Making Sense of the Type
After my Manifesto presentation I decided I wanted to create a printed version of some description. At first I was going to come up with an illustrative poster which I could screen print as I was keen to get back in the print room and off the computer. After some thinking I decided it would probably be more benficial for me to try and experiment with the lead type and create a letter pressed manifesto. After spending a week at Vernon street creating letter pressed woodblock posters I had got the feel for the process and settled on this method. I headed to the print room to find that none of the staff were actually trained on the machine and few of the staff knew how to set type. I didn't let this get to me and I decided I would just try and do it by myself. I had a look through the cases to see what type I had to work with. I found allot of the type was either too big or too small for the size I was wanting to print. There was also only A4 chases available which limited how big I could produce my poster.
Chosen Type Faces....To Begin with
I started off by choosing several typefaces that I thought might work together nicely and that are off a similar weighting. The type needs to work together and compliment each other in order to work.
Times Bold 36 pt
Caslon Italic 48 pt
Times 36 pt
Chisel 48 pt
Clarendon Bold 30 pt
Leading
Setting the Type
It took me around a day to figure out where each letter was in the draws, as there wasn't a map available for reference. This was a massive pain in the arse, and made the task so much more confusing and slow. It wasn't until I went for an interview the week after I had finished my printing that I found out there was a a mapped out set place for all the letter forms. However the lack of map meant that now I pretty much know where everything needs to go in the draws. It took me around 2 days to set this in the chase. A few hours of my time was probably spent trying to find leading for the spacing between words. This was a hard task as the leading for each typeface was quite sparse I had to half the weighting and use double the leading instead in many cases. For example there was no 48pt Caslon leading for spacing so had to use 2 x 24pt to make up for the lost height.
Printing
After finally finishing setting my type me and the technicians tried to set up the Vandercook but with no luck. We managed to set the chase in the bed but when it came to actually inking up the rollers and printing they decided it wasn't the best idea. This was pretty annoying as I had spent 2 solid days setting the type.
This was a massive set back which was out of my hands. There seems to be only one member of staff within Leeds College of Art who actually knows how to use the machinery and he doesn't even work at the Blenheim Site which is pretty annoying as it makes you wonder why they even have the equipment available to students.
I decided Instead of trying to use the Vandercook I would just experiment using the vice presses to print with. The problem with this process is that its fiddly slow and is more prone to errors. There is also the fact that the pressure will not always be even. It is pretty much a bodge job in comparison to the automated even printing capabilities that the Vandercook offers. It is much slower as tyou have to manually ink the chase up after every print, carefully placing the paper on top without it moving and smudging. This means that every print is not central and will need trimming down. Once you have placed the paper on the chase you then have to carefully place some padding on top, however this seems to move about quite a bit which ruined many prints. After tightening the press you then have to do everything again but backwards, which creates more problems. I found that on many occasions I would ruin my print trying to remove the padding or from pulling the stock off the chase. There were loads of problems that cropped up from printing this way which is a shame, however the process has been really helpful in many ways and has taught me the importance of being gentle and taking your time when it comes to printing. Half the battle is in the preperation. Its a really time consuming and intricate process which needs time and care.
First Print
The other issue with letterpress is that you will never know what its going to look like properly until its printed, as the lead type in the chase looks beautiful regardless, it is not until it is printed that you see how well it works/doesn't work. After printing my first copy of my manifesto I wasn't that happy with it. I was unhappy with the Caslon type face as I don't think it worked with the other faces, I think the fact its an italic font makes it look out of place in comparison to the others. I also think I have used too many typefaces and I need to cut down in order to give it some consistency. However all my time wasn't wasted as this the first print has helped me to whittle down what is wrong with the design. I really like the Chisel font and also Clarendon Bold, they are quite unique faces and definitely have some character. I also like Times Bold, there were more faces available but non of them were big enough, or in some cases far too big. I also spotted that some of the letters were actually upside down. For example the 'n' on 6. Fear not, test the waters is actually a 'u' upside down! I found this test print was allot more useful than I had originally thought.
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