Zen and the Art of Letterpress Type Setting

The first time I had an induction to the letterpress I not only felt daunted by the vast amount of intricate type and all of the finicky processes, but was told I needed to be tested for dyslexia by my tutor!

Anyone familiar with letterpress setting knows that each letter, cast in metal or wood, is reversed so when you print they read the right way, kind of like when you hold a page of text up to a mirror... This dumfounded me and I found it completely impossible to grasp, I just couldn’t decipher the letters, n’s were u’s, and b, p, d and q were all the same. To top it off, I kept laying out my text left to right, making it doubly backwards. I should note that there is a little map that goes with the type cases that is printed the RIGHT way around so you can easily find the letters, but this was of no use to me.

One of our tutors asked if I was dyslexic, or maybe he just pointed it out, “you’re dyslexic.” In any rate, I thought about it for a second, how sometimes I read things the wrong way, can never make sense of left or right, and at times write numbers back to front... shit, I thought everyone had that!!


The technician at the Camberwell press is an absolute angel , only for his patience and his perfection did my work come out exactly the way I envisaged. Ian’s been at the college for years, and everyone loves him. He has an open ear to designers’ wishes and the foresight and experience to offer suggestion. But on the printing press is where his genius comes out, he sets everything he works on to absolute little, tiny, minute, detailed precision. Any indent or space too wide he gets... For me, any letter or word backwards. He is good!
He’s quick to point out the facilities are not what they used to be though, but who can blame him, at one point the college boasted one of the best collections of letterpress type in Europe. That changed a while ago when the college, for whatever reason, got rid of half of the equipment and type.

Well, I decided to approach letterpress again after the first term of graphic’s “dyslexia point out” and redo the sentence I was trying to illustrate for my typography elective. Spot varnishing was suggested, so I wanted to give that a go and explore the idea of invisible text. I liked the result this produced so I thought I’d carry on with the rest of the series, laying out a paragraph and page of text, in this way.

It wasn't until I was setting the page of text, that something clicked with me with type setting... there’s no rushing it. I know that is obvious, but how I mean it is, at the beginning it REALLY frustrated me, but after awhile I just learned to appreciate it for what it was... s l o w... and that’s ok . It’s the only thing I’ve ever done that forces me to be in the present moment. I’m not sure if it’s because of my personal struggle with the process, but when I’m setting type I’m fully focused on only that.

Of course the quality the letterpress presents over digital, laser, or whatever high-tech printer, is unmatched, and I hope that’s not just in the eye of the one who sets it. I think over the last seven weeks I’ve set nearly a thousand words, the last 600 took me around thirteen hours to put together only to have ONE print.

Now what I have yet to do, but hope comes to me as peacefully, is zen and the art of putting letterpress type away....

Why We Watch Movies During the Elective Course

It had to be pointed out to me by my typography tutor what the purpose of watching movies on a Thursday and Friday had to do with our elective course. Don’t get me wrong, film is one of my favourite forms of art, yet it was impossible for me to make the connection between what movie was actually shown and what it had to do with my art education.

The films we watch are in Peckham cinema and accompany a fantastic lecture. My favourite was Seeing is not Seeing, a very interesting look at illusions and how our brain manipulates our sensory responses. Click below for more.
http://web.mit.edu/persci/gaz/gaz-teaching/index.html
http://www.lottolab.org/Illusions%20page.html

Anyway, back to why we watch crappy movies... For example, Hollow Man, Paul Verhoevan’s film about scientists who discover how to make people invisible, but their test subject becomes an insane killer who stalks them - staring Elizabeth Shue and Kevin Bacon. If anyone has seen it they’d know it’s a cheesy horror flick with great special effects, and yes it is one of the many where you see Kevin Bacon’s butt...

Thank god we discussed the purpose for watching these films in class or I would have never figured out that as artists and designers you need to make the connection of what you are watching/ experiencing, otherwise you’re just downloading information. You need to put it in perspective of what you are studying and what you are interested in, take the Hollow Man’s wonderful animation sequence of Kevin Bacon turning invisible, or the ape, as an animator and figure drawer you could appreciate the level of detail in the anatomy and the sequential breakdown to transparency.

I like this way of thinking. It’s positive! It stops me from moaning, “this sucks”, or “I don’t get it” and establish a connection to something relevant that I’m doing at the moment.

Mark Pawson's lecture at Camberwell

I’m not going to compare Mark Pawson’s work to Tony Hayward’s because I don’t think it’s fair, even though both are book artists, their style and approach is completely different. They both publish books about their collections, Mark's have a lovely hand made feel to them, while Tony’s are printed in letterpress, something I’ll go into later where I'll convince you that there just is no comparison. I would, however, like to compare the experience of the their lectures because both of their talks at Camberwell are the only real in depth work of artist’s book art I’ve been exposed to.

Mark Pawson had a much larger audience, instead of presenting to just the typography elective students, about 20, he did his to around 80.
Like Tony, Mark showed us his collection of hand made books about his collections. Noggins, those small wooden troll like viking figures, and Kindereggs, the chocolate eggs with a toy inside, are a couple I remember - and what he said were his most noted books.

I like the roughness of the Kinder Egg book and the quirkiness of the subject. Being from the States I’ve never in fact experienced the chocolate egg myself, but wonder if it’s fair to compare them to the comics inside Bazooka Joe bubble gum?


My favourite piece of his was his Open/ Closed necklace he designed in collaboration with Tatty Devine. I think it exceeds his other work in craftsmanship and wit.

Besides the larger audience Mark presented to, he also had to deal with three slide projectors being faulty making it impossible to show his work on screen. This I think was a good thing as we got to see first hand and experience the actual work. He was also put on the spot quite haughtily by a few students who questioned why he didn’t get a bigger publisher to distribute his books, and what the lecture had to do with illustration (it was in the timetable as an illustration talk).

I say I like the roughness as an element of Mark’s work and the hand made quality to it but I have to say in respect to the cost it is lacking in quality compared to the books of Tony Hayward that are similar in size but for me surpass Mark’s in construction and material and for a less expensive price.

Mark ended his lecture though in true style and gave the students that were left in the auditorium free dibs on a bunch of his work!

You can check out a collection of the artist’s work here http://www.mpawson.demon.co.uk/

Paragraph of text, an installation for typography

I don’t know what’s drawing me towards more sculptural and installation projects, but I think I’m slowly defining what direction I want my art to take.

After considering different topics of text to use for my paragraph layout for the typography elective, I came up with the idea of writing how I came up with the idea. It sounds confusing but all I did was write my response to the critique we had from our sentence illustration project and my thought processes and actions to resolve the paragraph.

The text for my paragraph is this:

Get rid of broken bulb Push it back Try spot varnish Ask Ian Write with wire Construct so it can be reproduced Limited Copies One hundred words Scan glass Photocopy shattered glass Try tracing paper Project text with light Manipulate shadow Keep shattered glass Spot varnish looks good Find smooth shiny paper Place sentence in top left corner Mount broken glass top right and bottom left Shadow in the centre Spot varnish paragraph of text Thought process of coming up with this idea Place bottom right

I thought this language worked well with my sentence, I have no idea, it’s just a simple juxtaposition of the statement. I left out all full stops because I wanted it to be just one stream of thought/ text.

I was pleased again with the spot varnish and next tried the installation. From the paragraph you’ll see that my original intention was to have the image projected on to the letterpressed paper, but I actually preferred it on its own, huge on the wall.

I have no idea, sentence redo

Sam, our typography tutor, suggested I try spot varnish on the letterpress for the next working stage of my sentence.
I was really pleased with the way this came out! Even though, he didn’t want me to go back to actual smashed glass, I decided I liked it to much to listen. So, I ended up spot varnishing the text, printed by Ian and gluing the glass onto the paper that was adhered to mount board.

I like the spot varnish because it gave it a lovely shimmery effect, and you could hardly see it depending on the light. I decided I would stay with this technique for my paragraph and page of text projects.

Tony Hayward and Book Art

Tony Hayward gave our typography class a presentation of his astounding collection of all sorts of STUFF one Wednesday afternoon. I’m capitalising STUFF here to somehow illustrate how much of it there really was, a ton! Mainly it consisted of his artist books about his art, and items and experiences from his trips to India. It also included, letterpressed postcards, invitations, flip books, art books, plastic bags recycled from banners from Indian streets among other things. Actually thinking of the plethora of STUFF makes it hard to recall exactly how much STUFF there actually was.
What I do recall is how everyone seemed to listen intently, or appreciatively I would say, because of how he described his STUFF. It was like he was so into it that we were into it. For example the way he described the big, plastic, plaid, mothball smelling bag made from an Indian street banner was not done with necessary over the top excitement, but was endearing because Tony really was excited about it, you could tell he just really loved his STUFF. It was like he gave us a peak into the time capsule of his life, like we were looking through his attic... you have to give respects to that.

Tony’s work can be found at the book store
http://www.bookartbookshop.com/docs/opening.htm
Tony Hayward has been publishing books and postcards since the early 1990s. They feature his own work as a visual artist under such titles as The Castle and other works and Comedy of Errors. Travelling to India for more than fifteen years, he has also published books which document his collection of Indian contemporary objects formed during trips to the Sub-continent. With such titles as Made in India and 89 Indian Kerosene Lamps they focus on utilitarian objects made from scrap or waste material.

Illustrating a sentence, I have no idea

The first typography project Sam set the class was to illustrate a sentence without using images, strictly text. We did this in graphics the first quarter in letterpress and I hated it then... just as much as I did in that moment. Last time we had to choose from Rumi, this time was more Rumi but also Wilde and a children’s poetry author that I can’t remember.

The statement I chose reflected the bewildered temperament I had in the instant. I chose a sentence from a Rumi poem, it was, ‘”I have no idea.”

The next thing we did was go around and room and tell the rest of the class our sentence then everyone had two minutes to write down their suggestions of how to approach the brief.

The brain storming session was not as useful as I wanted it to be to help come up with a direction for my project. I told the class I didn’t want to use light bulbs straight off the bat, let’s get rid of the clichés. I wanted to do something on thought process, illustrating something big and blurry and complex and ending with small and simple, something kind of honest. I wanted to try hand drawing the text.

We had to present two or three options the following week, this is what I was trying to narrow down from:

1. On crumpled paper, “I have no” on the edges “idea” in the middle
2. Lots of crumpled paper in a bin with the text “I have no idea” scattered throughout and visible through the rubbish bin basket wire.
3. Written in a fingerprint on an exhalation from a bus window
4. On scraps of paper
5. A maze coming out with “idea” at the end
6. blank canvas
7. some kind of mechanical machine, an idea machine
8. drawing of elaborate “idea” and “i have no” printed on an eraser
9. print on toilet paper and each square has a different letter of “i have no idea”
10. post it notes, hand drawn “i d e a” printed on an eraser “i have no”
11. printed on a pencil

The problem I was facing was I kept coming to the conclusion that to illustrate “I have no idea” was to display a white piece of paper, a blank one. I didn’t want to use the letterpress because of my hatred for its finicky application and if I was going to have to use text, which is the whole point, I wanted to hand draw it.

I considered writing the words “I have no idea” and blacking them out. Then I wanted to try smashing a light bulb onto the paper around it. In the end I wrote I have no idea on the light bulb and smashed it, this was my starting point.

My second approach was to hand draw the word idea, a letter each on a post it note, rub them out, and carve “I have no” into an eraser. Three attempts it took me to do this, as much as I enjoyed cutting into rubber, it was a painfully slow process.


I also tried “i have no idea” on pencils, I thought this would work well if I painted each pencil to look like a light bulb... four hours later I was asking myself, “what the hell was I thinking this looks ridiculous” the cliché had got me! I tried with simply the text and it was more successful and took only 15 minutes instead of a few hours.

The majority of the class agreed that the smashed light bulb was the strongest and to work from this, Sam at the time did not. He wanted me to “push it back” for it to be able to be reproduced. Of course I went against this and wanted it to remain sculptural, so decided to make an installation! The next project was to illustrate a paragraph of text, this we needed to source ourselves and had to tie in somehow with the sentence.

It is what it is, Dan Flavin at the Hayward

I think I went to the Dan Flavin exhibition at the Hayward too early on a Monday morning because my eyes were so sensitive to the light that I could only take 40 minutes in of this stunning show.

As soon as you enter the exhibition it’s as if you immediately transcend into a futuristic, disco glowing, geometric green field of kryptonite. And immediately you want to “oooh and ahhh”...and put on sunglasses.


I was not at all familiar with Flavin’s work but knew that of his friends and contemporaries, Donald Judd and Carl Andre. I have to say I wasn’t an avid fan of American Minimalism until I saw Flavin’s work. I think it’s fascinating and full of energy in the literal and metaphorical sense. Flavin’s work is what it is: aesthetically pretty installations of light, but it’s more than that too. He’s not just whacking up light bulbs, he’s consciously considering colour, space and shadow, and however the simplicity comes across, the intelligence of those matters are also apparent. It’s like he’s painting with light and it creates something very lovely and almost audio. I can’t remember if you can hear the buzz of the light bulbs but I felt like it created something musical.

I enjoyed the sketches and drafts that were on display, I spent probably more time looking at these, as I said, it was very early and very bright for a Monday. But in these framed pages was a peak into the thought process and planning for the installations which was a great insight into the light constructions.

I love how Flavin named his work, usually personal acknowledgements to his friends or interests. There didn’t seem to always be a link between the name and the actual work, but I like that too. Some of them are called:

• the diagonal of May 25, 1963 (to Constantin Brancusi)


• pink out of a corner (to Jasper Johns)


• monument 4 for those who have been killed in ambush (to P.K. who reminded me about death)


• untitled (to you, Heiner, with admiration and affection)
  1973

Flavin was born in Queens, NY in 1933. Besides doing a few art courses at Columbia he had no formal art education. I was intrigued to find before he became an artist he was studying to be a priest. He died in 1996.

I found this quote of his about his work and think it sums up the show. Check it out it’s at the Hayward until April 2 and it’s half price on Mondays, just don’t go too early...

It is what it is, and it ain’t nothin’ else. . . .  There is no overwhelming spirituality you are supposed to come into contact with. . . . It’s in a sense a ‘get-in-get-out’ situation. And it is very easy to understand. One might not think of light as a matter of fact, but I do. And it is, as I said, as plain and open and direct an art as you will ever find.” [1]
—Dan Flavin

Robert Morgan Animation Lecture Overview

Robert Morgan is a 30 year old animator and film maker. He came in to Camberwell to give a lecture on animation to our course elective group and show his stuff. I was very impressed by his work... but I also have to say that I was seriously creeped out by it, even now, thinking about it disturbs me, his work is so dark and weird... I loved it!

I much prefer his stop animation pieces to his more recent live action work. In most of his early animations the main character is rendered from plasticine, or plasticine like, to look old, ugly, pot-belied and asexual, the substance they’re made from creates a very visceral reaction. But it’s not really how these characters look that’s the most engaging, it’s Morgan’s stories. Take for example,

The Separation a tale of separated siamese twins, who then realise one day while at work they want to be conjoined again and go ahead with the procedure... just thinking about it now bothers me.

Cat with Hands is an interesting concept but I think it lost a lot of Morgan's edge incorporating live action. This is a short film based on his young sister’s nightmare, a cat that has human hands. The film is an account of a feline that lives in a graveyard and steals people’s body parts for himself.
See what you think, view it here, http://www.jengajam.com/r/Cat-With-Hands

And I’d say Monsters, his first short live action film, was the least successful that he presented to us. "It's the story of 8-year-old Stan, a troubled child with a vivid imagination and a spiteful older sister. One Sunday afternoon, violent visions and sibling hostility spiral dangerously out of control." For me, the blood and guts to it just seemed unnecessary, like they were only added to look cool instead of for purpose, as I think it would have been much darker with out it. I thought the hostile relationship between the brother and sister was interesting, but again, it just didn’t seem believable at times that they could be so evil. I don’t know, maybe Morgan was just trying to fit too much in? The boy’s skin disease on his hands, the bullying older sister, his imagination, the relationship between the kids and the mother, the asylum, and then the next door rabbit... in 10 minutes.


In any rate, I feel Robert Morgan is an extremely interesting and talented artist.
Even if I didn’t particularly care for his most recent work, I think he’s someone to watch out for in the future and I hope he still continues with his provocative stop animations.

From Animation to Typography, an Elective Switch

The typography elective has turned out to be a surprise. A good surprise! I entered the course after a disappointing first day of animation...

After being stuck in that sweaty IT PC lab for three hours going through the beginnings of Flash MX I was bored and disappointed. I thought it would have been more drawing or concept based, but it was in fact, a step by step guide to using the Macromedia software. For me, I’ve been using it for the past four years, so that first day was tedious, though on a positive note, since I’ve always used it to publish for the web it was nice to learn a few new tricks for doing heavier file size animations.

Thankfully I saw Patrick, graphics course director, in the canteen area during lunch, and thankfully he asked me how the elective was going. Of course I didn’t hold back my criticism and after describing my frustrations he said, “I thought you’d be better off with typography...” at this time I panicked a little, realising he just confirmed my suspicion that I sucked at type during the first 10 weeks of graphics and thought, I should take his suggestion and try to improve.

That night I was feeling hesitant about switching and thought I’d best speak to the animation tutor to see if she could offer any advice. I HATED typography in Graphics and felt dubious about transferring, even after speaking to Patrick, I was convinced I just had a bad first day in animation. So, I approached the tutor in the next morning’s lecture (Robert Morgan’s animation) and told her I felt the class might not be right for me with all of my Flash experience and asked if we would be learning any of the traditional and experimental concepts of animation. She replied with something along the lines of this, “you can push the brief whichever way you like, Katie will be doing some tutorials in After Effects, but no, I won’t have time to show you how to get under a camera. I can’t tell you what to do, you have to do what you want to do.”

I left after the lecture and switched to typography.