#type setting

Typography Tuesday

Every spring semester when I teach INFOST 603: History of Books & Printing in person (I teach it online in the fall), I have my students (mostly from Information Studies) set type and print a collaborative broadside. I set a theme (this year, "Springtime Milwaukee"), have each student send me a very short phrase related to that theme, and then I arrange the lines as an exquisite corpse poem.

This year, we met at Adam Beadel's Team Nerd Press/Grove Gallery, where each student set their individual line in various fonts of wood type. These were locked up on a poster press in the poetic arrangement, and everyone got to ink up the form in a kaleidoscope of colors and pull their own prints. After reading about the invention of type and the beginning of letterpress, the only way to fully understand the nature of that technology is to do it yourself!

Thanks to Melissa, our Special Collections Library Assistant (and student in the class), for taking the pictures.

View other field trip posts from INFOST 603.

View more posts with wood type.

View our other Typography Tuesday posts.

The picture is linocut and the text was type set and arranged in a printing press to line up as best as I could get it with the image. They were printed separately.

It's meant to be Turtle reading about Indigo. And I'm pretty proud of the carving part. Also typesetting was really fun to learn.

Description of the text below the cut cause despite my best efforts the text still lined up with the lines on this copy.

I had to abstract a picture that inspired a memory from my childhood for a class assignment. I chose a book (specifically Nightmare by Piers Anthony) and abstracted the idea with heavy inspiration from the character (Embrium) from the book.

I then had to carve a lino block and come up with text to go with the image. This is the completed result.

And as an aside: have you ever heard the saying "Mind your P's and Q's"? It's used now to tell someone to behave or keep in line... but letter press is where it originated. This is why. Lower case p's, q's, b's, d's and apparently sometimes h's look alike in letter press (depending on font). All the letters are backwards and it's hard to tell what's what sometimes.

I didn't mind mine close enough 😅

Hidden Hitchin

The article on the left-hand page is my chosen piece to evaluate and re-imagine using typesetting techniques and rules.

Below is some my critique of this piece.

Looks very word heavy for a single A5 page doesn’t make me want to read it. 

Feels squished, needs breathing space/white space

Hate the main headline layout, the awkward and uneven spacing between the headline and text bothers me immensely

Sub headings have no no spacing and are not easy to pick out.

The intro paragraph gets lost amongst all the other information

Needs a focus on its theme, Halloween & spooky 

Could use more imagery, or better placed imagery

Some of the alignment of the columns and rags on the paragraphs need adjusted. (single widowed words are sitting alone)

The text sits too close to the inside edge of the page, should try an appropriate grid layout to account for the inner fold.

Could use some colour to liven it up.

Some of the actual copy could use an edit as it feels a little clunky and repetitive in places, but I won’t dive too much into that side.

Do you notice anything else I should make note of?

So here’s the finished version of my Newsies Banner! It’s all ready to be copied and printed onto thicker newsprint paper.

Original sketch of the Refuge from the show. My pencil outline. My charcoal rendition. The final product.