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.

Cover Up

I tried out leather as a primary option for creating the cover for my artist book. In this case, it's more a pouch than a conventional cover.

One of my early inspiration came from this pouch (in terms of the craftsmanship):

I bought a piece of untreated leather and then had laser etching done, which looked really good. However, because of burning the leather everytime you touched it your hands would get black. Not favourable if you want to touch the pristine white contents of the leather pouch.

To tackle the soot getting on to your hands I decided to get it treated. So with the help of the shop keeper from where I had purchased the leather and showing him what was happening to the leather, I got a "finishing" lacquer. This gave the leather a sort of shine and changed the colour and made it a darker brown. This extra coat helped in getting rid of the soot problem.

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.

For the Teacher..

On Monday I had some pictures clicked as a part of my artists book. These photographs have been clicked by my friend and class mate Vishnu.


This book is dedicated to Mr.Laxmikanth, the man who taught me everything during my one month of working at the printers.

Some of the images below will have captions/ quotes letterpressed (or screen-printed, depending on which medium works well). This is in hopes of tying together what sort of a place Konark Printers and give people an opportunity to visualise the work space.

 7hrs of standing, is sooo painful. You don't realise it till one leg starts hurting and then you know all your weight was on that one leg for the past 1hr. ATTENTION is the key.

                          

 
Quotations

 At the end of the day, to avoid lead poisoning.. there's a bucket of cold water and a bar of rin to wash your hands with.

Beginnings of the Book

After a 3days of composing and day of trying out some prints. Here are pictures of the test prints.

And.. I had composed a large body of text, which took 6 hours. But, while transferring it onto the chase, the printer dropped half of it. So will recompose that and print it soon.

Also, now I am looking into what sort of stock I can use and what the colour range can be like (because the printer doesnt print light colours like yellows or even white. Which I find a little surprising).

Book dimensions:

As of now I am looking at the book being the standard post card size (about 6inX4in), so that it will be possible to add pictures with letterpress/ screen-printing into the book. Also for binding i am thinking of something more "temporary", so that each page can be seen in isolation or even removed from the book.

At the Printers

After a week of working at the printers I finally printed one of the many little pieces I had composed.
It's been a rather tiring week. A one and half hour drive to the place and then standing for 5 hours while composing. It drains out all your energy.
Composing a large body of text, left- aligned:

And the composing stick gets rather heavy as you add on the lead. All the letters must be aligned in a certain way and there is a groove on each letter which helps you figure that out.

While taking a break, I was going through some of the cases and found these old blocks that include company logos, images of gods or some decorative patterns. Most of the have gathered dust and I am hoping to make some fun prints out of these blocks. This is just once case, there are two more that even more dusty.

Composing a page for a bill was a tedious task. But it did give me a good understanding of how quotations (the black square blocks, without text) are meant to be used and what sizes they come in. This was my first taste of central aligning text and now MS Word seems god-sent in comparison.

But what came next, composing a flyer for a beauty parlour, all completely central aligned. And using five different fonts (just like in the original flyer) with grammatical mistakes was a little painful. but in the process I did get to work with some script fonts and they look slightly different from other fonts in letterpress. But it was fun to touch upon that sort of an aesthetic.

First few test prints to check for mistakes

And finally this first test print. 3 mistakes, not so bad!

Starting tomorrow will compose some of the content that i have generated for my Letterpress book. Hoping it will be a mix of the aesthetic that is prevelant in India letterpress 'jobs; and the kind of aesthetic we as designers feel is 'more appropriate'?

Death becomes... (Content Generation)

"Letterpress in India is.. DEAD".
Sure, sounds like a bold statement. But it is pretty much the truth and rather sad one.
Today letterpress (whatever I've seen on blogs etc.) being done abroad is largely done with polymer plates. I am personally not a big fan of these polymer plates, they have moved away from the whole hands on approach. Creating art works on the computer and then printing them using a letterpress is just bastardizing the medium.
Very few people still chose to actually tediously compose type, set it and print.
And that is why once i again..i do repet myself.. Letterpress is dead. But is there hope for revival? Probably. 
In India however the future is bleak..dim...call it what you may. One of the main reasons is that the people who still do letterpress printing in India no longer find it commercially viable and for them it is a means to an end. So, if it means that they cannot make money from letterpress printing they will shift to offset printing.


With these things mine the content i have generated for my Artist Book is based on some of the things that people have said about letter press, some haikus about death.
Here are a few: 
Norb Brylski, Retired Pantograph Operator (movie: Typeface): "I am good at what I do because I am the last one. There's no one really that I can compare myself to." 
Anil Joshi, letterpress Printer Mumbai: "There were 50 printers on my street now I am the only one left." 

I have also had the opportunity to speak to Pierre Tzenkoff, Art Director who has worked for 7years on a book for luxury brand Goyard.

His insights have been amazing and a huge part of giving a small positive angel to my book. I'd like to quote a line from one of his emails. The way he writes is just as interesting as what he is talking about. 

"Letterpress is beautiful, the text is different, it has a real emotion, the blacks are very dark and the way it goes inside the paper is amazing. letterpress is an art.

I'm spending hours working on the colour of the black, how deep it goes inside the paper...and each page is different."

Bus Tickets

Some initial sketches of re-contextualizing bus tickets. 
In this case I have tried to draw parallels with letterpress printing and its form. I want the "bus ticket" to retain its original columns and margins,so that at first glance it does look like a real bus ticket. Of course, on closer inspection it is, otherwise.

Content Generation - The Start

After what seemed like an eternity of moving circles and mind map after mind map, decisions have been made.

I still like the idea of working towards an artist book. This book will now deal with the "Death of Letterpress" (Yes, A rather bold statement. But, from my research that seems the case.) Some of the reasons why I think it is so would be part of this artist book. The book is to also contain quotes from interviews, design quotes, haiku's about 'the end'. The next 2 days I hope to get all of this in place.

To go with this I want to work with some of the "products" that are produced by Letterpress printers in India. Some rather "clerical" objects like bus tickets, bill books, business cards, doctor's prescriptions and numbering lottery tickets. I hope to make some "modifications" in the object/ reprint it and re-contextualize it.

There is a certain aesthetic that letterpress printing has and it seems lost esp. with the current use for letterpress. I hope these modifications will help highlight this difference and make a comment about our ever evolving times and aesthetic. Maybe people will take a closer a look and realize that the object is not what it seems to be!

Layers

After a few days of aimless wandering, I felt great sense of purpose on Sunday and started mind mapping. This technique saves my life time and again. I got down to breaking all the threads I could use for figuring out what my end product would be.


One of my inspirations is the artist book by Paolo Carraro called The Impermanent in the Permanent.


There are three versions of this book:

• The book form in bound as the traditional Japanese style in which the four quarters of a square which runs through the book are rotated by means of cut-outs, folds and colour, capitalising on a powerful left-hand, right-hand interaction.
• The book size is 21.5 by 20 cm with 16 images.
• Edition of 9 copies only, all signed by the artist.
• The slip case form is made of 4 little volumes boxed in a slip case in which each of the four rotations is contained in its own base were all the pages are unbound so that the cut-outs and folds can be re-arranged in a virtually endless discovery.

• Each booklet is made up of 4 pages of 20 by 20 cm.

After taking a look at this artist book, I started think of what could be done for my project that would help highlight Letterpress printing and make it India specific.

Some of my initial rambling:

I am now thinking.. spatial (just in terms of the product), tactile, discovering.. like finding a piece of history and taking the time to understand it.

Another mind map and then will re-listen to all my interviews to get some content or starting points out of them.