Extra, Extra

Extra time, who's really got it? And when we get it, what do we do with it? Me, I take classes.

I'm just wrapping up a continuing education letterpress class at the Cooper Union. It's being taught by Dan Morris who owns and operates The Arm letterpress shop in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. It's a pretty basic course, but it moved along quickly and I no longer feel like a beginner. Most of the class time is either spent pulling type out of the drawers or printing on one of the Vandercook presses.

When I signed up for this class I was looking for something that would get me away from the computer while creating something tactile. I love that I can run my fingers over my prints and feel the grooves where the type kissed the paper.

My interest in letterpress got started soon after I threw myself into the art of typography. I wanted to learn more about the early days of type and how it was originally used. There is such a rich history behind the wood and metal type and the presses used to print. The type in those drawers have been used in any number of prints over the years. I like to think about who has used the type before me and what story they were telling with it.

I really fell in love with wood type in this class. Every character has it's own nicks and notches, earned over time. Unfortunately, some of the wood type collections don't have the complete character set. Restricting, yes, but having limited selection adds its own sense of character to the prints. When setting the type, I had to get creative with the type I selected and looked at the letterforms to reuse them in other ways.

Is it worth it?

In this world of eBooks and iPads, everything is instant. I've gotten used to it and I'm sure I'm not alone in that. There is something to be said for waiting. It feels good to have to earn that print. I'm going to guess that other "web people" like myself are craving quality, tactile work and that the wonderful 8 Faces magazine owes much of it's success to that same idea.

It takes time to manually set type. It requires patience and attention to detail. There are no templates, no generated content, no CSS stylesheets to change the text color automatically. What's done is done, so its important to do it right and do it well. While I'm not going to go typeset this blog post, I really enjoy sitting down with a drawer of type and picking out what I need for a poster or a card. It just takes commitment, something I think could be said for anything really worth creating.

How does it relate to what I'm doing?

Letterpress may not directly relate to designing a website. But, working with these amazing machines and all of the wood and metal type allows for a renewed appreciation for type history and working with typographic hierarchy. The rich history of the characters, the way that the inks are mixed and spread on the rollers, how the metal type cuts through the initial fibers of the paper leaving a crisp and subtle indent along with the ink, all informs the type choices in my day job. The connection might not be direct, but it comes down to typographic hierarchy. When all you have to play with is type and a few line rules, The Elements of Typographic Style becomes your best friend.

After spending all week creating things that get sent off into the Internet, it feels great to create something that I can physically give to someone. I've set up an Etsy shop with a few of my prints. I'll be adding to it as I learn and print more.

Now, you go.

I know I'm a huge dork. I'm completely OK with spending my Saturday night in a letterpress shop. I've already booked time at The Arm outside of class to get more press time. I've joined the ink co-op there and I plan on printing on a regular basis. But I want to hear from you. How do you prefer to spend your free time? What are you excited to learn?