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Tag: print

Where Hollywood’s Printed Props Are Made

Special effects designer Adam Savage (Mythbusters) visits the warehouse of The Earl Hayes Press, a prop house that’s been making printed material for Hollywood movies for over hundred years. Fake newspapers, magazines, currency, and product labels all came from their printing presses. Historian and archivist Michael Corrie of YouTube channel Props To History walks Adam through some of the iconic props that originated by the press, including Blade Runner‘s ID badges and, incredibly, the passports and letters of transit from Casablanca. So good.

(via Waxy)

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How a Book is Made

Moon Witch, Spider King cover design by Helen Yentus; illustration by Pablo Gerardo Camacho

The New York Times takes a look at how books are made, following Moon Witch, Spider King, the second novel in the Dark Star trilogy by Marlon James, through its printing process:

The book jacket was manufactured first. The cover of “Moon Witch, Spider King,” printed at Coral Graphics Services in Hicksville, N.Y., was unusually complicated, with a vivid mix of bright colors. James, who used to be a graphic designer, joked that his previous profession — and accompanying opinions — made him “the worst type of person” to consult on the cover.

Most covers are printed using black, cyan, magenta and yellow ink, but two additional colors were used to print this one: Day-Glo green and a special blue. The machine above is loaded with 8,000 sheets of paper at a time, which are then fed through the press. Each section of the machine contains a separate tank of ink, one for each color.

There are some lovely behind the scenes images if that is your kind of thing.

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PRINT’s Next Chapter

This animation by creative agency Pearlfisher for the relaunch of PRINT is fun.

When PRINT launched in June 1940 (!), its first issue was a technical powerhouse from the foremost minds of the graphic arts. Then, in 2019, something remarkable happened: PRINT died. The company that owned it declared bankruptcy, and PRINT suddenly disappeared into the publishing ether from which it came.⁠

⁠And then, later that year, something even more remarkable happened: Debbie Millman, Steven Heller, Andrew Gibbs, Jessica Deseo, Laura Des Enfants, and Deb Aldrich banded together and formed an independent enterprise to save PRINT from its demise and former besuited overlords. ⁠

⁠Now, in 2021, PRINT has moved on to its next chapter. So, yes, PRINT is dead. But it’s also more alive than ever.

PRINT

While I am glad that PRINT is back from the dead (congratulations to all involved!), it is a bit disheartening that their first book cover design article is on a trend that has been widely written about elsewhere (as recently as last month!). :-(

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Farewell – etaoin shrdlu

Farewell – etaoin shrdlu is a half-hour documentary about the last day of hot metal typesetting at The New York Times.

The 1978 film by Carl Schlesinger and David Loeb Weiss shows the remarkable nightly production process for a daily newspaper and the changes to come with the transition computers.

The title ‘etaoin shrdlu’ refers the words made by the letters of the first two columns of a type-casting machine keyboard. If I understand this correctly, the phrase was used by operators to create an ‘obvious’ mistake in a line of type to be discarded.

And if this sort of thing is your bag, the video was posted to Vimeo by Linotype: The Film along with number of other archive films about typesetting that are worth checking out.

via PressPad Apps / Open Culture

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The Collection

The Collection is a short documentary about two friends and their discovery of a unique collection of movie memorabilia, comprised of over 40,000 printer blocks and 20,000 printer plates used to create the original newspaper advertisements for movies released in the US from the silent era through to the 1980s:

(via Coudal)

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The Counterpress x Derwent

A lovely short film about The Counter Press, a design studio and letterpress workshop in east London: 

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Alan Kitching: “I always try to have some logic to the job”

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Related to my post earlier today, typographer Alan Kitching also talked to It’s Nice That this week about printing with letterpress, and a new monograph documenting his work:

Kitching started Omnific studio with Martin Lee and Derek Birdsall, who he had met through Anthony Froshaug, in the late 1970s. They worked from a studio in Covent Garden, then still surrounded by typesetters and other service people, until rents shot up and they moved out to a toy factory in Islington. By this time some foundries were starting to sell off their type, and Omnific bought up a press and installed it at their new studio: “All this type was selling off cheap, cheap-ish, and it was the last chance to get this stuff. So we bought it all and I continued printing there for around three years until I decided I wanted to leave. I didn’t really know what I was going to do but I wanted to buy the press and the type and go and print somewhere”, Kitching says. “I didn’t want to be a jobbing printer but I wanted to start out on my own. It was a very precarious thing to do because we were successful, well-established, and I was taking a backwards step, it was a bit of a leap in the dark.”

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The new book, Alan Kitching: A Life in Letterpress, will be published Laurence King on April 7. A ‘Collectors Edition‘ of only 200 copies featuring a limited edition, numbered print by Kitching will also be available. Laurence King have produced four short teaser trailers for the book:

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Catalogue Covers: A Request for Submissions

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For the past few years, Quill & Quire (magazine to the stars) has asked Canadian books designers choose their favourite covers of the year. This year, however, instead of choosing a book cover like everybody else, David Gee picked out the McGill-Queen’s University Press Spring 2015 catalogue designed by David Drummond.

After laughing pretty hard at Mr. Gee’s audacity (and his transparent attempts to never work in this town again), I realised I would love to do a post on great catalogue covers.

McGill Queens

Print catalogues can be beautiful things, and as David Gee himself points out, “the simple fact that publishers’ catalogues tend to fly under the public radar doesn’t mean they’re easy to design.” They’re are also an endangered species. Publishers are cutting costs, and most are switching to digital alternatives. Now would seem like the perfect time to celebrate the charm of the print catalogue before it disappears completely.

I don’t usually ask for submissions, but I don’t think I can possibly gather enough material together for this by myself. So if you’ve ever toiled thanklessly over a publisher catalogue and you’d like to see a little appreciation for your hard work, send me an email (hello [at] casualoptimist . com] with your favourite catalogue covers (and interiors if you wish), and I’ll showcase all my favourites in the New Year. The images should  be hi-res jpegs or pngs (at least 620px wide), and please be sure to include the publisher information, and all the relevant credits.

Thanks all.

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Art of the Book: The Making of Dog Dreams

Illustrator Michael Wertz explains the process of hand-printing 100 copies of his limited letterpress edition book Dog Dreams at the San Francisco Center for the Book:

A trade edition of Dog Dreams is now available from Ginko Press.

(via Drawn!)

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New York Types

‘New York Types’ is a short film about New York, letterpress, and the art exhibition of the same name at the Art Directors Club last year. Inspired by the ʻThe Scriptʼ at  New York Writes Itself, the exhibition illuminated the sights and sounds of New York City:

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Epilogue: The Future of Print

Epilogue: The Future of Print is a wonderful student documentary project by Hanah Ryu Chung about book and print culture in Toronto. In the film, eight local book and print professionals talk about their work and what the future holds for the printed word:

(via Letterology)

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Birth of a Book

A short film created for the Daily Telegraph by Glen MilnerBirth of the Book captures a book being made using traditional printing methods. Shot at Smith-Settle Printers in Yeadon, Yorkshire, the book being printed is Mango and Mimosa by Suzanne St Albans published by Slightly Foxed Editions.

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