Round 3: Test Prints go Metallic!

Another round of test prints to figure out what stock would work better. The earlier stock I had tried out gave the project an "old world" feel. However the feeling of preciousness was lacking. So I decided to try out some more options ranging form bright white to metallics.

I also thought of dividing the book into sections. Each section would have a different kind of stock.

The 3 sections are as follows:

• General information about letterpress
• Quotes from designers, typographers etc.
• Quotes from letterpress printers - death of letterpress

The stock was bought from Transasia Fine Papers Pvt. Ltd. This is the list of stock that was tested out for the final book:

• Conquerer Diamond White 250gsm
• Shiro Echo Bright White 250gsm
• JC Colorscope Pristine White 270gsm
• Village White 280gsm
• Rives Traditional Ice White 250gsm
• Conquerer Iridescent Silver Mist 250gsm
• Curious Metal Galvanised 250gsm

These are some of the test prints.

Another test print which is more of a design than content that gives you information. The pattern has been made using a "tombstone". (Wikipedia Article: Tombstone [Typography] )

The Rives Traditional Ice White 250gsm being used for one of the sections.

Round 2: Test Prints

This time took some more test prints but with three different kinds of stock. Took about half a day to get seven different 'pieces' printed.

The stock was bought from Fedrigoni. The three different types of stocks I tried were:

• Old Mill Banco 250gsm
• Century Cotton Laid 280 gsm
• Splendorgel Avorio 300gsm

These are some of the test print that I took. Rather happy with some of the results. Fine tuning will be done during the final prints. Legibility cannot be compromised.


But as Alan Kitching said "Print wasn't meant be perfect".

It looks like a walk in the park to put these compositions together, but it takes forever. And when you are looking at tiny alphabets, you don't realise when you wrote "thingi" instead of thing. The original composition has now been corrected.

 Tables are perhaps some of the most time consuming compositions to make in letterpress. You have to actually calculate and think in points to get accurate positioning in the table.

 Large body of text with justification seems so simple on a computer, but doing this manually for every line definitely gave me new found respect for justification. Especially, when I had to reset the text a second time after the printer dropped it while setting it in the chase for the first round of test prints.

 Just a fun composition that was made using old blocks. Some of these haven't been used for years. Some of the blocks were made of lead and wood and some were the newer polymer blocks.

 Tried experimenting with lines of horizontal and vertical text.

 These were literally the last few pices of Kannada type that I found lying around. SO I thought I would use them in one final composition that spoke about the rate at which type is sold off as scrap metal in India.