You may not know a lot about letterpress, or the process that those in history went though to make prints everyday, but hopefully this will give you a little more appreciation for what people back then had to go though. This weekend in my intensive letterpress class, we actually set our own type. Now I have never done this before as I am a designer, I design on the computer and have photopolymer plates made of my work, so I never have to set anything. But I feel like if I am going to be good at something, I should know everything about out, so this class has really given me a full view of what goes into traditionally printing.. Now back to my type. These 8 little sentences took me 2 hours to set. 2 HOURS! Type cases are large, as in they take up an entire table (more pictures to come) you have to find each letter, and put them in individually. Then you have to add the kerning pieces (pieces of metal to space out the words so that they don't touch). All while making sure that each very tiny piece of metal type isn't facing the wrong way. Then you have to add Leading (long pieces of metal to space out complete lines of text). Not to mention you have to make sure you don't have bad breaks, or widows, or forget period and commas!!
Ohhh yeah and did I mention that you have to put in the type upside down????? UPSIDE DOWN! Try proofreading upside down, as you will see in my first example, this was my (I think I am done moment) alas, I was certainly not and my poor little type was in serious need of a proofreader.
Here is the type as you would see it printed on paper, as you can tell, I still had a lot of work to do to make this correct. Please don't judge the text, my homework assignment was to write a poetic paragraph about going back in time, and being whomever you want. Yes I choose to come back as a dude, but its BOB Freaking DYLAN!
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