Funny, i was going to make the exact same post today. JonSel gave me the original idea, but I'm glad you posted it.

Here are my thoughts on letterpress, as a designer I absolutley love the quality of it, the texture, the look, the feel. It's all working for me baby!

Now, as a solution for a client I also think it's great, especially when working with ID systems. The result is a tactile experience that can't be matched with offset printing. When we try to get a client to print with letterpress we simply show them samples and they fall in love and price is rarely an issue. It's even lees of an issue now that you can letterpresss through photopolymers.

Another intangible factor of letterpress for businesses is it's memorable. Our business cards are letterpressed and when our Sales Director goes out to trade events the people he meets always compliment his card. And when your prospective clients are looking at 20-30 business cards in one day, and that's all they are taking back with them, you want them to remember you.

From the article: “I would certainly agree that when the process is used for effect, as if the process itself were the aesthetic, yes, that is quite a low point.”

I disagree with that. Letterpress is a printing method like any other, whether it's used for effect or not is not an issue. Then what would be the point of engraving or embossing? they are used to create an effect, an emotion or a response.

Other than that, the article is great. It's a smart discussion on the state of letterpress and Gerald provides some great insight into letterpress and the vast considerations we need to keep in mind when using it.

Do you suppose Lange feels about graphic designer's and letterpress the way many designers feel about those who design swoosh logos?

I'll just have to disagree somewhat with his position that deep impression and other 'trademark' characteristics of letterpress are really mis-uses of the technique. I would say there's a time and a place. I would certainly not suggest a book project be produced with substandard typography and inking nor would I suggest that the type on each page be slammed into the paper so you can read it like braille. But on a business card? Why not achieve some of that nice tactile feeling with a thick paper and a little deep hit of the type? It makes for a beautiful card.

I guess for every arena there are purists who see "the right way" to do things and then there are those who "mis-use" the technology. Now, here is where I get myself into trouble, because when it comes to letterpress printing, I'm an undying fan and admirer with a hint of experience with it. But I like some of the stuff that Lange doesn't.

So this is where subjectivity takes over, and why it is always dangerous to declare yourself against something, because it comes back to bite you. I hate swoosh logos and bad drop shadows and ugly photoshop filter work. To me, they are so clearly a mis-use of design technology and technique. But, they wouldn't exist if lots of (my words here) "lesser" designers didn't love them.

So after some rambling, I find myself uncomfortably seen as a letterpress hack, yet I'm willing to sneer at what I would term design hacks. In the end, I just have to chalk it up to beauty and skill, and the knowledge that wonderful things can happen, even when done "the wrong way." And that I'm a design snob. :-)

Armin, thanks for the nod. I must have been composing my comments as you posted yours.

Now that my little bit of self-therapy is over, I'll say this: I found it very fascinating the discussion on typography and how it reacts on press when printed with photopolymers. I would say that only in the last few years are we truly recovering from the disaster that photocompositing wrought on the typographic and design field. Truer typeface revivals that more closely mimic the original metal faces are appearing more and more rapidly. Unfortunately, there are still so many faces that were digitized based on photolettering samples that they are difficult to use. I can think of Centaur as a great example of this. When printed with litho, it is too lightweight. Ironically, letterpress is a great technique to use with Centaur, as it restores, through the relief printing process, some of the weight of the letterform.

I used to work at a firm that did a lot of letterpress printing in-house for other firms.

Without a doubt, other designers prefer the thick paper, over inked, double-hit impression.

And so what? If that's what people like, so be it. We're a service industry, remember? ;o)

>Do you suppose Lange feels about graphic designer's and letterpress the way many designers feel about those who design swoosh logos?

I'm not sure how he feels, but that would be a very understandable stand to take. People who are experts in their profession usually know what works best in different situations. In this case letterpress might not have been intended to be a decorative printing technique, just as the swoosh is not intended for logos (except nike.)

It's also important to accept where letterpress is going, because of the photopolymers it's not reserved anymore for highly trained print shops in the craft that is letterpress printing. It's like when designers got their hands on Fontographer, typeface design stopped being a craft only a few could perform. And one must look at the end result to decide whether the process was appropriate or not.

>And that I'm a design snob. :-)

Amen. The first step toward recovery is accepting that you have a problem. The next step is to criticize all crappy design.

> People who are experts in their profession

> usually know what works best in different

> situations.

Exactly. To me thinking that an infatuation with over-impression is generally a bad idea is not a matter of purism, it's a matter of functionality.

--

I'm a total digitboy, but since last week I've been taking Gerald's letterpress class (through ArtCenter). During last night's class he showed us a very pretty piece with nice illustrations and many paragraphs of tiny text. The text "body" itself was very sharply printed (although there was apparently some luck involved, and the guy couldn't get more than 6 prints out of it, for reasons I still don't fully grasp...), but the amount of the impression was rediculous - and it was very hard to read for that exact reason. The problem is, I guess it wasn't meant to be read, it was meant to be gawked at, by people who can only see the surface, people who will point to it and say "Wow, dude, check out the bumps and shit, maaan."

So it's a superficial attraction, and generally dysfunctional; the way a bourgeois prick would pay a small fortune for shiny baubles. Like my current Compaq Presario laptop, actually: I got it because it was a great deal, but the sheer amount of fake chrome on it makes me sick, makes me miss my classy, somewhat somber, functional Dell Latitude.

hhp

The reason that the guy couldn't get more then 6 prints out of it is because tiny type and heavy impression equals broken type. Too much pressure on too small of an area and type (lead or photopolymer) breaks. Serifs snap off, forms get rounded. Asking a printer to print with a really heavy impression is asking him to do damage to his equipment. One reason that photopolymer is great for printers is that you don't have to worry about ruining your expensive metal type with heavy impression.

Another excerpt from the article:

I attended the Oak Knoll Book Fest a few years back and a hobby printer (and curator of a significant institutional printing collection) came over to my table and spotted my monograph on printing digital type via the letterpress process. He would not even pick up the book, or any of the books produced with the photopolymer plate process, but instead proudly announced himself as a �Luddite.’

First of all, that's just hilarious. Seondly it's pretty sad. I'm all for being wary of new technologies or processes, but being down right neglected is a loss for the individual. One might not grasp new technologies right away, and that's understandable, but to consider it the devil's work like this "Luddite's" case is just ridiculous.

A lot of people are using the word luddite lately, right Chris?

I guess I should chime in on this.

The reason the increased impression was bad in this particular case (which was printed with photopolymer) is that as soon as ink would have to be applied, as is the normal case during editioning, the combination of improper impression and accumulating gain would allow the letterforms to lose their sharpness and clarity. I think any typographer, and especially type designers, would appreciate this.

That is what you are looking for here. Correct impression facilitates even inking. To consider it as anything other than a technical factor will simply lead to poor presswork and a distortion of the letterform.

The notion that impression itself should be taken as an aesthetic quality, which is what this thread seems to be focusing on, has its merits. But over-impression, or conversely, severe under-impression, are demerits if they do not contribute to the clarity of the printing.

However, if one doesn't care about quality, then it doesn't matter. The problem is, even poorly printed letterpress is being toted as a form of quality, simply because it is letterpress. Bit of a sad ending for the technology that forms the foundation for all things typographic.

>even poorly printed letterpress is being toted as a form of quality, simply because it is letterpress.

Now, that's a low point. I may be wrong, but I think one of the reasons letterpress has become so popular lately is because it's the complete opposite of web design. It provides a tactile quality that was missing from the dot-com era. So anything that is letterpressed might be considered of quality by some.

Armin

I certainly agree with this. But the interest in letterpress is growing in two separate areas. There is that of the consumer (or client) and that of the practitioner.

In many of the classes that I have been offering over the last decade or so, more and more graphic designers are enrolling (and some of them are fairly high-end) Why? Their rationale: they want to feel the type and work with it in their hands.

On the other hand, isn’t it typography that we are concerned with?

I’ve been looking at some of the recent posts here and at Typographica on web design. Isn’t it odd that legibility and readability and letterform clarity are significant concerns in this regard but these same qualities are seemingly no longer a consideration for letterpress printed material?

To view a page printed with metal type and judge its quality solely on the basis of a favoring toward primitivism is an insult to our typographic heritage, is it not?

>Isn’t it odd that legibility and readability and letterform clarity are significant concerns in this regard but these same qualities are seemingly no longer a consideration for letterpress printed material?

It's odd, and I think the reason is that designers, Martha Stewart or whoever, think that the sole fact that they are printing in letterpress excuses them for making an effort of creating smart typography, because the end result will "wow" people anyhow.

>To view a page printed with metal type and judge its quality solely on the basis of a favoring toward primitivism is an insult to our typographic heritage, is it not?

Yes, and to our responsibility as designers of communicating. When we base the quality of a project on pure "look and feel" (also known as eye candy) we are at the lowest point. As you have stated.

This is for anybody who's seen The hours: did anybody else find the scenes of Virginia Woolf's husband setting type on a letterpress to be the most exciting during the whole movie?

This comment is not so much connected to the comments from above, but related. It's a re-location of the hijacked Downer topic over at typographi.ca so please indulge me.

Bill Troop:

" ... suppose that your goal is to produce printing, today, at the highest level ever attained in the history of printing. Well, your best bet is probably a monotype, for the simple reason that, in the post-metal era, it is not ecomomically feasible to put together the large teams of experts who produced the great types of the drawing room era. "

Or foundry type. The wearing-out of monotype is a real issue. Of course, perhaps you are only making one run of the theoretical finest printing ever.

BT:

"The argument I am trying to make is that photopolymer is limited not just by whatever technical defects it may or may not have in comparison to metal, but, far more seriously, by the fact that it requires digital type to feed it. "

Or the method that Gerald Lange mentions in his interview at new-series.org. Though I've certainly never done it and probably am not qualified to truly comment on the process... It sounds as if he works from a digital file (maybe post-script or something) and tweaks the particular characteristics of the job for letterpress. Or maybe he has a digital layout program for the art/layout/typesetting and creates specifically tweaked typefaces for letterpress printing.

It seems to me, at first gloss, that this would be an acceptable procedure--assuming the skills and knowledge of the digital tweaker (but this sort of thing is a caveat for all human endeavor).

But perhaps what you're saying, Bill, is that the raw material that is being tweaked is no good. And that the only hope is to start from scratch and design digitally from scratch for letterpress process printing (as was apparently done with Rialto Pressa... I haven't seen it so I don't know if it's a nice face but that's beside the point... if they made a digital face with letterpress in mind as the output device as Georgia was made with the screen in mind as output device.. that's what matters). In this case the digital tweaker would have to become a full-blown type designer working in the digital realm with letterpress in mind as the output device. Perhaps creating many optically scaled versions of face. Is that what you're after? Sounds interesting and expensive of course, but it would save work for the digital tweakers and perhaps yield greater results than the tweak method. Assuming the skill etc of the designer.

So it seems two methods are a) adjust from what exists digitally on a case-by-case basis and b) design new digital type for the letterpress. I'm just thinking out loud now maybe.

Bill Troop:

"It is economic reality, I think, and nothing else, which is forcing this poverty upon modern printing."

GD:

I would have to note that there are plenty of fine examples of printing today. I would even be willing to wager that the ratio of good printing to bad printing is no different really than in times past. But just as a newspaper is rarely worth saving and presenting to future generations so too have the poor examples been filtered out of past printing that we study. I bet there was a lot of crap printed in any era.

HHP in response to Bill Troop:

"> your best bet is probably a monotype

With all its limitations?"

I would note that lack of a zillion typefaces and size options is not really that much of a limitation. A good typographer can do something with whatever is at hand (and this includes the digital as well as the analogue realm btw). The explosion of available typefaces in the past 20 years is not indicative of a rise in greater use, flexibility, or desireability of type. Having a ton of fonts doesn't make you a designer.

Storage of the metal is maybe a problem depending on one's situation. But each process has its advantages and disadvantages. Working in metal doesn't involve staring at a laser beam for hours on end. It does involve dealing with ink and dirt and solvents.

g.

Even more from the Hijacked stuff:

HPP:

"Although I agree that most digital type sucks (more than most metal type), this is not a real limitation, for the simple reason that you can easily reproduce any metal original in digital"

Really? How easily? Mr. Lange is it easy?

HPP:

"the digital medium is certainly more powerful - unless you're a hopelessly romantic luddite."

The digital medium is a powerful text editor. And perhaps it helps you visualize more than sketching on a napkin. It certainly helps with flowing pages and all that.... But I'm really not convinced that it's that much more powerful than hand-based methods. And I'm not that much of a hopeless romantic luddite (technical editor for Friends of Ed books on Flash and XML, Flash Games, a fair portion of my income comes from web design and production, I'm here posting this message on the internet).

HHP:

"The so-called "democratization" of type has two main effects:

1) There is more bad type.

2) There is more potential for culturally priceless, progressive type. We will increasingly see works that surpass all the stuff the old dead farts have done. "

I completely agree with this statement. Regardless of my romantic luddite-ness. Though maybe I'd disregard the bit about progressive type because I don't know what that means.

Bill Troop:

"The problem remains that I cannot today print in a range of well-optimized sizes without going to metal.

If I choose to use photopol, it should be not because I am trying to replicate metal. It should be because I am trying to do something else."

I think that's the nugget of Bill's stuff that I agree with the most.

Glad you find a good discussion spot Gahlord.

>I would even be willing to wager that the ratio of good printing to bad printing is no different really than in times past.

I have printed twice in letterpress here in Chicago with Rohner letterpress (they use photopolymers). Every time I go to their press I know I'm going to see some of the best examples in printing. If I could I would move my bed to their sample room and frolick on top of every printed piece they have in there. Some of them are real pieces of art, even when the design isn't great the printing just brings out the best in each piece. Which brings us back to using letterpress as a purely decorative process. But I do think that some of the samples in that room are something to hold on to.

>If I choose to use photopol, it should be not because I am trying to replicate metal. It should be because I am trying to do something else."

Maybe in 50-75 years people will be trying to replicate photopolymers : )

>The digital medium... But I'm really not convinced that it's that much more powerful than hand-based methods.

I'm a big believer of the digital medium, be it for graphic design, type design or printing. Any medium is as good as the hands you put them in. To think that hand processes are much better than digital processes is, in my opinion, thinking backwards and trying to hold on to what is familiar and has yielded positive results in the past. Things evolve for a reason. The results are just different. Not bad different. Just different.

> How easily?

Just scan the stuff, trace it, and space it.

Much easier than being original!

> Just different.

The results are different. The potential is a world better.

hhp

Hey, this is cool. Found you guys!!!

One thing I think should be said in regard to Bill's standing defense of Monotype. Monotype sold only matrices, composition equipment, and casting machines. They never sold type. The composition and casting of Monotype was up to the individual who had purchased these materials. Thus, unlike foundry metal type, cast Monotype varies greatly in its metallic composition as well as its alignment. When I was revering to my frustrations with Monotype as a letterpress printer this is the problem I have to deal with. Non-standard castings.

Nor were the great faces of Centaur and Bembo all that great to print with as they do not hold up well to impression. They certainly wear out much faster than Monotype Plantin. Centaur's companion italic, Arrighi, has characters that do not even set well next to each other, because of overhanging descenders. So while indeed, there were several possible design sizes for these particular typefaces, they weren't quite what they are being made out to be.

How many folks does it take to design a typeface? Sounds like the beginning of a joke! The Rialto typeface was put together by a calligrapher and a letterpress printer, complete with optimization and ink traps. How much are we to deny such efforts in our glorification of a past that might not actually warrant such glorification?

HPP:

"Although I agree that most digital type sucks (more than most metal type), this is not a real limitation, for the simple reason that you can easily reproduce any metal original in digital"

GD:

Really? How easily? Mr. Lange is it easy?

I'm assuming that the easy here refers to the fact that you could set and repro a specimen of a metal type face and of its size ranges. These could then be scanned and imported into a font-editing program. This is pretty much what Justin Howes did with the size specimens he had of Caslon. So his Founder's Caslon has 13 true sizes ranging from 8point to 72point.

Designing a typeface for letterpress is a whole other matter. But tweaking an existent digital typeface with the capabilities of a font-editing program is quite simple and does yield satisfactory results, not only to counter ink spread but also to provide a certain optical size range.

Not exactly the best but I would submit that the optical size ranges built into twentieth century metal type were probably tweaked only a bit themselves since with the use of the pantograph engraving machine it became a design/technical/economic issue rather than a natural course of occurance (as in the handcutting of a steel punch).

>How much are we to deny such efforts in our glorification of a past that might not actually warrant such glorification?

I do think we should glorify the past and revel in it's accomplishments, but to sit back and say “we used to do it like these in the old days (when wiping your own butt wasn't a necessity) and it was so much better...” is pointless and should be reserved for the old people who don't want to embrace change. IMHO.

Maybe in 50-75 years people will be trying to replicate photopolymers : )

Unlikely. And hate to throw a damper on this, but the photopolymer plate process as it is currently being used for transferring digital output to letterpress, is ultimately short-lived, and will be doomed by the slow disappearance of film from the commercial markets. It is somewhat the last hurrah for letterpress. There are alternatives being sought out but computer-to-plate, the most obvious, isn't quite there for letterpress applications, and, with the way digital technology in general is progressing, it seems unlikely it will be.

Hey gang,

Armin (and thanks for recommending/donating this spot, the topic is more appropriate here):

"I'm a big believer of the digital medium, be it for graphic design, type design or printing. Any medium is as good as the hands you put them in. To think that hand processes are much better than digital processes is, in my opinion, thinking backwards and trying to hold on to what is familiar and has yielded positive results in the past."

I'm not saying that hand methods are better. But I am saying that I'm not convinced that digital methods are better either. I completely agree that any medium is as good as the hands (and that may be an important choice of anatomy) that wield it.

Some of this has to do with the total cost of ownership. How much time do we all spend dealing with computer meltdowns, software update issues, format update issues (true type, type 1, OF... AAC?), etc. If that time were spent working by hand how close would we be to making it all work.

Add to this Gerald Lange's recent comments re: the shortlived nature of photopol technology due to lack of film in 50-75 years and I wonder if the energy placed in photopol isn't misplaced. Though I do think that someone will come up with a way to do direct-to-plate for letterpress. Maybe it will be as small a market as foundry type is today. But someone will do it.

Armin:

"Things evolve for a reason."

Minor issue and OT but that's faulty thinking. Things don't evolve for a reason. It's one of the major fallacies in common understanding of evolution theory. Find a book or two by Stephen Jay Gould. It's my trip, but it drives me nuts when people use evolution as a metaphor but aren't up-to-date in their knowledge of it.

And to wrap it up for today I want to note that what I admire most about what Gerald Lange is doing is the mixing of the hand and digital worlds.

Four or five years ago I was in college and did the school newspaper. I had pretty much ultimate freedom in how I did stuff so I did it differently each time (once replacing the page numbers with a growing contingent of cloned sheep, for example). The results were terrible but I got it out of my system. Later I showed up on Dan Carr's doorstep after reading Bringhurst and I got very interested in hand work. Down to the punchcutting. Now Dan's no luddite and he messes with a computer now and then too. What I got out of working with Dan was a distinct appreciation for the knowledge that we all carry around in our hands. The digital realm is great for stimulating our minds, but in the end our hands are in the real world.

Recently I set up a drafting table behind my computer workstation. So while video is rendering or a batch of pshop images is running I can turn around and work on my calligraphy. My drawing is quite terrible. But it's getting better with practice (as any skill will). And I'm particularly excited by how doing things with my hands is affecting my digital work as well.

All this is to say that an interest in hand-methods is _not_ solely the province of luddites and romantics; that the two methods _can_ co-exist and gain value from one another. I think that this is what Gerald Lange's doing with photopol. I think this is what Dan Carr does when he draws, scans, tweaks, prints out and then cuts a punch. One is perhaps slightly more digital, the other is perhaps slightly more analogue. Both care deeply about their craft. Both do valid work (I'm assuming in the case of Gerald Lange because I have shamefully never seen his work... but I am certain, based on HHPs devotion and the comments of others that it's very fine).

I'm rambling.

Free beer in Vermont ,

g

GD:

Add to this Gerald Lange's recent comments re: the shortlived nature of photopol technology due to lack of film in 50-75 years and I wonder if the energy placed in photopol isn't misplaced. Though I do think that someone will come up with a way to do direct-to-plate for letterpress. Maybe it will be as small a market as foundry type is today. But someone will do it.

GL:

I did graduate work in the history of science. I'd have to agree, things don't evolve for a reason. All the more reason to pursue digital-photopolymer letterpress/metal type letterpress/whatever's next letterpress.

Free beer in Vermont? Hmmm.

Don't mean to hijack this thread once again, but has anyone seen the Paperback Test Number 2 in the recent issue of The Printer? John Downer's size-mastered face (Paperback) for House Industries.

GL:

Don't mean to hijack this thread once again, but has anyone seen the Paperback Test Number 2 in the recent issue of The Printer? John Downer's size-mastered face (Paperback) for House Industries.

I haven't. But I have to say that I'm sucker for just about anything House puts out. Especially if it comes with a pillow.

I have to say that I'm real intrigued by the idea of a size-mastered digital face...

And yes, free beer in Vermont. I'm in northern Vermont, but if the timing's right I can travel.

g

Bill Troop:

"The problem remains that I cannot today print in a range of well-optimized sizes without going to metal.

If I choose to use photopol, it should be not because I am trying to replicate metal. It should be because I am trying to do something else."

There is no reason that the problem of well-optimized sizes cannot be resolved with digital type. I believe optimization has long been a concern and there are digital faces out there that are optimized. Whether or not they meet with your technical approval is another thing altogether.

Optimization is not the only concern though. Hrant has discovered some interesting ink trapping on a metal typeface I have lent him. This is another consideration for any digital face that would need to perform well when printed letterpress. The typeface was a European foundry cast. Besides the other technical and structural difficulties encountered with Monotype that I’ve mentioned previously, I’m not aware of any Monotype typefaces that included ink traps. I doubt the limitations of the casting machines would have allowed for this.

Trapping could be implemented in digital faces, in fact, Rialto Pressa (also optimized) includes them. Based on a study of historical examples, I would suspect that there are certainly patterns to trapping that could routinely be implemented during the design process.

It is not a question of trying to replicate metal. Nor that of “trying to do something else.” Every technology is going to be different and is going to show its "tool marks," so to speak. The real concern is the replication of mechanically derived letterforms, that is, the printing of these letterforms, in this case, with the letterpress process. If the reproduction is exacting� if the letterforms perform their technical function� if this results in clarity, readability, legibility... isn't that the goal?

This is what Goudy [along with Tschichold, an early champion of photo filmsetting] had to say about it: The appearance of the work itself is of more importance than any quibble over the method of its translation into the vehicle of thought, since its legibility or beauty is determined by the eye and not by the means employed to produce the type.

I live in las Vegas, I have a small letter shop and i would like to learn more about letterpress

Jose, try starting with this Typophile thread and go from there, they have tons of topics on Letterpress.