside and contributed a piece for the book as well.

And when it was all done, the entire class got together in the morning and bound 100+ copies in about 3 and a half hours. Not bad for a group who had never really done any of this before.

And some of them got really into it. This book was made by Neal From.

The one miscalculation that we made in planning this project had to do with the distribution of the broadsides. The original plan was to put them up as a complete set in as many different places on campus as possible. BUT we finished right at the end of Block 4, immediately before winter break. And if we put them up right then, they would have been up for only a day before everyone left, and before they all would have been removed (they clean the public bulletin boards at the end of every block). But we all agreed that, yes, we would put them up first thing in Block 5. And of course that never happened. So much changes over that winter break. But lesson learned: always build distribution time into a project. Or bite the bullet and let them live for just one day. It is ephemera, after all.

NEW SIGN!

2011-09-01T17:24:00.000-06:00

An impromptu wood type and hand inked sign for our display case by the front door of the building. And at the bottom will be posted smaller sheets with info and upcoming events. Maybe people will be able to find us now….

BEGINNING FICTION: TWICTION (2)

2011-08-30T17:34:00.000-06:00

And then the things themselves. We letterpress printed the covers from photopolymer plates (as shown in the post below), and digitally printed the pages. We chose the typeface Georgia because it is a text face designed for the screen that still looks great in print. The books were pamphlet stitched by the students. Somewhere around 60 copies were made—3 for each student plus extras for the archives. Below are some images of the book and of the broadside.

The Press at CC is primarily a letterpress studio, so we definitely try to have some letterpress component in every project that we do. That being said, the focus of the class projects isn’t always on letterpress printing in and of itself (though it can be within the contexts of certain classes), but is on the production and distribution of the written/printed word and the graphic image. The point is to demonstrate the contingent, historical, and constructed nature of the printed word, and to give students the tools, through their own intimate experience with hands-on production, to critically evaluate that nature. Letterpress printing happens to be one of the best ways to connect language, the mind, the eye, and the body. It is possible that the continuing interest in the medium is (partly) because of the connections that it fosters, and the kinds of thinking that it allows.

Letterpress printing is not just a tradition to be preserved—it is a still vital medium with a living, growing history that gets richer every day.

This Twiction project is a prime example of how the things we do at The Press connect to the larger world, of how an “obsolete” medium, precisely because of its lack of transparency, can allow for direct and hands-on engagement, both with the internal aspects of a text and its external life in the world.

BEGINNING FICTION: TWICTION (1)

2011-08-30T16:08:00.000-06:00

When last year’s visiting Press lecturer, Darren Wershler (see the posts below for the project that we did with him) gave his talk, he brought up many interesting and provocative ideas in regard to the future of the book and various forms of web-based publishing. He talked about writing constructed through the use of Google and other software, QR codes, and Twitter and other social media, and how these new modes of textual generation and distribution are affecting the practice and role of writing.

Shortly after that lecture, Steve Hayward’s Beginning Fiction class, who had been at the lecture and participated with other parts of Darren’s visit, came to The Press to learn and do a project. They decided that they wanted to respond to Darren’s lecture somehow, to use it as the basis for whatever they did at The Press—a little old + new media.

They had already written some Twitter-length fiction (Twiction: stories containing no more than 140 characters—an extreme, media dictated form of flash fiction) and wanted to use that as the text for the project. But how could Twitter and letterpress printing fit together? The answer came in the most ubiquitous link between the physical world and the web: the QR code. The printed QR code could literally be the (hyper)connection between the physical mode of text distribution (a book) and the electronic mode of distribution (in this case, a Twitter account set up to publish their Twictions). Scanning the QR code took a reader to the Twitter page of the class. The QR code became both the aesthetic and the conceptual driver of the project.

[Aside: one of the central tenets for structuring these class projects is that the students are given as much control and ownership as possible—both what to do and how to do it. I always give feedback on their ideas and help to guide them in terms of what is possible and what is feasible, but ultimately these Penny Press projects are conceived and executed by the students.]

We also decided to augment our hyper-project with that oldest form of social media: the letterpress printed broadside. We designed a poster that was made up of the QR code, the Twitter URL blind stamped at the bottom (for those without smart phones), and the actual text of the Twictions, also blind stamped, printed directly on top of the QR code. The blind-stamping allowed the QR to remain functional. These broadsides would be hung all over campus, with no explanation beyond the information encoded in them, as a real world, guerrilla expansion of the project.

Printing the QR codes on the book covers.

Blind stamping on the book cover.

The polymer plate for the QR Code.

Printing the QR codes on the broadsides.

“POETRY HAS LEFT THE POEM” BROADSIDE: PHASE DELAMINATION

2011-08-26T15:50:00.000-06:00

The other big “?” of this project was the delamination: a process of cutting into (but not through) the sheet of paper and peeling away its surface. I have done a fair amount myself (in books and broadsides) but I have never asked anyone to help me (though I have taught it and seen those students succeed at it). But it is tedious. And strange. And this was the first large project that I was asking my new apprentices to help with. I would not have been surprised had there been a mutiny. One mistake I did make in planning was not realizing how slow the process goes when someone is first learning. But our brave crew stuck to it, and we completed the edition.

“POETRY HAS LEFT THE POEM” BROADSIDE: PHASE COLOPHON

2011-08-26T11:29:00.001-06:00

The explanation really doesn’t require an explanation:

This was printed centered, towards the bottom of the reverse side, in 12 pt. Centaur.

“POETRY HAS LEFT THE POEM” BROADSIDE: PHASE TEXT

2011-08-26T11:22:00.000-06:00

After the image was complete, the next step was to print the text over the image, so that the outlines to delaminate would already be on each print. Like the image, the text had to be printed in two sections:

[A brief aside: Some of you printers out there might be wondering why a plastic-backed photopolymer plate is mounted on a magnetic base (made for steel-backed photopolymer). Because those are the bases that we have. We do have one Boxcar base, but it’s only a 9” x 12”. We have the advantage of having two presses with adjustable beds, so the plates can easily be raised to the proper height. We have also stuck pieces of paper under the magnetic bases to raise them up on the non-adjustable presses. So those magnetic bases are still useful, even if you’ve switched entirely to plastic-backed plates.]

I first tried printing the text in opaque white, because I was afraid black or another color wouldn’t have enough contrast. I was wrong. Here’s what the white looked like:

So black again, and it worked much better:

“POETRY HAS LEFT THE POEM” BROADSIDE: PHASE K

2011-08-26T10:59:00.000-06:00

And then “K” for the key color, in this case (as in most cases) black.

In the two images below, the top image shows the top half of the print without the black layer, and the bottom half with. The black becomes just enough of a presence to provide the structure of the image. The second image shows the top half of the print with the black layer.

And somehow that full image is also this:

“POETRY HAS LEFT THE POEM” BROADSIDE: PHASE M

2011-08-24T14:56:00.000-06:00

And then, you guessed it, magenta! The difference between the yellow+cyan and the yellow+cyan+magenta is extraordinary.

DON'T BE AFRAID, CANADA

2011-08-24T09:47:00.001-06:00

Here's a fun video about CC professor, friend of The Press, and author Steven Hayward's new novel Don't Be Afraid and the Giller Prize. Canada, take notice!

“POETRY HAS LEFT THE POEM” BROADSIDE: PHASE C

2011-08-23T13:40:00.003-06:00

And then the cyan. The image started to come through, but the color still looked rather bizarre….

“POETRY HAS LEFT THE POEM” BROADSIDE: PHASE Y

2011-08-23T10:28:00.004-06:00

And of course another thing was that I had never attempted a CMYK letterpress print before. But I figured this was a good chance to experiment, as the fidelity of the final image wasn’t going to matter. The important thing was for the remaining areas to have that CMYK dot pattern.

So I jumped right in.

And it quickly became clear that four-color process printing was mostly a matter of faith. I decided to match the ink to the Pantone swatch and hope for the best.

“POETRY HAS LEFT THE POEM” BROADSIDE: DESIGN

2011-08-23T10:21:00.005-06:00

This post is the first in a series about the process of designing & printing “Poetry Has Left the Poem” a broadside by Darren Wershler. The broadside was produced in conjunction with Darren’s visit last to CC last October.

About a month or so before the visit we asked Darren to send us some text for the broadside. Here was his response (quoted from an email):

In terms of the broadside, I'd like to see what your printer can do with a single, provocative, aphoristic sentence: "Poetry has left the poem in the same way that Elvis has left the building." As long as that sentence is the major element of the broadside in a huge, heavy, fuckoff typeface (something like Franklin Gothic, Ziggurat or Giza), he can do whatever else he likes...

And of course there’s nothing better than a challenge like that. This is what I came up with, a CMYK printed and delaminated image/text print.

As radically stripped down as the final product is, getting there was quite an adventure. It began with a scan of Andrea Mategna’s St. Sebastian:

And then that was cropped, the resolution lowered, and the CMYK dots enlarged.

The desired final size of the broadside (12” x 18”) was too big for our platemaker to make as a single plate, so the image had to be split into two sections. But with the dot pattern being so large, making the plates was no problem, and it wasn’t long before we ready to print.

PRINT HERE NOW (THEN)

2011-08-22T13:26:00.006-06:00

And so begins the catching-up-recap of last year’s events and goings on that we didn’t have time to blog about during the school year. First up is “PRINT HERE NOW: The Colorado College Broadside Bonanza.” The official description of the event was:

In the summer of 2010 Levi’s began a program of opening up temporary art studios devoted to different disciplines in cities across the US. [They have since expanded to Europe as well.] The first one of those was in San Francisco, and that studio was focused on screenprinting and letterpress. The studio closed in August but the adventure is not over, because three of the intrepid letterpress printers that were involved with the workshop are now driving across the country to deliver a printing press to a community print studio in Braddock, PA, and they are stopping for a day here at Colorado College. They will be setting up shop in our letterpress studio, the Press at CC, to host a day of informal conversation about the trip, the experience of the Levi’s studio, and their personal experiences as young print artists in the Bay Area and beyond, as well as orchestrating an improvisational print project that anyone and everyone is invited to participate in. So come on over, meet Rocket Caleshu, Taylor Reid, and Tom Smith, see the Press at CC, and learn about letterpress printing by reaching in there and getting your hands dirty.

This was a really fun event—we spent all day and evening in the studio (with the team of 3 printers + 1 more printer, Erin Fong, just arriving in the morning), making things (postcards, broadsides, etc.), talking, drinking coffee, making more things, talking. We had a good crowd that came in & out during the day—not just students, but CC faculty, staff, and interested people from the CO Springs community as well. A perfect opportunity to open the doors and let people in.

Sometimes, it’s about printing. But all the time, it’s about the love.

LETTERPRESS IS GOING COUNTRY STRONG: VIDEO ROUND-UP

2011-07-18T11:01:00.003-06:00

Two more fun letterpress videos. One is an advertisement for Jack Daniel's, made at Yee-Haw Industries in Knoxville, Tennessee. (Thanks Emma! Thanks Printeresting!) The other is a short "documentary" video about the printing of the album covers for the new Gillian Welch CD, The Harrow & The Harvest, which takes place at Aardvark Letterpress in Los Angeles, CA. Both of these studios do great work. And sometimes they get paid to do it too.

Yee-Haw Poster Documentary from Aggrodesign on Vimeo.

2010 – 2011 POSTER ROUND-UP, PART 1

2011-06-15T15:04:00.005-06:00

Here are images of some of the posters that we printed this year—everything that we have photos of so far (we did more than 20 this year). They’re presented in (roughly) chronological order, with the artist’s name and the medium underneath (they’re all letterpress printed, but using various techniques to make the matrices). The posters are normally designed and printed by the students, but I occasionally do some to handle overflow or really tight deadlines.

Poster by Aaron Cohick
Lead & wood type, found cuts

Poster by Aaron Cohick
Lead & wood type, found cuts

Poster by Aaron Cohick
Image by Dave Armstrong
Photopolymer plates, printed in a variable edition. Three different posters are shown in the second image.

Poster by Eleanor Anderson
Photopolymer plates

Poster by Eleanor Anderson
Reduction linoleum cut, printed in a variable edition with silver and blue lettering

Poster by Taryn Wiens
Lead & wood type, reduction linoleum cut

Poster by Eleanor Anderson
Photopolymer plates

& IT WAS BEAUTIFUL & WE NAMED IT KEVIN SPACEY

2011-06-14T15:39:00.006-06:00

[A large, ongoing project here is the reorganization of the studio to accommodate waves of new students with no previous letterpress—or studio art in general—experience. This post, and others to follow, will document that reorganization in the hope that it can be helpful for other people setting up studios. This post is technical and detailed, but that’s where the action is.]

If you’ve ever worked in or managed a community and/or educational letterpress studio, you know that one of the hardest things to keep organized is the spacing material. (For any readers that are unfamiliar with lead type, spacing material is the “blank” pieces of metal used to create the spaces between words. In lead type, every aspect of the composition, even the negative space, is a physical object.) The image above shows the physical center of the new system that we are trying to implement. The physical system will work in tandem with a modified way of teaching students how to handle the type (more on that later).

The main idea for this system was suggested by Robin Price, who taught here during Block 7. She learned this from her teacher, Gerald Lange. The gist of it is that all the spacing is removed from the type drawers and put into this one rack, organized by point size in rows (from smallest to largest, going down) and in spacing size in columns (largest to smallest, left to right). (It occurs to me now that maybe I should reverse that, go from smallest to largest left to right. We’ll see.) Each bin is clearly labeled with the point size and spacing size. 2 & 3 em quads and coppers & brasses are kept in separate transportable containers, more size/quantity appropriate. The bin/rack system was dubbed “Kevin Spacey.”

In each of those large, white, mounted bins are smaller blue bins, also labeled, that can be removed by the students and taken to wherever they are working. Keeping all of the spacing material in a centralized yet accessible location will (hopefully) be a little easier for the students to learn and use than the type drawers. It will also be easier for us to periodically re-sort.

The image at the beginning of this post shows Judy Reissmann posing with Kevin Spacey. Judy is our very brave summer employee—I say “brave” because her job is to do the actual sorting. And she has done that admirably, putting a serious dent in this seemingly insurmountable problem in a short time. Thank you, Judy.

And I am going to change the way that we teach people to set type, ever so slightly. Basically, the change will be to use the same size spacing throughout the entire setting, including end-of-line spacing. Example: Let’s say I was setting a block of flush left, ragged right type, and using 4 to the em spacing between words. At the end of every line where I had to fill in blank space, I would use as many 3, 2 and single em quads as I could, then as many 4 to the em spaces from there, and brasses and coppers after that.

And then that consistent spacing is marked on the sheet that we use to ID the type in galley trays. So when we finally get around to redistributing our type, we know exactly what size spacing was used. No sorting, no confusion—it all goes right back where it came from.

This new system won’t be perfect, and I can already see a few potential problems:
1) Simple “operator error,” of course, 2) it will require the use of more than the usual amount of word spacing and coppers and brasses, which could put a squeeze on our overall supply, and 3) it won’t work for setting justified type. But I feel like anyone setting justified type will at that point be familiar enough with the different sizes of spacing to be able to sort it accurately at the end.

And of course it’s not the “right” way, but the “right” way changes from context to context, from studio to studio. I feel like those minor problems are worth a system that does not need to be continually re-sorted.

Kevin Spacey—actor, spacing system, hero.

ARCHEAOLOGY OF THE PRESS (1)

2011-06-14T11:00:00.005-06:00

Yesterday Lucy and I were looking for some brown ink to use in a printing demo for some high school students in the Marie Walsh Sharpe Art Foundation Summer Seminar, which is hosted here at CC. I remembered that we had a big can of brown ink on the shelf (we were trying to avoid mixing colors).

But when we opened it up there was quite a surprise inside. Not quite jumping snakes, but I think as close as ink can chemically get to those.

More updates as excavations continue….

CULTURE, SOCIETY, AND HISTORY: CULTURES OF THE BOOK (16)

2011-06-10T16:17:00.002-06:00

"The Library of Alexandria"
by Alex McConnell & Andrew Salazar

CULTURE, SOCIETY, AND HISTORY: CULTURES OF THE BOOK (15)

2011-06-10T16:16:00.001-06:00

"The Warring States Period"
by Yuchen Zhao & Will Harris

CULTURE, SOCIETY, AND HISTORY: CULTURES OF THE BOOK (14)

2011-06-10T16:14:00.002-06:00

"The Story of Boudicca"
by Sonora Miller & Lizzie Hunt

CULTURE, SOCIETY, AND HISTORY: CULTURES OF THE BOOK (13)

2011-06-10T16:13:00.002-06:00

"Libraries through History"
by Max Perryman & Linda Jimenez

CULTURE, SOCIETY, AND HISTORY: CULTURES OF THE BOOK (12)

2011-06-10T16:12:00.003-06:00

"Pokemon and the Classic of Mountains and Seas"
by Catherine Zaumseil & Jeffrey Collett

CULTURE, SOCIETY, AND HISTORY: CULTURES OF THE BOOK (11)

2011-06-10T16:11:00.002-06:00

"Robin Hood, Through the Ages"
by Rebecca Smith & Peter Elliott

CULTURE, SOCIETY, AND HISTORY: CULTURES OF THE BOOK (10)

2011-06-10T16:09:00.002-06:00

"The Book Burning of the First Emperor of the Qin Dynasty"
by Bobby Meller and Mariel Dempster

CULTURE, SOCIETY, AND HISTORY: CULTURES OF THE BOOK (9)

2011-06-10T15:45:00.006-06:00

The finished piece:

"Dear Scholar, do not be deterred by the complexity of this construction! It may seem at first glance to be confused, muddled, and lacking any sense. But does not time itself look that way when we first peer into its depths? Chaos is the natural state of time, while order is the constructed nature of history. This map, prepared by many hands in intentionally disparate visual styles, seeks to represent that chaos and that order simultaneously. Each of the seven sections, roughly demarcated by the folds of the map, represents a different history of the book in cultures throughout the world. Each image tells a story, and is rendered in exquisite detail in order to help you, brave Reader, inscribe that story into your memory. On the back of every panel is a textual explanation of the image. First, memorize the arrangement of the scenes on the body of the dragon. Then, with the aid of the text, you can commit each scene to memory. After you know each picture by heart and can recall it at will, you are ready, intrepid Voyager, to set sail on the turbulent seas of time. Go forth, daring Champion of History! You carry the light that guides us home."

The title panel. When the map is folded up, this is on the front.

The "How To Use This Map" inset, which is part of the large title panel on the image side. This is the text that begins this post.

And the colophon. When the map is folded up, this is on the back.

CULTURE, SOCIETY, AND HISTORY: CULTURES OF THE BOOK (8)

2011-06-10T15:39:00.001-06:00

And fold,

and stack,

and food.

CULTURE, SOCIETY, AND HISTORY: CULTURES OF THE BOOK (7)

2011-06-10T11:57:00.006-06:00

And then we went to press.

The total size of the map was fairly large (20” x 27.5”) so we printed it on our giant press, the Vandercook Universal 4. Each pair of students came in to print together, in 2 hour shifts. The runs were arranged in logical printing order (light to dark), so each group of students were responsible for more than just their image and type—everybody contributed directly to the whole piece.

The press is 30” across the grippers (which is the long side on this model) so feeding was done by two people at a time.

And we had one “master printer” on the end, pulling the sheets and checking the ink levels.

Despite the size of the sheets, the fact that this was the first time the press had been used in a while, and that this was the first class project that I oversaw here, the printing went pretty smoothly.

There were, of course, a few minor mishaps, but nothing we couldn’t handle….

Gradually everything built up into an (almost) finished piece.

CULTURE, SOCIETY, AND HISTORY: CULTURES OF THE BOOK (6)

2011-06-07T14:16:00.003-06:00

From the beginning of the project we planned on printing the images with photopolymer plates. But as we drew closer to going to press, we decided to make the images 2 colors. The line art that the students initially made would be the key color (black), and then we would add a second color to provide contrast and make the images pop a bit more. In most cases, the second color was essentially solid fills in certain areas of the image.

One of the problems with using polymer plates with a beginner group is that it tends to make the process of image-making for the press very abstract—they make a picture, the picture goes into the computer, becomes a film, and then they push some buttons on the platemaker and out comes a plate. (We didn’t have the time or resources to allow them to experiment and possibly fail with the plates, so I took care of the digital pre-press and supervised the making of every plate. Which is a shame, because as one of the professors of the class, Carol Neel, said several times, “Learning is making mistakes.”) The “abstraction” of the plate technology tends to eliminate a hands-on engagement with the material aspects of making/printing, and the whole point of this project was to provide a hands-on engagement. But the speed and ease of the plates was also necessary, so what to do? Analog platemaking!

For the second color, instead of making digital films, I had them cut rubylith stencils from print-outs of their final image files. Rubylith is very straightforward and easy to use, but most of them struggled with it—they weren’t used to cutting gently with a Xacto knife (if they had used a Xacto knife at all), and they also weren’t used to thinking in reverse to make the negative (they had to cut away the section where they wanted the second color to be).

[I wish I had picture of this step, but I don’t. My apologies.]

In the end, using the Rubylith was successful, and I think that the students got a better understanding of, and appreciation for, the plates than if we had done it entirely in the computer.

And at that point we were ready to start printing.

FIRST STEPS

2011-06-02T13:48:00.002-06:00

Here are some more pre-views of the book to come, an image turned up in research and some initial sketches/studies to start working through some visual ideas. At the beginning of a project it's really easy to just spin one's wheels without actually getting anywhere, so I just jumped right in, not censoring myself, just trying to get things moving. Hopefully, when the book is done, we (my collaborators & I) will be surprised by how different the completed objects is from where we started.

This image is the frontispiece from Charles Howard Hinton's The Fourth Dimension, first published in 1904. This scan came from the 1921 reprint.

And the two images below are some relatively quick studies, based on a geometric method of dividing a page space to determine layout. After the initial divisions are drawn in, the coloring follows two rules: 1) There are 6 colors to choose from (white, black, 4 grays in between, 6 colors for the six faces of a cube), and 2) the same color can not be used in 2 sections that share a side.

The first sketch (above) started with the idea of symmetry, but the colors could not be perfectly symmetrical because of the rules of their application.

The second sketch (below) was a purposeful move toward asymmetry, because the first drawing seemed so static.

I think that maybe the next step will be to figure out how to manipulate the geometric schema to work with linear perspective and 3D modeling...

A PREVIEW OF THE NEXT BOOK

2011-05-25T12:36:00.005-06:00

This animation comes from the Wikipedia article on hypercubes.

LETTERPRESS IS COOL & HERE'S "PROOF"

2011-05-23T14:03:00.002-06:00

Letterpress from Naomie Ross on Vimeo.

The link to this video was sent to us by Emma Mitchell, a student here at CC and a friend of the Press. I don't know if I would call this video "instructional" necessarily, but it sure does make it all look sexy. Which is the important thing, really.

"POETRY HAS LEFT THE POEM" BY DARREN WERSHLER

2011-05-06T09:33:00.002-06:00

Aphorism by Darren Wershler.

Produced on the occasion of Darren Wershler’s lecture and workshop at Colorado College in October of 2010. Designed and printed by Aaron Cohick at The Press at Colorado College. Letterpress printed from photopolymer plates and lead type. Delaminated by hand. The typeface is Franklin Gothic and the paper (what’s left of it) is Somerset Book Heavyweight. 11” x 17”. Variable edition of 20. Signed by the author.

We'll be doing a process post about these soon. Ordering info can be found here.

"ENERGY" BY DAVID MASON

2011-05-06T09:27:00.004-06:00

Poem by David Mason.

Produced in honor of David Mason’s ascension to the post of Poet Laureate of the State of Colorado, on the occasion of his reading at Colorado College in December 2010. Designed and printed by Aaron Cohick and Eleanor Anderson at The Press at Colorado College. Letterpress printed from lead and wood type. Ink wash painted in by hand. The (lead) typeface is Bodoni and the paper is Rives BFK. 10” x 13”. Variable edition of 30. Signed by the author.

Ordering info can be found here.

LETTERPRESS IN ACTION!!!

2011-04-27T14:51:00.003-06:00

One of the most visible things the Press at CC does for the campus & community is design and print posters for events. All of the posters are designed and printed by our student apprentices. Here's a shot of a brand new one, frolicking in its natural environment, happily living its print-life. It was made by Becca Levi.

DOES THIS LOOK LIKE A GAME TO YOU?

2011-04-25T11:00:00.003-06:00

Our Block 7 Book & Book Structures class with visiting professor Robin Price just finished last week. I submit the above picture as evidence of how much fun was had. Full details will emerge as we settle back into our usual routine….

SENIOR ART EXHIBITION POSTER

2011-04-24T21:22:00.001-06:00

This poster was made for the Senior Art Exhibition in the Coburn Gallery the Worner Student Center. It's a pretty cool show--each year all of the art majors submit a few of their works and the curators of the space (they're really the glue of the whole exhibition) do an amazing job at putting together a collaborative show. Here are some photos of the process and the final results.

The edition is one hundred 11x17" two color linoleum block prints, with an orange as the base color and brown for the cut. I printed a special edition of forty on vellum, and the remaining sixty are on cement green french paper.

Prints on the drying rack.

Vellum posters...what?!

Both styles of paper compared.

PEOPLE OF THE PRESS: LUCY HOLTSNIDER

2011-03-10T10:23:00.002-07:00

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

2011-03-08T10:34:00.017-07:00

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

2011-03-08T09:47:00.012-07:00

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)

2011-03-03T13:27:00.004-07:00

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

2011-03-01T21:48:00.001-07:00

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

2011-03-01T20:46:00.001-07:00

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!

GRAPHICAL OBJECTIVES

2011-02-27T17:42:00.023-07:00

Ahoy! My first book project at The Press! Not only did I discover that I can't get enough of teal and red together, I also discovered how incredibly satisfying it is to print a book. I spent second block of this school year investigating some of the fundamentals of design, particularly digital design techniques. The majority of the block was spent messing around on photoshop and illustrator, trying some of Ellen Lupton's assignments from Thinking with Type. I also dilligently worked in a sketchbook, using a method for developing an idea that I lifted from Nadine Nakanashi of Sonnenzimmer in her artist book called Formal Additive Programs. In Formal Additive Programs, Nadine gives herself 18 Instructions: abstract verbal cues in order to proceed from one drawing to the next. These instructions include "Continue Motion & Move Freely," "Isolate, Observe and Compare" and "Listen to the Rhythm of the Patterns." Her drawings thoughtfully respond to these prompts and the book and ultimately generate a body of images that could be used as jumping off points for other projects. I found that if my initial drawing wasn't that great, it didn't matter because the third or fourth mutation was something completely abstracted from the first. For me, there was a good balance between relinquishing control, following instincts and trusting my internal dialogue.

After a few weeks of doing sets of these exercises every morning, I found a series of these that I liked enough to make into a letterpress book, hence Graphical Objectives came together. I found I was thinking a lot about graphs, maps and diagrams as visually gripping objects for their formal qualities rather than the information they conveyed. I also perused The Visual Display of Quantitative Information by Edward Tufte which discussed the theory and practice of data graphics. Here are some of the examples of my own formal additive programs from my sketchbook:

With a lot of help and patience from Aaron, I began to lay out, print and bind the book. Graphical Objectives was printed on our beloved Vandercook-219 over block break (during which I listened exclusively to Andrew Bird.) Amazingly, there weren't any huge snafus or "OH SHIT!" moments, which I had definitely anticipated. Registration, particularly on the last page was tight, but not too many pages were lost to mistakes. If I could print it again, I would err on the side of more ink and be more careful about the placement of the first page so that the teal wouldn't come through onto the fourth page.

Four months later, I am still incredibly psyched on this book and plan on making more. It was great to mail it to friends and family, and watch them read it. A lot of the recipients read the instructions, gave me a puzzled look, flipped through the book quickly, went back to the instructions and went through again more slowly. It was interesting to be able to compel almost every reader to go through it twice.

Recently, I read an essay by Karl Young, (not to be confused with called Carl Jung) "Notation and the Art of Reading" in which he discusses Aztec, Chinese and Early English ways of reading. He notes that early Chinese readers "in writing or reading poetry...tend to be much more attuned to the interworkings of sound, sight, gesture and idea. The interaction of components emphasizes continuity and versatility; a mind trained to read interwoven pictograms, graphs of gesture, phonograms and ideograms can be expected to feel a continuity between sight, sound, gesture and intellection." (Young, p. 33) This idea relates to the concept I had in mind for how readers might look at my book - written instructions that visually move from one graphic to another continuously, linking sight, intellection and intuition.

Headiness aside, I still can't beat my grandpa's comment over the phone the other day: "I don't know what it means, but I like touching it!"

Karl Joung, "Notation and the Art of Reading," A Book of the Book: Some Thoughts & Projections About the Book & Writing, ed. Steve Clay and Jerome Rothenberg (New York: Granary Books, 2000), 33

NUNZ

2011-02-27T17:20:00.015-07:00

Commissioned by Carol Neel in the History Department at Colorado College, this poster was for speaker Mary Ann Hinsdale, professor of theology at Boston College, speaking about the disappearance of nuns in the Catholic Church. This poster was my first poster using all polymer plates, and the smallest poster I made so far. Inspired by Andy Warhol's screen print of Ingrid Bergman as a nun, I wanted to make the image of the nun as graphic as possible, and use bright colors that aren't usually associated with nuns. Another source of inspiration was typographer Isaac Tobin (an internet fav of mine) His style is simple, crisp and clear and I tried to emulate his style for the type lay-out of this poster.

During the printing process, I was a little nervous about the EXTREME VIBRANCY of the colors, and, additionally, that the colors were the exact colors of the Denver Broncos. (yikes) After the orange, blue and dark blue were printed, I wandered over to the print shop to get some other eyes on it. Luckily, Heather Oakleaus, photography teacher, was around and plopped a barbie doll down on my poster and said "throw some HOT PINK ON IT." Moral of the story: What Would Barbie Do? Go BIG or go HOME! The nuns giving the speech loved the poster and grabbed all they could before heading home.

Another thing to consider about this poster, was the fact that the nuns have X's over their eyes, and these posters were going up in churches all over Colorado Springs (again, yikes?) Although this poster could have been potentially controversial, I learned that sometimes, over-doing it works. The image is eye-catching and funny and the colors are saccharine but stand out on a busy bulletin board. If I could do this poster over, I would have built in trapping in the polymer so that slight registration errors weren't noticeable.

PEOPLE OF THE PRESS: TARYN WIENS

2011-02-25T13:48:00.002-07:00

Name: Taryn Wiens

Year of graduation: 2014

Major/Minor: Studio Art/ Museum Studies

Where are you from? All over (Oregon most recently)

How long have you been working at the Press? Since fall 2010

Briefly describe what you do at the Press:
I print posters, help with workshops, and do personal printing and book binding projects.

What brought you to the Press?
Book Arts/Letterpress summer class (highly recommend it!)

What keeps you coming back?
The awesome crew that works here, a need for inky hands, a desire to continuously learn more about bookmaking and letter-pressing, and the beautiful dualistic nature in the practicality and pointlessness of it all.

How has working at the Press enhanced your overall education at Colorado College?
It’s one thing you can learn at CC that is not purely conceptual. It’s like the shop class that I never had. To do real things with your own hands is so satisfying.

How would you like to see the Press grow and change in the future?
I’d love to a) see more students get involved...it’s such an amazing resource but too many people don’t know about it and b) see it produce more quality artistic works and make a really strong name for itself in the larger letterpress community which of course depends on a), student involvement.

PEOPLE OF THE PRESS: ELEANOR ANDERSON

2011-02-25T09:53:00.002-07:00

Name: Eleanor “Bone-saw” Anderson

Year of graduation: 2012

Major/Minor: Studio Art, Minor in the Book

Where are you from? Cleveland Heights, OH

How long have you been working at the Press? 3 years

Briefly describe what you do at the Press:
I primarily make posters, books, and other ephemera and have recently started a press with Lucy Holtsnider called Iron Cupcake Press. A lot of the time I drink coffee, listen to Andrew Bird, and think about what to do next.

What brought you to the Press?
When I was a freshman I saw all the posters around campus and had to learn how and where they were made. Then I took a class called Basic Graphics and made my first poster for the Aspen bike trip (6 colors, with a broken leg I might add)

What keeps you coming back?
The smell of solvents in the morning, all the sharp equipment, definitely setting type… oh and, the people!

How has working at the Press enhanced your overall education at Colorado College?
I want to work as a letterpress printer after college, so working at the press has not only provided me with the technical skills needed for this, but also turned me on to a community of interesting people, working all over the country, geeking out over the same thing.

How would you like to see the Press grow and change in the future?
In a manner similar to Danish astronomy icon Tycho Brahe, I would like the Press to gain feudal power over an island, commission its own castle complete with paper mill and printing press and become the unrivaled authority on subjects such as taming tigers, bedtime stories and dinosaur management.

PEOPLE OF THE PRESS: BECCA LEVI

2011-02-25T09:48:00.002-07:00

Name: Rebecca Levi

Year of graduation: 2011

Major/Minor: Art Studio (Environmental Issues)

Where are you from? Boston, Massachusetts

How long have you been working at the Press? Since mid-junior year.

Briefly describe what you do at the Press:
I print posters for the Sound of Colorado College Student Radio station events, including student band and visiting artist live shows. I have also done various editions for CC Farm club events and opportunities, and other CC events.

What brought you to the Press?
A love for workmanship and craft. Immediately I was fascinated by the intimate relationship between a printer and her work. I had done many other forms of printmaking before, but letterpress presented a whole new world of understanding. The technical aspects and true sense of patience that letterpress demands are challenging and continually fascinating to me. The sense of respect that I have for other printers and the community that I feel I am now more a part of is also something I think brought me to the Press, and will keep me printing for the rest of my life.

What keeps you coming back?
What I said above sums it up pretty well...but besides the passion and fascinations, there’s always the deadlines.

How has working at the Press enhanced your overall education at Colorado College?
Time spent at the Press allows me to use my hands in a way that most classes do not. Though I am an art major, and am working with my hands a lot, there is a meditative and calming aspect to letterpress printing that has allowed me to be a more aware student and member of the CC community. However, I must say that printing can also be stressful--yet without those moments of stress I would have less appreciation for times of calmness and would probably get a lot less done. Letterpress has taught me about time management, stress management, working with other people to meet a deadline, learning how to be a better teacher and mentor, and learning how to work in harmony with the other printers in a small(ish) space.

How would you like to see the Press grow and change in the future?
I would love to see the Press grow to be something that the whole CC community knows about. Much of the time, people don’t know that the posters they see are letterpressed by hand, and it would be great to spread that basis of knowledge about the medium throughout the campus--not only so the printers can be more recognized--but so that we can share this awesome tradition with others who value hand made things. I am really looking forward to seeing the apprenticeship program flourish, and am loving seeing the classwork that gets done at the press. It would be super cool to see students hanging out at the Press that aren’t just printers...students who want a nice place to do work or hang out with a printer-friend. Mostly, I would like to see the press integrated into the CC students database of cool places on campus, because it really is one of the raddest places to be.

FUNK FACE AT THE CARRIAGE HOUSE

2011-02-24T15:06:00.005-07:00

For this project, I made an edition of 31 posters, 10"x 20". The event is a student band (FUNK FACE!) playing live at the Morreale Carriage House on Friday the 25th at 10pm. Sponsored by The Sound of Colorado College Student Radio Station.

Above: Top: Printing the first color, and essentially laying the foundation for the poster in red. Photo taken by my assistant--Daniel Alvarado.

Above: Bottom: Printing the 2nd color: brown. On the left is the lock down on the press bed, on the right is the product hot off the press.

Carving for the third run. This is mid-carving, when I was done the block looked mostly lighter--this was in an attempt to shade the edges of the lines with the third color (dark purple) to add depth and movement.

Playing around with margin size and formatting. So many choices! Final poster is the one on the far right.

Above: all three stages of the poster. From right to left you can see the red, brown, and finally the purple phases of the image. This poster was done using linoleum blocks, and utilizes what is called a 'reductive' printing process, this meaning as I printed each run (or in this case, each color) I carved away more and more of the block. You can see in the first few images, I started out with solid red blocks to lay a base color, and then in the sixth image, that I was on my second stage of carving. There is one sentence of type at the bottom, set by hand in Nubian typeface, size 14, which was printed on the third run in purple. So in between each run, I went back to the carving block and changed where the press was going to lay down ink--for a grand total of three runs and two carving sessions!

CULTURE, SOCIETY, AND HISTORY: CULTURES OF THE BOOK (4)

2011-02-24T10:45:00.003-07:00

After we had the general plan for the project together, the next step was for the pairs to choose a specific topic (something that we covered in class that they wanted to learn more about) and begin researching it. After they had gathered information, they needed to do two things: 1) construct a visual representation of the information that they wanted to communicate, and 2) write a textual explanation of their topic and image.

The process of making the images was interesting and challenging, as the majority of the students (all but one, really) had little or no experience with art and design. I told them to use whatever methods that they felt comfortable with—drawing, collage (analog or digital), tracing, etc. Most of the groups ended up using a combination of those three methods. Some used an entirely digital collage approach, and one pair drew their image entirely by hand.

The images that follow are the scans of the originals that the students turned in.

"The Library of Alexandria," by Alex McConnell & Andrew Salazar

"The Warring States Period," by Yuchen Zhao & Will Harris

"The Story of Boudicca," by Sonora Miller & Lizzie Hunt

"Libraries Through History," by Max Perryman & Linda Jimenez

"Pokemon and The Classic of Mountians and Seas," by Catherine Zaumseil & Jeffrey Collett

"Robin Hood, Through the Ages," by Rebecca Smith & Peter Elliott

"The Book Burning of the First Emperor of the Qin Dynasty," by Bobby Meller & Mariel Dempster

CULTURE, SOCIETY, AND HISTORY: CULTURES OF THE BOOK (3)

2011-02-23T10:36:00.002-07:00

One of the major difficulties of collaborative projects, where many different people are contributing images, is to bring the whole thing together visually. We knew that our “map,” with images from 7 different groups of 2 people, would look pretty crazy when it was all jammed together on the same surface. We took a cue from the historical images that we were looking at (by Johannes Buno, see the post below) and realized that we could bring the disparate images together in two ways: 1) by using a unifying image underneath (which was kind of the point of the thing in the first place), and 2) by “flattening” the images through technique and color. They were all, of course, going to be letterpress printed (from photopolymer) but we worked them over digitally to sharpen and flatten the images into solid colors. We also decided to add a second color, to accent and articulate each image. The same second color would be used in all of the images, over the entire map. We chose not to make the films for the second color digitally, but to use hand-cut rubylith stencils.

One of the students, Sonora Miller, drew our dragon image. It combines aspects of both eastern and western dragons. The dragon would cover the entire surface of each side of the map, but reversed on the second side so that the two images would back up correctly, and the smaller images and text would be on the same place on the dragon on both sides.

We wanted to make the map big (roughly 20” x 27.5”), print it on the big press (a Vandercook Universal IV), and then have it fold up into a smaller booklet. The only problem with that plan was the size of our platemaker, which is only 11” x 17”. Nothing like a first project to run into every possible logistical problem that could come up….

CULTURE, SOCIETY, AND HISTORY: CULTURES OF THE BOOK (2)

2011-02-18T13:47:00.002-07:00

Almost immediately upon my arrival here at CC, discussions began about what sort of Press project could be done with the Cultures of the Book FYE. The class had run before, in a slightly different incarnation (as just a Western history of the book) and the students had made, of course, a small (and very beautiful) book based on research that they had done in class. As we brainstormed ideas for the project this time around, someone (I think it was Steve Lawson) suggested doing some sort of map. We decided to go with that.

Shortly after that a friend of mine told me about a book called Cartographies of Time, which was a history of graphic representations of time. Intrigued, I got a copy through the library here (I love being a library employee) and after flipping through the book I discovered the image below:

Here is the background info, from Cartographies of Time:

[…] In the second half of the seventeenth century, as the possibility of fixing the Creation, the Flood, and the founding of Rome to rigorously established dates seemed to recede, some chronologers transferred their ingenuity entirely to the pedagogical part of their enterprise: to fixing the traditional set of dates that schoolboys had to master to images so memorable that they would become unforgettable. Johannes Buno […] devoted himself for half a century to devising textbooks that wrapped the standard narrative of ancient and medieval history in striking images and coded cues to short texts. History, he explained, was a vast ocean, and the student needed proper navigational equipment in order to avoid shipwreck. Ideally, he explained, the student would memorize “the whole order of time, as it were, reduced into a single body and set out in particular periods or segments, and whenever important events were mentioned, he would immediately be able to work out to which period or segment they belong.”
Buno had just the graphic tools for the job. For the four millennia that stretched between the Creation, in 4004 BCE, and the coming of Jesus, he found four comprehensive images: an eagle, a set of planks, a camel, and a dragon. Each image summed up a vital aspect of the millennium it stood for (the planks, for example, referred to Noah’s ark, and the camel to the camels on which the Jews made their Exodus from Egypt). But each also provided a vivid, memorable background, on which Buno placed images of important men and women. […] [1]

Here are some more examples of Buno’s images, also from Cartographies of Time:

The dragon was a particularly resonant image, because it is important to both Eastern and Western cultures, though it has very different meanings in each. The next questions were structural: how could the project be organized so that it could connect with the interests of every student? How could it be built textually and graphically for each student to play an equal role in the production of the final piece? The solution that we arrived at was this: the map would fold into segments, creating “natural” divisions of the image similar to the numbered sub-sections of the historic dragon image. The students would work in pairs, and each pair would get one section to fill. Each group chose a subject covered in class that they wanted to explore in more depth. They did research and gathered information, constructing mini-narratives of different events, personages, and institutions throughout history.

Then they needed to figure out a way to graphically represent those narratives. Their images would be printed on one side of the map, and the text they wrote (and set) would be printed on the other side, directly behind their image. But how were we going to bring all of these different images, and styles of images, together?

1. Anthony Grafton and Daniel Rosenberg, Cartographies of Time (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2010), 89 – 93.

CULTURE, SOCIETY, AND HISTORY: CULTURES OF THE BOOK (1)

2011-02-14T13:08:00.003-07:00

Now it’s time to really get this new blog started. And we’re a little more than one busy semester (my first) behind. We will start where I did, with a First Year Experience course (or FYE, as we call it in the biz) called Culture, Society, and History: Cultures of the Book, taught by Professors Carol Neel and John Williams, both from the History Dept., with assistance from: Jessy Randall, Curator and Archivist of Special Collections, Steve Lawson, Humanities Librarian, and myself.

[A quick aside, for those of you not familiar with the way that Colorado College works—we don’t operate on semesters. We use a system called the “Block Plan,” where students take one class at a time, 5 days a week, for 3 and a half weeks. Yes, it’s intense. The FYE classes, like the one being described here, run for two consecutive blocks, so seven weeks.]

This was a long and busy class, with regular sessions here at the Press. I documented it all pretty thoroughly, from our initial “getting acquainted” workshops through to our big project. In order to cover it in a way that makes sense and is digestible I will be breaking things up into multiple posts. But we will start at the beginning, with that all-important document—the syllabus. Here is the official class description:

This two-block course will explore the ways in which ancient and subsequent European and Asian peoples have read, copied and used writing from the origins of script to the contemporary electronic book. The course's central readings will be major sources in the development of Western and Chinese civilizations. Attention to these works from both ancient and more recent pasts will stress the ways in which culturally normative texts both reveal and critique the power of the manuscript and printed word. Further readings by modern historians and critics will explore the book-making technologies known to historical readers and writers.

Students will write individual critical essays on the respective common readings and collaborate to choose, research and print in limited edition a text of significance for the cross-cultural history of the book. The faculty coordinators of this course, members of the History Department, will support students in discussion and written assignments, and Special Collections and Humanities librarians as well as the letterpress printer who oversees the Press at Colorado College will engage with students throughout, especially in preparation of their final publication. Class members will collaborate with these non-departmental experts in handling of manuscript and other primary source materials, researching these works’ contents and contexts, and producing a hand-set and hand-printed edition of the text they choose and the commentary they construct. Students will thus develop familiarity with modern research tools and postmodern critical frameworks as they enter into the experience of historians and printers of the past as well as the subjects whom their technologies of the book revealed. Although all course activities including the production of printed matter are grounded in prior cultures, their goals are contemporary: for student participants to develop awareness of the power of the written word and the indebtedness of even electronic information storage to the historical frameworks shaping literacy.

So yes, a big, gorgeous, almost overwhelming class, especially for students just beginning their college careers. But the students here are sharp, and they did really well. And we’ll see just what they did in the next few posts.

ABOUT THIS PRESS, ABOUT THIS BLOG

2011-01-10T11:21:00.003-07:00

Hello and welcome to the brand new blog of The Press at Colorado College! This is the first official post of our restarted blog, and in this post I would like to describe the Press, what we do here, and what we hope to do with this blog.

The official history of The Press, taken from the website, is as follows:

The Press at Colorado College, founded by Jim Trissel in 1978, is a letterpress printshop dedicated to the art of making limited edition books and broadsides. Under Trissel’s guidance, The Press became one of the finest letterpress studios in the country, producing stunningly beautiful books on a variety of subjects, from Color for the Letterpress, to Twelve Mammal Skulls, to A Selection of Poems by Helen Hunt Jackson and Emily Dickinson, and Silence. Since Trissel’s death in 1999, The Press has continued its work under the supervision of Brian Molanphy, Chris Forsythe, and Colin Frazer. Aaron Cohick is the current Printer of the Press.

From its inception, The Press has served as a classroom and laboratory for students interested in book arts and literature. Students can initiate their own projects, work on projects as part of a class, or participate in production of The Press’s books. They may learn to design books and broadsides, make polymer plates from photographs, set type, print on the letterpress, and bind books. The Press also creates “keepsake” broadsides for events in The Colorado College Visiting Writers Series, including work by figures like Seamus Heaney, Richard Wilbur, Anne Stevenson, Darren Wershler, and Billy Collins.

The short description of what we do, the one that I like to use is: “We make books. We teach people how to make books, by making books.” My main job here is to facilitate the making of as much stuff (books, posters, broadsides, etc.) in this space as possible.

All of the production and activities here at The Press center around the question, “What is the role of a letterpress and bookmaking studio at a liberal arts college?” Everything that we do is a provisional answer to that question. The Press is growing, its mission is changing and expanding, and this blog is here to document that growth and change.

We want this blog to be a living archive of the activities here at The Press. But this archive is not here for its own sake, and is not even here for the exclusive benefit of the Colorado College community. This blog is here for every person (student, teacher, professional) interested in the book arts. It is here for other schools that are running or building their own letterpress studios and book arts programs. We are in this together, and we want to share our thoughts, accomplishments, problems, and solutions with the rest of the book arts community.

There will be posts from myself, Aaron Cohick (the name at the bottom of my posts appears as “NewLights, et al.”) and from the students working here as well. The posts will document what we are up to, but they will do so, hopefully, in a reflective manner. Here’s this thing we did or are doing. How does it work? What was successful? What was problematic? How did we solve those problems? How will we do it differently next time?

And of course there will be the usual bloggish fare: announcements of events, announcements of publications, links to interesting goings-on about the web, and whatever else seems relevant.

Any posts preceding this one are from the first version of The Press Blog. The original author and date of the post is listed at the top. Extra special thanks go out to Colin Frazer and Katie Montgomery for their work to get that first version going.

So, as this blog, this Press, and this community grows, we are continuously thankful for the opportunity to do this work and to share it with you. Please stay tuned. It’s only going to get better from here. And, as always, thanks for reading.

“This Press has always depended on the kindness and devotion of students who want to help make books. What better environment is there for a student in a liberal arts college? What more encourages a range of inquiry, teaches crafts which ask the mind to work to the limits of the hand and eye, demonstrates the intersection of disciplines, the flights and vagaries of process, the focus of affection and all kinds of gratifications?” —Jim Trissel

BEGINNING POETRY WRITING

2010-12-10T14:56:00.001-07:00

Originally posted by Katie Montgomery on 2/17/2010.

Another fifth block update: Dave Mason's class came in and co-set a co-written poem which bears a wee resemblance to "Nevermore" in its text. Each student took home a copy.

GRAPHIC DESIGN CLASS

2010-12-10T14:53:00.000-07:00

Originally posted by Katie Montgomery on 2/17/2010.

So! Goodness it's been awhile. Apologies to anyone out there who's been in desperate need of a Press update. Over fifth block Colin helped to teach a graphic design class with the Art department. Students designed letters of the alphabet, learned how to do some basic printing, and a couple made posters. Lovely odd posters. A couple even went up around campus. Here are a few examples:

Several students decided to print in silver ink which is indeed sparkly but a little difficult to see from certain angles. The text reads: Vivid Broken Words/in cahoots with death metal/a comic quartet/rife with the last remaining/crackhouse anthems not uttered. Yup. (The yup is mine).

Text reads: Life insurance is/shark repellent, possibly--/THE REST IS DETAILS./Get answers from REAL people,/APPLE'S ipad will fall short.

More images to come once I get my hands on a decent camera.

DAVID QUAMMEN

2010-12-10T11:17:00.000-07:00

Originally posted by Katie Montgomery on 12/19/2009.

On December 7th esteemed author David Quammen came by the press to sign copies of "The Same River Twice", a book Colin had printed in honor of his visit. David has an enviable job and regaled us with stories of his adventures researching articles for National Geographic and trekking through the desert.

The book was printed in an edition of 60, the type is Dante, and the papers are Gutenberg Laid and Fabriano. Colin had a great deal of fun creating the wildly textured background for the cover.

A copy of the book (the insect on the front is a stonefly featured in the printed chapter).

The title page with the author's signature below.

The title page with the author's signature below.

A copy of the pamphlet created to celebrate and emphasize dear old Darwin.

BOOKBINDING CLASS

2010-12-10T11:15:00.000-07:00

Originally posted by Colin Frazer on 12/11/2009.

Had a wonderful Class on Japanese Stab-Side binding given by veteran bookbinder and college staff member Pamela Leutz. We will continue to offer these types of community-oriented classes so stay tuned.

HOW TO MAKE A PRINTER'S HAT

2010-12-08T16:59:00.000-07:00

Originally posted by Katie Montgomery on 12/11/2009.

Check out Friend of the Press Tom Leech at his printshop at the Palace of the Governors in NM.

NEW CALLING CARD

2010-12-08T16:56:00.001-07:00

Originally posted by Colin Frazer on 12/10/2009.

New Calling Card. Ahoy Patterns.

The type is an old french tuscan (brass!), Modern, and Copperplate Gothic #4.

HAMILTON WOOD TYPE AND PRINTING MUSEUM 1ST ANNUAL WAYZGOOSE

2010-12-08T16:39:00.000-07:00

Originally posted by Colin Frazer on 12/10/2009.

A couple of weekends ago I had the privilege of attending Hamilton's 1st annual wayzgoose in lovely Two Rivers Wisconsin. There were about 70 of us in attendance and the place was bright, friendly and cheerful in a way I haven't found it on previous visits. Suffice to say that it was a total type dork-fest of the best kind. Talks included type designers Richard Kegler of P22, Mathew Carter, and Juliet Shen.

Great presentations - Richard Zauft proofing Matthew Carter's new only-in-wood "Van Lanan" type, Jim Moran, the Director of the Museum on Poster Woodblocks in the Museum's collection, Paul Brown on treasures from the museum and history of decorated type, and Norb Brylski, a long time employee of Hamilton, on cutting wood type.

Richard Zauft pulls the first proof of Van Lanen (nee Carter Latin) wood type.

Jim Moran shows off a freaky clown woodblock.

Norb Brylski expertly operates the Pantograph router.

There were plenty of other things going on including a screening of the documentary about the Museum called Typeface. And some nerdery with Chris Fritton about modern methods of making woodtype. Chris is using the "Holly-Wood" approach that might prove to be ultimately more cost effective and reproducable than my own approach of cutting end grain hardwood. Plenty more to come on that subject.

Matthew Carter took home a quilt square of his printed type that Chris and I made for him.

It was such a pleasure to meet fellow enthusiasts, in particular those that are making wood type their lives. Bill Moran, Artistic Director of the museum, Nick Sherman, a graduate of MassArt and wood type blogger, David Shields, professor of Design at Austin where the Rob Roy Kelley American Wood Type Collection is housed, and Paul Brown, Professor of design at Indiana University who gave me some great leads in my continuing research on Wm. H Page. It was also great to get to see my friend Greg Corrigan, former director of the museum.

Amish Pecan Pie.

The weather was gorgeous in Wisconsin for the weekend, I even went for a swim in lake Michigan, bought an amazing pecan pie from some nice Amish folks at the farmers market, and explored a bit of the countryside before heading back to catch a plane in Milwaukee. Looking forward to next year, and to the continued growth of and enthusiasm for the Hamilton Wood Type and Printing Museum.

Auxillary Bathroom parting shot.

THE MAKING OF A POSTER

2010-12-08T11:19:00.001-07:00

Originally posted by Katie Montgomery on 11/06/2009.

Emma Mitchell has been working on a poster to advertise visiting writer Bonnie Nadzam. The following is a bit of a photo essay documenting poster printing (significantly lacking a few stages such as a preliminary sketch, setting the type, and printing the image. Whoops) with Emma!

Carving the organic filigree design she created for the poster.

The second print. Emma originally went for a grass green text but had to abandon it (sigh) because the text overlapped with the filigree and wasn't readable. Thus a switch to deep midnight blue. The look of mild bewilderment is no doubt caused by my taking her picture. For those of you who are interested, this is what a locked up press looks like when the type is inked and you're ready to roll!

Mixing colors is a bit of an art. The ink is extremely concentrated so the ratios are very important. In the end you often try a number of mixes before you find a hue that's juuust right.

Jody looks on while Emma Prints. Nobody No-how No-way is allowed to print without the presence of a monitor. We really hate it when people get fingers or sleeves or braids caught in the press and there ain't no-one around to give them a hand. Plus, despite the fact that a Vandercook weighs a couple thousand pounds and looks like a beast, you gotta baby it a little.

The finished product!

THE PALACE PRINT SHOP AND BINDERY

2010-12-08T11:15:00.000-07:00

Originally posted by Katie Montgomery on 11/05/2009.

During the second block break Colin went on a bit of a road trip down to New Mexico and visited Tom Leech at the Press of the Palace of the Governors. "Situated in rooms adjoining the nearly 400-year-old courtyard of the Palace of the Governors is the Print Shop and Bindery, known as the Palace Print Shop, or, more formally, as the Press of the Palace of the Governors. A living Museum of New Mexico exhibit dedicated to the history of the state's printing traditions, the Print Shop offers some 70,000 yearly visitors an opportunity to relive the lively environment of 19th century publishing." Extensive historical information is available on their website.

Tom Leech, printer.

Tom's assistant, James.

KAY RYAN POET LAUREATE OF THE US OF A!

2010-12-07T11:05:00.001-07:00

Originally posted by Katie Montgomery on 11/05/2009.

We've been hosting some North-American literary royalty! Earlier this week(specifically Tuesday), Kay Ryan came to campus and gave a reading. In honor of her visit Colin and Jaimie created a beautiful broadside of her as yet unpublished poem "Cloud". The piece is quietly elegant, printed in a pale green, grey, and black. Those color descriptions don't do it justice, let's try again: deep sea-foam, mist, and ebony. Printed in an edition of seventy they are available for purchase at the price of $15 and an additional $5 for shipping. A previously unpublished piece by the Poet Laureate of the United States letterpress printed on a broadside measuring 19 1/2" x 12 7/8" and (if you get to us early), signed by the author? This is a steal! Contact [Aaron] if you
want one. [Note: This broadside is sold out.]

Aaron Cohick 
The Press at Colorado College 
14 E Cache la Poudre St .
Colorado Springs, CO 80903
 719.389.6376 
aaronDOTcohickATcoloradocollegeDOTedu

Close up.

Signed Copy.

The Full Broadside.

A lesson in printing: It will always take more time than you think and you will become obsessed with making it PERFECT. The above is a sampling of all the test sheets we went through to produce "Cloud".

CHRISTIAN BÖK

2010-12-07T10:55:00.000-07:00

Originally posted by Katie Montgomery on 11/02/2009.

Christian Bök, top poet of the cold reaches of Canada, did a reading at Colorado College on the 15th of October 2009. To celebrate his visit Colin printed a pamphlet of "Voyelles," a poem by Arthur Rimbaud translated by Christian Bök. With everlasting class and cleverness Colin selected the imagery thusly: the cover features a print of all the capital vowels rotated around a central axis. Nerdy? Yes. Cool? Absolutely! For those of you who don't speak french "voyelles" means "vowels" which are the subject of the poem. The first line goes "A black, E white, I red, U green, O blue: the vowels." The back of the pamphlet is printed with five small rectangles, one in each color. Oh how minimalist and elegant. They were printed in an edition of 90 and are available for purchase at the price of $15. Contact [Aaron] to set up getting a copy!

Aaron Cohick
The Press at Colorado College
14 E Cache la Poudre St
Colorado Springs, Co 80903
719.389.6376
aaronDOTcohickATcoloradocollegeDOTedu

The inside en francais (the english is on the facing page).

Capitalized vowels rotated around a central axis.

INDEED, WHAT IS 'GOIN' ON?"

2010-12-07T10:53:00.000-07:00

Originally posted by Katie Montgomery on 10/29/2009.

Thus far this third block there has been a great flurry at the press. Poster printing, poster setting, and preparation for Kay Ryan Poet Laureate of the US of A! Jaimie has been busy working on a broadside of Ryan's poem "Cloud", as yet unpublished but we hear it should be coming out in Poetry sometime soon! Ryan will be visiting the campus and doing a reading on November 3rd at 7 PM in the Cornerstone building. Don't miss it!

Colin has been experimenting with glow in the dark ink for concert posters (a warning to those of you who get excited--this ink is expensive stuff). I, (Katie), just finished up a blindingly orange poster advertising the half-block class in "The History and Future of the Book" taught by our beloved librarians Steve Lawson and Jessy Randall. Several students are taking advantage of the press to create small books on their own time and with the aid and supervision of Colin and the monitors. We love visitors so come to the press and explore some ideas! Ever considered making your own letterhead? How about book-plates? Low on cash for the Holiday season and not really prepared to do a repeat of the clay birds nest you made your mom in second grade? There are any number of elegant, funky, and generally interesting projects that you might embark upon. Gosh and golly gee, I'm really making a sales pitch here. But honestly, don't let the opportunity to experiment in the press pass you by. The craft is amazing and the people are pretty cool too.

OBERLIN GROUP 2009

2010-12-07T10:49:00.000-07:00

Originally posted by Katie Montgomery on 10/14/2009.

From the 1st through the 3rd of October Colorado College played host to the Oberlin Group, "an informal consortium of the libraries of 80 selective liberal arts colleges." In celebration of the annual Library Directors Meeting The Press at Colorado College produced a pamphlet in 65 copies. The pamphlet featured "Walking Along the Dictionary," a poem by CC's Curator of Special Collections Jessy Randall, and "All A's," a poem by English Professor Jane Hillberry.

Colin addresses the crowd.

Librarians explore the Press.

Tutt Library Director Carol Dickerson engages in some bibliophile chat over a Vandercook.

EN283: BEGINNING FICTION WRITING

2010-12-07T10:45:00.000-07:00

Originally posted by Katie Montgomery on 10/14/2009.

Most of the students in Professor Steven Hayward's English class had never even stepped foot in the press. However, during the 8th and 9th of October 2009 they had a crash course in letterpress design, typesetting, and printing. Under the guidance of Colin Frazer the class worked together to assemble the lines of Chapter Six, a poem they had co-written. Completed as a pamphlet the finished work was elegant and simple, and each student took home a copy. Professor Hayward is responsible for the unusual colophon quoted here: "This Exquisite Corpse was produced by Hayward's Beginning Fiction Workshop. Block 2 2009 * When the world was young."

Students assembling type.

And expressing some confusion....

The finished product!

NEW HOME

2010-11-23T12:02:00.001-07:00

Originally posted by Katie Montgomery on 10/07/2009.

If you're confused or haven't been around, the press has moved to into a new home: the same building as Taylor Theater. You can find us if you walk along the path between Ticknor and Taylor. When you enter the building turn right and ta da! All of the 15th century technology you could want.

A corner of our new space and one of our feathered friends.

Furniture, ink, type, leg, mounted bird and skeleton (cat?). All necessary for letterpress.