15 December 2015 - Letterpress Project Thought Process

While you wouldn't know it from my posts, I really do have a life outside of birding. Lately I have been spending time in my shop. Most of this time has been spent cleaning type and cases, not to mention organizing. So much work to do!  But I had agreed to print two pages for the annual calendar that the Monks and Friars letterpress group puts together. My months were April and December.  This year I just couldn't settle on a concept. Finally came up with a couple ideas and thought I'd let you follow along on the thought process. 

April Calendar Page

Jen Farrell at Starshaped Press introduced me to the work of Al Schiller. He created elaborate pictures using type ornaments. His work inspired me to follow his lead in using ornaments to create the letters for April, which would become the main art for the calendar page. 

It wasn’t pretty. How many iterations of letters can there be?  Many!  And it wasn’t easy to find ornaments for a balance of light and dark in each letter.  I generally run everything through a proof press first, using a stamp pad and newsprint so I know exactly how it will look before I commit to a lock-up. 

You may think you are looking at the same thing over and over, but each one is slightly different. I am looking for the perfect mix of ornaments. I want the weight of each letter to be overall the same. Picky? Oh, yes. 

  

 

I discovered the Basho haiku while I was looking for a quote or poem for the December page. I liked the idea of having a haiku for both pages. 

Bernhard Modern was the perfect typeface choice for the haiku, as I wanted something that would not distract from the impact of the ornament-built characters for April. 







As much as I liked my fancy new letters, the page looked too spare. Adding the ornamental row filled the space and created a visual break between the haiku and April. 

The December Calendar Page

Concept: In the 1800s, poet Christina Rossetti wrote In the Bleak Midwinter. It begins:

   In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan, 
   earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone; 
   snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow, 
   in the bleak midwinter, long ago. 

This stanza jump-started my thinking. I did not want my December to reflect any holidays, but wanted it to highlight the season--to illustrate the monotony of snow when one becomes winter weary. I was thinking about a one-color page: gray, with a lighter gray ink.

I found the perfect haiku by Matsuo Basho.

Next up, find the right font.  

Clematis.  Too fussy.  Too small on the page.  I’ll try it for my April page.

Parsons. Loved it (okay, I love anything Parsons) but the font was too large for the page. The sample paper here is larger than the actual calendar page size.  Tried it in the smaller point size but didn't have enough lower case O’s. 

Cloister Ital.  Too rigid, not the flowing look I wanted.  But I admit, I love the lowercase f. 

Keynote. Goldilocks said “Just right.” 

 I wanted a border that looked kind of windy. The only border I could find that worked for the vision in my head was very worn and one of the corners was crushed so it would not print correctly. I used it anyway.

Set Keynote again for December. Didn’t like it. It was just too small to hold up to the calendar numerals. 

Replaced it with Lydian Cursive.

Perfect.  Locked it up and printed it with white ink on gray paper.  

Needed more light for this picture-- it isn't as drab or as dark as this looks.  

Hindsight:  While the white ink on the gray paper gave the wintry feel I wanted, I can’t help but wonder what silver metallic ink would have looked like, either on the gray paper or white. It is probably the difference between an overcast gray winter day and a day with sun making the snow sparkle.

Printed both of these on my workhorse, a 10x15 Oldstyle Chandler and Price.