The Denver Art Museum's Frederic C. Hamilton building

To kick off the show, the Denver Art Museum hosted two events, including a night of printing demonstrations and a “letterpress typography symposium” with screenings of Jack Stauffacher, Printer about the San Francisco publisher Jack Stauffacher; and the recent Typeface documentary about the Hamilton Wood Type Museum.

I was honored to speak after the screenings on a panel with Jim Sherraden & Brad Vetter from the much-loved Hatch Show Print, Denver’s resident letterpress guru, Tom Parson, and Rick Griffith as moderator. As you might imagine, the discussion covered a variety of typographic topics, but seemed to have an emphasis on the history and culture of letterpress as it relates to contemporary typeface design, design education, and poster printing.

The highlight of the weekend was the opening of the Pressed exhibit and store in the Denver Pavillions. Rick and his team have collected a huge amount of contemporary letterpress work from all over the US and beyond, and presented it in an impressive gallery with giant 8-foot-tall wooden letters. Just about every inch of wall space is covered with colorful prints from Hatch Show Print, Amos Paul Kennedy Jr, the Hamilton 10th Anniversary Show, Yee-Haw Industries, and many, many, more artists/designers/printers.

The show will remain up in Denver through July 4th, after which it will continue on as a traveling show. A catalog is also being produced for the show. For more information and updates check DesignArtArtDesign, the Pressed project page on Kickstarter, and Matter on Twitter.

The treasure trove of vintage photography featured on Shorpy provides endless samples of commercial sign painting and architectural lettering from the 1850s through the 1950s. Though the site doesn’t specifically focus on the topic of graphic art, the abundance of lettering isn’t surprising considering the amount of images from the so-called Second Industrial Revolution – a period of dramatic growth in consumer culture, fueled in part by public advertising.

The high resolution of the images (most of which were extracted and adjusted from reference images in the Library of Congress research archive) makes thorough inspection a rewarding task. A surprising number of photographs that appear barren of lettering in their low-resolution form often reveal impressive examples when viewed at full size. In some instances you can even make out the signature of the lettering artist.

Many images on Shorpy show not only interesting lettering, but a high concentration of it. Any one scene may contain dozens of notable examples, stacked and layered as far as the eye (or camera) can see. This illustrates the volume as well as variety of lettering that was being crafted at the turn of the 20th century. Before mechanized sign production was the norm, lettering artists weren’t tempted by the same shortcuts that so many of today’s sign makers have succumbed to. Templates were used regularly for letterforms and layouts, but the variety of swashy scripts, catchwords, shading, punctuation, lightbulb illumination, and other such techniques added a certain character to the urban landscape which only survives today as ghost signs or in the work of a small number of specialized artists.

This post is the first in a series showing highlights of lettering on Shorpy. Each image links to the original photo page on Shorpy where full-sized, uncropped views can be accessed.

Behind the scenes of a new cover design by David Shields for a reissue of "American Wood Type"

Thirty-three years after its most recent printing, Rob Roy Kelly‘s seminal book on wood type, American Wood Type: 1828–1900, will finally be offered in newly printed form. The 350-page tome is being republished in paperback form by Matt Kelsey at the Liber Apertus Press in Saratoga, California. Kelsey informs me that the book is being printed digitally, on-demand, from high-resolution scans of the original 1969 hardcover edition. It will be made available starting March 31 for a retail price of $29.95.

The news will come as a relief to many students and others who have not been able to afford the prices which are usually asked for second-hand copies of the book. Both previously available editions — a 1969 hardcover by Van Nostrand Reinhold and a 1977 paperback by Da Capo Press — have been increasingly difficult to find at affordable prices. For example, at the time of writing this, only two copies are currently available on Amazon.com, both with price tags of  at least $750. Thrifty buyers have been able to get the book for much cheaper (I lucked out on a first-edition hardcover on eBay for $95 last October), but such deals have become few and far between.

1964 precursor folio of "American Wood Type"

This newest reissue features a short foreword by David Shields, caretaker of the Rob Roy Kelly American Wood Type Collection, in which he gives a brief history of the book and explains the impact it continues to have on designers and printers (myself included). Shields has also designed a new cover with types from the collection, inspired by the cover of Kelly’s 1964 folio precursor to the book.

In all other regards the book will be printed as a facsimile and, as such, will retain various typos and historical inaccuracies which David Shields and others have uncovered since the book’s first publication more than 40 years ago. While this is less than ideal, a proper follow-up would undoubtedly require much more work, time, and money; essentially it would be a different project. Shields’ foreword addresses these issues, referring readers to the Kelly Collection website for more current information (at least for the types in the collection).

One of the many reasons a reissue of the book has taken so long is related to the complexities and uncertainties surrounding its copyright information. The original 1969 publisher (Van Nostrand Reinhold) and copyright holder (Reinhold Book Corporation) were split and merged with other corporations several times over the years, with the rights to the book being moved around, licensed on a temporary basis (for the 1977 Da Capo Press reissue), and generally changing hands on numerous occasions. Despite, and perhaps because of this, the original publishing agreements cannot be found.

With the help of Rob Roy Kelly’s widow, Mary Helen, Kelsey researched and contacted all of the known corporate successors who acquired all or portions of the Van Nostrand Reinhold assets, and all have stated that they do not control the rights to the book. Kelsey’s conclusion — based on provisions that were common in agreements for scholarly works at that time — is that the rights have reverted to the author’s estate after the book went out of print. Under this belief, Mary Helen Kelly has granted a license to Liber Apertus Press for a reissue. For the first time the author’s family will receive royalties from sales of the book.

For those who are curious as to why a reissue of American Wood Type isn’t being carried out by a more notable or relevant organization — like Oak Knoll Press, RIT Cary Graphic Arts Press, Harry Ransom Center, or the Hamilton Wood Type & Printing Museum — the main reason that I can see is that Kelsey is the first to go to the trouble of researching and contacting all the possible copyright owners. Also, as a smaller on-demand publisher, Kelsey avoids higher investment costs that other publishers might have to put up for traditional printing and binding processes.

Adding another generation to the production process by scanning from a print will likely have some affect on the fidelity of the book’s reproduction, but I doubt it will be anything that would make the book worth anything less than $30. Indeed, the difference may be imperceptible. I’ve heard rumors that the original film negatives used to print the first edition still exist somewhere at Yale, which would be ideal for the purposes of reproduction (a proper digital scan of the negatives may even yield a better print than the 1969 edition), but I haven’t personally seen or heard anything concrete to that effect.

Liber Apertus previously took on a similar reprinting of the letterpress printing guide, General Printing, and plans to continue the series by reissuing other such books like American Wood Type that are in demand but out of print.

I must admit that my first gut reaction to the news that the book was being digitally reprinted, as a direct facsimile, using less-than-superior paper and binding, by a relatively tiny and unknown publisher, was something along the lines of skepticism. However, after remembering the shady lengths I went to in order to acquire my first copy of American Wood Type when I was a student (don’t ask), I ultimately think that having Kelly’s amazing book widely available again in any form is a good thing.

Detail of pages 86–87 in "American Wood Type"

The amazing Leeds Playbills website contains nearly 5,000 medium-to-high resolution scans of vibrant playbills dating from the late 1700s up through the 1990s. The database, part of the Leodis digitization project, represents all the playbills in the Local Studies Library collection, with samples from a variety of historic theatres in the city of Leeds, as well as a group of related circus bills. Interestingly, the project is funded by the UK National Lottery‘s Big Lottery Fund (formerly the New Opportunities Fund).

Many of the prints showcase an impressive array of large and ornamented types. Not surprisingly, the circus bills are among the most vibrant on the site, many utilizing multiple colors with chromatic typefaces, illustrations, and sensationalist prose. There are also a few non-typographic lithographs with elaborately colored lettering and illustration.

Other than the obvious wow factor (!!!), the prints are interesting for several typo-historic reasons. First of all, they show many typefaces that aren’t seen as frequently on this side of the Atlantic, and perhaps even in the UK. Furthermore, it shows the type in real-world use (not as in self conscious type specimens), revealing how the printers organized the information through variations in letter style and layout. One advantage of the higher resolution enlargements is that you can get a sense of how much care was put in to the printing of each piece (the range is wide). Many of the bills also have a credit line citing which print shop ran the job, allowing an evaluation of each shop in comparison with others, and giving info about which venues employed which printers. Finally, some of the items give an interesting view in to the practice of updating information by pasting on additional slips of paper or overprinting.

Unfortunately the small thumbnail images make browsing a bit tedious, and some of the full-resolution images show streaking from faulty scanning equipment. The site does have some useful functionality though, including the ability to filter content according to dates, keywords, and venues.

While wide time range is represented, the most interesting material to me, typographically, is that from the mid-to-late 1800s — coincidentally also the same period in which wood type was at its height of production and use. I’ve compiled a collection of details from some of the more interesting samples below, each linked back to the original page where you can access an enlarged, un-cropped, view.

One week from today, the Type Directors Club in New York will host a lecture by Adrian Wilson about his collection of ephemeral lettering artifacts from the English textile trade of the 1800s and early 1900s. Wilson was kind enough to provide me with some sample images (below) and an interesting PDF describing the collection.

The topic of fabric merchant labels is an obscure one, but there seem to be many parallels with similarly intriguing fruit crate labels from roughly the same period. The text from the PDF gives some background on what Wilson will be discussing…

The 1842 Design and Copyright Act required that all pieces of cloth had to be clearly stamped of labeled with a “faceplate” that included the supplier’s identifying mark, and the cloth’s type and length.

Wilson’s collection — which he salvaged from cotton warehouses in Manchester, England — includes “over 2,000 hand-made wood and copper stamps used for printing the marks, around 4,000 unpublished printed stamp designs, and around 800 paper shippers’ tickets”. He was a guest on BBC’s Antiques Roadshow in 2005, but the collection has still yet to be shown publicly at any significant level.

Even after seeing all the background info and sample images, I’m still not 100% sure what to expect from the lecture. I am pretty confident, though, that it will include a lot of ornamented 19th-century lettering; and that’s enough for me.

What: TEXTile, a lecture about the typography of the 19th century textile trade
When: January 28, 2010; 6–8 PM
Where: Type Directors Club; 347 W 36th St, #603; New York, NY [map]
Cost: Free for TDC members; $20 for non-members; $15 for students
Registration: E-mail director@tdc.org or call 212-633-8943

19th century textile trade ephemera courtesy of Adrian Wilson

A portion of Bethany Heck's wood type collection

Bethany Heck is a student currently in her senior year in the Graphic Design program at Auburn University in Alabama. She has been collecting wood type since her freshman year there — a fact that seems to make sense considering her design pedigree (her father teaches graphic design). To date, she estimates her collection at about 600 wood type blocks — some as part of complete fonts and some as miscellaneous sorts.

End Grain is Bethany’s new website which showcases her collection, as well as other letterpress-related content. She describes its inception thus…

The End Grain was born out of my desire to have some sort of letterpress website […] I was frustrated by the lack of sites dedicated to letterpress and I wanted a place I could go and just get lots of great examples of letterpressed works and hear from others who shared my passion for wood type.

I have been advising Bethany with some of her work on the site so far, which includes several distinct features. First, the Daily Letters and Character Studies series of posts highlight Bethany’s growing collection of type, piece by piece. She provides historical details about the typefaces and manufacturers, but the most prominent and interesting aspect of the write-ups is her attention to the details of each particular block as its own unique object. Her reflections on specific scratch marks, manufacturing irregularities, specks of dried ink, etc often border on archaeological examinations. The posts are appropriately accompanied by high-resolution scans to show all the details.

Details from wood type scans at End Grain

Some blocks are also presented side-by-side with their prints for comparison. The prints aren’t necessarily the cleanest proofs possible, but this is partially forgivable considering the limitations of Bethany’s on-press experience so far.

Beyond showing Bethany’s type collection, the site functions as a resource for others interested in letterpress printing, with growing reference info on print shops, websites, retail stores, etc. Relevant content is also aggregated from sites like Flickr, Etsy, eBay, and Twitter.

Another element of interest on End Grain is a series of posts documenting Bethany’s experiments with movable type production. The projects so far have ranged in scope from replacing missing characters in an incomplete font, to creating blocks of a digital typeface that hadn’t previously been available as movable type.

Up until now, all of the projects have been executed by affixing thin laser-cut plexiglass  to a wooden base, emulating the veneer type production process.

Plexiglass veneer cuts and wooden base blocks for a set of Futura Condensed printing type. Note the guidelines inscribed on the base blocks to assist in aligninment when affixing the veneer cuts.

Futura Condensed with plexiglass veneer replacement blocks

Print made with the completed Futura Condensed font

Replica blocks of № 504 made with clear plexiglass

Print made with replica blocks of № 504

Plexiglass veneer blocks of Matinee Gothic

Print made with the Matinee Gothic blocks

These projects on their own are enough to warrant recognition, but the fact that they’re all done by the same student and presented the way they are makes them that much more notable. Furthermore, knowing that Bethany’s printing experience has been relatively limited, it’s impressive that she’s enthusiastic enough to initiate her own projects. This comes as no surprise though, knowing her strong personality and enthusiasm. It’ll be interesting to see what other things she does in the future and beyond graduation.

Image courtesy of Tillamook Air Museum

While driving up the West Coast last summer, I passed what is probably the largest example of typography that I have ever seen. Off Pacific Coast Highway 101, the blimp hangar at the Tillamook Air Museum stands 192 feet tall, and is reportedly the world’s largest clear-span wooden structure.

Photo from TheRogue on Flickr

Emblazoned on the side of the hangar are the words AIR MUSEUM, set huge in what appears to be Helvetica Bold (or is that Helvetica Neue Medium?) — easily legible from thousands of feet away.

After seeing the hangar and making my own estimates, I confirmed with the museum’s curator, Christian Gurling, that the glyphs measure 100 feet from baseline to cap-height. That’s ≈120,000 pt Helvetica!*

Depiction of the scale of the Tillamook Air Museum letters relative to a 6-foot tall person

Christian also told me that 500 gallons of paint were used for the job, which was done in the summer of 1994. Unfortunately, he didn’t have any details about how the letters were applied. I’m guessing they were enlarged by superimposition on a scaled grid, outlined, and then filled in (not everyone can hand-paint Helvetica from memory, after all). I only saw the hangar from afar, but I’d guess a closer inspection of the letters would reveal more clues.

Larger typographic lettering may exist somewhere else in the world — most likely as part of an air traffic guidance system, if so — but I’ve yet to see it in person. Feel free to cite any relevant examples in the comments.

*Apple’s version of Helvetica Bold set at 1,200 pt produces an E glyph exactly 1 foot tall.

New Year's Eve digits being delivered to Times Square. Photo via the Times Square Alliance

Next week, the most important glyphs in the United States will be numbers hanging above One Times Square, welcoming a new decade at midnight on New Year’s Eve. The two most crucial digits, 1 and 0, were delivered to Times Square last week in true New York style: by pedicab.

The complete 2010 display stands 7 feet tall and is covered with 545 scalloped LED flood light bulbs, which are being hyped up for their superior energy-efficiency over the halogen lights used on previous years’ displays. A representative for lexiphane.com commented on a related Gothamist article with some entertaining / insightful (if slightly vulgar) thoughts regarding “green” lighting for the display:

I love the irony of energy-efficient lighting in Times Square. It’s like spraying Febreeze on a piss-soaked bum and then patting yourself on the back for improving the environment.

For your sake, I will refrain from making jokes about illumination in this entry.

I’m not sure which typeface was used to fabricate the numbers (if they were indeed based on a typeface), but the choice of a “chamfered”  industrial style works well with the marquee-esque bulb lighting. It also has historical ties with large-scale lettering: traditional sign painters often use simple polygonal letterforms when working large, since they can be scaled up more easily using a systematic grid, requiring fewer calculations for curves.

The "2010" New Year's Eve sign on display at the Duracell SmartPower Lab in Times Square. Photo via the Times Square Alliance

I have a soft spot in my heart for this method of building / filling letterforms with lightbulbs. Though certainly a universal practice in sign fabrication, it’s especially prevalent in New York City. In particular, the Theatre District surrounding Times Square is an epicenter of examples — rivaled only perhaps by The Strip in Las Vegas.

"NYC" lightbulb lettering Illustration by Jeff Rogers

With that said, the decidedly dotted stylization (as opposed to solidly-lit forms or high-tech flatscreen displays) works perfectly in the cultural context of Times Square. It evokes the bright-light lettering tradition that has inspired people to refer to the section of Broadway near Times Square as the “white-light district”, “Street of the Midnight Sun”, “Great White Way”, etc. This lightbulb lettering seemed to parallel New York City’s prosperity in general, reaching a pinnacle during the 1920s — just before the prevalence of neon tube lighting and the Great Depression.

The lightbulb lettering for the title screen of "The Roaring Twenties" (1939) epitomizes a specific time and place in the history of the USA and New York City. Screenshot image via the Movie Title Stills Collection

Similar connections to iconic marquee signage could be pushed even further with the New Year’s display if its lights followed the classic “chase” blinking pattern. Whether or not the designers behind the Times Square numbers consciously consider these kinds of cultural connections… I couldn’t say. Either way, the end product seems to honor relevant lettering traditions, even while using modern lighting technology and being presented in the world’s premiere location for high-tech signage.

The giant digits are currently on view at the Duracell SmartPower Lab in Times Square, where visitors can pedal bikes to charge the batteries that will light the display when the ball drops next week.

Greeting cards from RIT

I’ll start with a topic very close to my heart: the book Specimens of Chromatic Wood Type, Borders, &c., Manufactured by Wm. H. Page & Co… This mind-blowing object, published in 1874, is something that I have much, much, much, more to talk about than I will go in to now. Instead, in the interest of time, I’ll just note a great set of greeting cards published by the RIT Cary Graphic Arts Press that feature scaled-down reproductions from the book.

Also available are similar cards featuring reproductions from a great French lettering manual, Nouvel Album de Letters Peintes.

You might as well check out all the cool stuff that the press sells related to printing history. It’s a great source of cheap but awesome gifts.

Both sets of 4.25″ × 6″ cards are sold in packs of 8 — 2 each of 4 designs, with envelopes. I’ve purchased several batches myself over the past few years.

☛ $7 from the RIT Cary Graphic Arts Press

Wood type monogram coasters

There are tons of products available online that are printed using wood type (I’ll show some more below). The thing I personally like about this set of coasters from Marquand Books is that the type isn’t intentionally “distressed”, as is so common with many similar products. Instead, the letters are printed cleanly in solid black.

I can’t say that I would ever really use my own set of hand-printed coasters; but whatever, it’s wood type!

They also offer some wood type doorknob hangers, but I like the coasters much better myself.

The 3.5″ square coasters come in a nice little packaged set of 9 — 3 each of 3 colors (orange, green, and blue).

☛ $8.50 from Marquand Books

Decorative lettering bags

Similar to the cards show above, this bag from Blue Q reproduces alphabets from beautifully colored French chromolithograph lettering samples. Unfortunately it’s sold without any proper credit to the original source, but I think it might be from Modeles de Lettres, 1884.

Blue Q also has the cool HI/BYE shoulder bag featuring decorative lettering by the talented Ray Fenwick.

Both bags are made with recycled woven polypropylene.

☛ $11.99 / $9.99 (respectively) from Blue Q

2010 calendar

This calendar was printed by Allen Stump at his a Mano Press. Calendars are great for end-of-year gifts, but they’re ten times better if printed with the same wood type collection I encountered on my visit with Allen over the summer.

There are other worthy items from the a Mano Press available on their Etsy shop.

The wirebound caledars are 12½″ square, printed in multiple colors on a pair of Vandercooks.

☛ $20 from the a Mano Press on Etsy

PLINC Eventide M print

House Industries has been doing some great stuff with the prestigious library of Photo-Lettering Inc since they acquired the materials in 2003. One highlight of such work is this silkscreen-printed poster featuring a chromatic glyph from PLINC’s Eventide alphabet, originally designed by Paul Carlyle, digitized by Jeremy Mickel, and printed on this poster by hand with metallic inks by David Dodde.

The hand-numbered  26″ × 20″ poster is printed on 130# acid-free cover weight paper. I picked up a copy for myself when House was selling them at the TDC recently.

☛ $40 from House Industries

Daily Drop Cap poster

The first alphabet of Jessica Hische’s Daily Drop Cap project that I wrote about previously has found its way on to a poster.

The 15″ × 22″ poster is an archival Giclee print on Velvet Fine Art paper and comes signed by Jessica.

☛ $100 from Jessica Hische

POP! Goes The Weasel poster print

For people looking for kid-related gifts, this poster from Richard Ardagh and New North Press shows three variations of the traditional nursery rhyme, each set in a variety of 19th-century display type styles.

They made a video showing the process of printing the posters, accompanied with an endearingly British singsong take on the rhyme.

There are a few other prints offered from the same collaboration that are worth checking out too.

The 560 mm × 760 mm (≈22″ × 30″) poster was hand-set and printed in an edition of 200.

☛ £75 from New North Press

Marquee alphabet lights

We enter a higher price bracket with these large-scale lighted marquee letters from Urban Outfitters. I promote this item somewhat begrudgingly since I’m not particularly a fan of some of the practices of Urban Outfitters. However, these letters are too cool to leave out and I couldn’t find any info about how to get them otherwise.

The particular shape of serifs used for these letters designate them as being of a “mansard” style. William Page patented and sold wood fonts of this style in 1879 as “№ 121″, but a thorough history requires more details than I’ll go in to here.

The metal letters vary in width from character to character, but are all 24″ high × 4″ deep.

☛ $178 from Urban Outfitters

Alpha Coffee Table

I don’t have any expectation that anyone will actually buy this after reading about it here, but I include it for the sake of relevance. The top of this table from Crate & Barrel is composed of wood type — or, actually, a solid piece of wood that’s been carved, painted, and finished to make it look like wood type. According to the product description, the table was designed  by “a London graphic designer with a penchant for, and a large personal collection of, antique printers’ blocks”. I can’t say I know who that is, but if I don’t know them already, they sound like someone I could have a good conversation with.

The table has a steel base and glass top that covers the letters; it measures 36″ wide × 36″ deep × 17″ high.

☛ $599 (on sale from $899!) from Crate & Barrel

Alphabet Drawers

Also in the realm of things I know people will think is cool but won’t actually ever buy is this big chest of wood type inspired drawers from Kent & London. In fact, there’s a good chance you may have already seen this on design and type blogs already, but I’m including it here for its notable relevance.

The letter style used on the front of each drawer approximates one offered in wood type by a huge number of manufacturers, most of them calling it, simply, “Gothic“. Similar to the “mansard” mentioned above, a whole article could be written about this style, but I’ll refrain for now.

The solid oak chest measures 800 mm high × 1200 mm wide × 300mm deep (≈32″ × 47″ × 12″)

☛ £2,700 from Kent & London

Support the Hamilton Wood Type Museum

Coming back to the real world… if conspicuous consumption and material possessions aren’t your thing, you can always take the charity route and support this deserving organization on someone else’s behalf.

Membership to the Hamilton Wood Type & Printing Museum is available on a number of levels which include things that you can wrap and give to people if you want, like digital fonts, printed specimen sheets, books, shirts, etc. Members also get reduced studio rental cost incentives.

If you aren’t the membership kind of gift giver, the museum also sells a variety of other wood type products.

☛ Various member levels are available from the Hamilton Museum

Help restore the Gastrotypographicalassemblage

Another charity gift option is to help fund the restoration of Lou Dorfsman‘s amazing wall of lettering. I won’t go in to much detail describing it here (I’m hoping to do a related report at some point in the future), but this piece of wood type-ish design is more than worthy of the care and restoration that the Center for Design Study is working towards giving it.

This short interview with Dorfsman gives a good idea about what you’d be helping to preserve.

☛ Donations of any size can be made to the Center for Design Study

Yee-Haw wood type prints

I’ll end this list of gift ideas with the items I’d like the most… This series of 3 specimen posters (1, 2, 3) was printed by Yee-Haw Industries and features  a huge variety of wood type faces. I saw all 3 of the prints at Yee-Haw’s Chelea market show in October, and have been wanting them ever since. They definitely aren’t cheap, but after having printed a similar specimen poster myself over the summer, I can fully appreciate the amount of work it takes to produce something like this. These images definitely don’t do the prints proper justice, but I’ll show them all regardless.

Yee-Haw has tons of other wood type stuff in their Etsy store (18 pages worth!), so definitely check that out as well.

Also, if you’re in the New York City area this month, Yee-Haw will be up from their home in Knoxville to sell stuff at a bunch of different craft fairs, flea markets, etc, including a pop-up shop at Chelsea Market (where their show is still up). Instead of repeating all the details, I’ll just direct you to their official announcement.

The color posters above are printed 2-color on 30″ × 42″ archival acid-free 100% cotton paper with deckled edges.

Please buy me all of them.

☛ $500 each from Yee-Haw Industries on Etsy

Happy holidays!

Detail of a poster sheet from the "Woodtype Now!" project by Dafi Kühne

Dafi Kühne at Hatch Show Print in 2008

Dafi Kühne is a designer and printer with a recent bachelor’s degree from the Zurich University of Arts‘ Visual Communications department. He also worked as an intern at the legendary Hatch Show Print poster shop in 2008.

Woodtype Now! is Kühne’s bachelor thesis project that explores experimental production methods for letterpress printing. It is one of the more interesting efforts from a handful of contemporary wood type projects I’ve come across recently, and stands out in its decidedly theoretical approach to the idea of wood type in a modern context…

Wood Type Now! seeks to transform […] traditional mechanical production methods into the 21st century by revolutionizing the way that prints are designed and produced by incorporating new peripheral hardware (i.e. lasercutter). Through the process of exploring the possibilities in regards to materials used and the way the classic printing block and set up are interpreted, the project redefines the conventional boundaries of the subject matter — as opposed to recreating a status quo with new means — and unlocks new frontiers.

Woodtype Now! dissertation

The project, mentored by Prof Rudolf Barmettler and Kurt Eckert, consists of several related parts. First, a 30-page dissertation, Woodtype Now! — An Analysis of Application Range, Possibilities and Potential of Woodtype for Graphic Design in the 21st Century. was written under the mentorship of Margarete von Lupin. Dafi has provided a PDF of the dissertation*, which is in German, but a rough translation to English via Google gets the general ideas across (despite some formatting issues).

Eight interviews were conducted during research for the dissertation, and Dafi has also shared a 100-page PDF of the full transcripts*. These too are in German, but still comprehensible as rough English translations. The subjects of the interviews include…

• Alfred Hoffmann: Former CEO of Haa’sche Schriftgiesserei Münchenstein (his father made the “Helvetica Deal” in the ’50s). Haas bought Roman Scherer, the only Swiss wood type manufacturer, in 1966.
• Adelbert Müller: former worker at Haas; he cut wood type.
• Bastien Aubry: graphic designer, FLAG
• Diego Bontognali: graphic designer, Bonbon
• Bryce Mc Cloud: graphic designer and printer, Isle of Printing
• Georg Staehelin: poster designer
• Urs Jost: printer, Druckwerkstatt Olten
• Urs Lehni: graphic designer and publisher, Rollo Press

The interview document contains a lot of what Dafi describes as “blah blah”, but there is also some interesting information on the history of European wood type (a topic that has been relatively under-represented in the significant publications to date).

The next aspect of Woodtype Now! is the webpage which presents experimental prints (single-color, 10 cm × 10 cm) using various letterpress production techniques, including lasercutting, “shimming”, adhesive foil application, wrapping with string, etc (selected images shown below; explore the webpage for a more comprehensive overview).

Finally, Dafi produced What is Woodtype Now?, a 9-page, 23-colour letterpress newspaper interpretation/expansion of the experimental exercises (again, only a small sampling is shown here; see the webpage for more).

While none of the material from the Woodtype Now! project is technically even wood type in the strictest sense of the term — it would be more accurately described as “typography printed from composite woodblocks” than proper movable type — Dafi has also done some extensive wood type production leading up to his dissertation. In 2008, he used a lasercutter to produce a full 10-cicero (≈128 pt) wood type veneer font of Univers with 250 individual sorts, as well as some larger sample letters of Railroad Gothic.

When I asked Dafi about the use of composite plates compared to movable type, his thoughts seemed to echo points from the ongoing debate about whether relief printing from digitally conceived photopolymer plates is any more or less valid than using traditional movable type…

[Producing movable type] was an important test before Woodtype Now! because I learned that it isn’t hard to make wood type in a traditional sense. There’s a lot of industrial art and woodworking knowledge involved, but from the present technical point of view, it’s not a big problem with a lasercutter.

More important for me was the question: What is wood type today? What can I do with a lasercutter that you can’t do with a pantograph and router? What do wood type prints look like today, without generating old-school or retro posters? Movable wood type has the huge advantage that it is reusable and it gives the analog layout and design process a boost, but it can’t be produced instantly (even with lasercutting there are two component constructions, so it takes a long time to produce). For Woodtype Now! I needed to do something fast! And now, after this work, I can decide if I want to do something with movable, reusable type or just a single-use woodblock. I can also decide if I want to use sustainable or cheap material …  It all just depends on the project.

I believe his logic is mostly valid, and am glad he utilizes the technology as he sees fit, without any dogmatic reservations. I would be interested, however, to see how his experiments with movable type might progress if he were experimenting more with the fundamental concept of how a piece of type can be physically constructed today, potentially altering how it is composed with other pieces of type. Either way, the work he’s accomplished thus far is impressive as is and exists on a conceptual and academic level above most undergraduate design work.

After graduating, Dafi still prints from his personal studio in Zürich. I wouldn’t be surprised to see him on the list of speakers at a future type or printing conference.

*Please contact Dafi for permission to republish any of the work presented here.