Mind your 'p's' & 'q's' - literally

And your 'b's' and 'd's'.....

So, I was commissioned to create some swing tags for Misohappi http://www.etsy.com/shop/misohappi?ref=ss_profile a wonderful Etsy store who just happens to make awesome aprons that fit just so!
Anyway, this was my first effort at hand setting type. My very first proof came out like below:

hamb crafted dy mj so haqqy los angeles california

OK granted, all of my type was mixed when I received it, and I had to sort it into fishing tackle boxes so give me a break but I made myself laugh.
I learned alot from the whole experience:

1. you need a good collection of spacers to go along with your type - something I did not have so I had to resort to trimming down quotation marks and commas.
2. the nick that is found on the bottom edge of all the type gives you a HUGE clue as to which way up the type goes (der!)
3. locking the type up is difficult when you don't have a good selections of leads and line spacers.
4. locking up is like putting together a puzzle and is time consuming trying to make sure there is even pressure all around the text
5. having  a second chase would come in very handy so you can get on with other printing somethng I dont have so I made do with photographing the lock up so I could refer to it when I need to lock it up after the job was approved
6. using a craft stamp - something like a mini stamp pad that you can daub over the text a get a quick impression rather than inking up the whole press is a great time saver.
7. inks can appear to have a different colour when applied to small amounts of text rather than a more open flatter surface. Text appears a lot darker - even though it's not...
8. Measure twice, cut once.... the hand setting, locking up, proofing, editing mixing ink, planning, took 10x longer than the actual printing but it was great fun! 



chase locked up

We got there in the end! Each tag was printed 4 up - pass1, rotate 180°, pass 2, flip over pass 3, rotate 180° pass 4, and then cut down to 8cm x 3cm, with added tear off perforation. Printed on Letterpress Lush paper 30% cotton, 70% paper pulp.

Final prints

x100 - yippee

Space invaders birthday party invitation

Six (6) passes through the press for this one. (only the best for my boy!)
Printed on Somerset Waterford 100% cotton rag.
Fed through black lazer printer to print text.
lets call it 'Hybrid Letterpress' My b&w lazer printer is a very inexpensive model ($99 from Australia Post) so my thinking is that most people would be able to imprint onto these. I haven't tested on an ink jet yet.
Of course there is the option of hand writing onto these with a felt tip pen my handwriting is terrible so i didn't bother.
Registration was challenging. Perhaps I will consider this when designing anything again. Things in lines with polymer plates prove to be slightly more time consuming. Although 6 passes may have had something to do with it...
Ill definitely re-print these but use only 2 or 3 colours to make them more economical.

More things I've learned

1. There are no short cuts in letterpress. Possibly more efficient, and logical ways of doing things but no fast shortcuts.
   Which leads me to my second point:
2. Adding white to a colour to lighten it up ON the ink disk, is not quicker than cleaning the old colour off, mixing a new colour and re inking the disk- and its less accurate.
3. Making 6 passes through the press is just silly (pics to come)
4. A design that requires 6 lines of images to all be straight and even is again a bit silly. You have to be super accurate and this takes time (see point # 1) Much easier to design with images that can be a tiny bit out without spoiling the design.
5. Trying to save a wrongly inserted piece of paper and trying to stop the platen from closing with your hands is ineffective. Better to loose one print than a finger. (No fingers lost but a knuckle bruised!) Der!
6. Still..I'm pretty happy with the end result. Invitations to Leo's 4th birthday. He is worth the full days work plus injury. Wonder if I can claim compo...

Letterpress is the graphic designers equivalent to slow cooked food

Fantastic quote. An awesome description of the letterpress craft.

From handmade hair accessories to artisanal pickles, there’s a metaphorical back-to-the-land movement for every profession. For graphic design, it’s letterpress, a labor-intensive printing process that creative types are taking up as an antidote to days spent staring at their iMacs. Produced on antique presses and characterized by heavily impressed lettering on thick paper, letterpress cards and stationery — if you’ve received a wedding invitation from an even vaguely arty couple in the past few years, chances are it was letterpress printed — are the graphic design equivalent of slow food. For designers who want to unplug, literally, letterpress is a chance to spend time refining their craft using a method that was considered old-fashioned long before the days of Photoshop. “People miss the hands-on experience of printing,” says Daniel Gardiner Morris, a fourth-generation letterpress printer and the founder of the Arm, the Williamsburg studio where many local printers have learned the basics of handling Industrial Revolution-era machinery. “Even if you don’t know anything about the process, when you pick up something that was printed on a letterpress, you know there’s something different about it. It was touched by human hands.”

for the full article, read on here

Save the date 'Branches'

A first run of my 'Branches' Save the date notes. No too bad! Perhaps I will make the ink a little heavier and I need to pre cut the paper to exact size so I can get everything centered a little better but all in all not a bad effort!.
They are intended to be imprinted using an inkjet or lazer (depending on the printer) or hand written. A heart stamp can be used to 'stamp' the date out.  I will mock one up and post later.

More 'stuff'

Latest Ebay offerings.  I'm going to try my hand at type-setting.  Ill add it to my list of things I haven't done before and I expect to be expert at in 30 mins...  Husband reminded me that 'back in the day' people would spend 3 years apprenticing at this trade.  Doesn't do the trick of making me any easier on myself.