Image of the Day: Pine Swamp Road

Inking Ampersands

For my birthday, my son and daughter-in-law gave me some metal and wood letterpress ampersands to add to my collection.  A few weeks later the head pressman at work [Ron] was cleaning out the area where we store leftover ink used on past printings.  I asked if I could have one of the containers in order to ink up my collection, and Ron’s eyes lit up when he saw the ampersands.

A little ink goes a long way. You can see some of the test prints I made of each individual ampersand.

I arranged the ampersands in a ‘cloud’ for printing, inked them up, then used a brayer  to get smooth impression.

Holding the group as I inked up.

Pantone 659; a pretty sweet color.

Eric Whitacre's Virtual Choir 2.0, ‘Sleep’

“The 2011 Virtual Choir video features 2052 performances of 'Sleep' from 1752 singers in 58 countries, individually recorded and uploaded to YouTube between September 2010 and January 2011.”


Watch and listen the entire video here.

Wood Type of the Month: De Vinne

via International Printing Museum

Read this month’s wood-type column to learn what typeface was named not for the designer but for the man who foresaw the need for this typeface style.

Mercator: An Italic Hand

via letterology

A 1540 monograph of Gerardus Mercator on the lettering of maps in 16th C Netherlands and his treatise on the italic hand. One of only 3 known copies in existence. Mercator (1512-1594), a Flemish mapmaker is best known for the Mercator projection world map named after him.

See more images here.

Ampersand Punch

I have a couple of metal ampersand punches. They are identical to each other, but I received them years apart. Terri got inspired and used one on her belt. 

Image of the Day: Mad Mex

Word of the Day: Bumf

via A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg

MEANING: Noun: Unwanted or uninteresting printed matter such as governmental forms, legal documents, junk mail, promotional pamphlets, etc.

ETYMOLOGY: Short for bum fodder, slang for toilet paper. Earliest documented use: 1889.

“A mortgage loan can generate 200 pages of bumf, most of it so boring and repetitious that no one has the energy or the time to read it all.”—John Gilmour; Lenders Use The Hoover Principle; The Sydney Morning Herald (Australia); Jan 20, 2001.

Image of the Day: Periodic Table of Typefaces

I found some wall space at work to hang the recent gift of The Periodic Table of Typefaces from my in-laws. 

4CP | Four Color Process adventures deep inside the comic book

via letterology


[From the 4CP blog] “. . . Lately, I've been trying to master the relationship between dot patterns and the finite color value options of vintage four-color process. Typically there were only three basic values for cyan, magenta, and yellow: 100%, 50%, and 25%, which were combined to create the optical illusion of 45-65 colors. (70% was also used sometimes.) These values account for the way a constituent color may appear as large or small dots or as what looks like a solid color with dots knocked out of it.

When you blow up process printing, you eliminate nearly all of the intended colors. There is no illusion of anything anymore, and no human intention behind what you’re seeing. It’s just the rudimentary building blocks of an inexpensive mechanical printing process, thrown into accidental relationships at the microscopic level.”


Discover more images here.

Earworm of the Day: The Only Living Boy in New York

The Only Living Boy in New York written by Paul Simon was recorded on November 15, 1969 as part of the fifth and final studio album by Simon & Garfunkel, Bridge Over Troubled Water.

Listen to it here.

The Dun Emer Press

Elizabeth Yeats standing at the iron handpress, with Beatrice Cassidy rolling out ink and Esther Ryan correcting proofs at the table at Dun Emer Press in 1903.

via letterology
“Elizabeth ‘Lolly’ Corbett Yeats (1868-1940) was the first commercial printer in Ireland to work exclusively on iron handpresses. She was also an art teacher and member of William Morris’s circle in London and studied with the Women’s Printing Society there. In 1902 she established a private press at the large home of Evelyn Gleeson in Dundrum near Dublin and was placed in charge of managing the new Dun Emer Press. With her sister Lily, a skilled needleworker, and Evelyn Gleeson they also began the Dun Emer Guild to train young women in bookbinding, printing and other craft trades so they might earn a living. In 1908, Elizabeth and her poet brother, William Butler Yeats started the Cuala Press, publishing over 70 fine edition books of Irish writers including 48 works by her brother William. . .”


More can be found here.

Eric Whitacre: A virtual choir 2,052 voices strong

via TED

“In a moving and madly viral video last year, composer Eric Whitacre led a virtual choir of singers from around the world. He talks through the creative challenges of making music powered by YouTube, and unveils the first 2 minutes of his new work, Sleep, with a video choir of 2,052.

Watch the TED talk here, and Eric Whitacre's Virtual Choir - Lux Aurumque here.

Planet eBook

via the PDF blog

Planet eBook hosts a growing number of iconic works of classic literature — free to download without needing a log-in or membership. 82 books are currently hosted in the library as PDF files, which can be opened and read on any computer or smartphone. The books served up on Planet eBook are all public domain material; meaning they can be downloaded, copied, printed, and shared without requiring authorization from the author or publisher — as long as you do not modify the content or sell them for a profit.

To read the novels on Planet eBook you will need a PDF reader. Visit Plant eBook here.

Nephew Art

A copy of B. Kliban’s art has had traveled with me and hung in the offices I’ve worked in since 1982. It has aged well over the years.

Fifteen More Minutes of Fame

via the Nightly Heller

Fifteen More Minutes of Fame at the Union Square Greengrocer’s Market in NYC — “The Andy Monument,” produced by the Public Art Fund is by Rob Pruitt and will on view until Oct 2. Bring your own soup cans!

Read and see more here.

Nerd Merit Badges

via PRINTERESTING

Printer Hero
“How does one earn this Nerd Merit Badge for being a ‘Printer Hero?’ It may appear that one must slay the Savage Printer, but apparently that sword is a reference to Arthurian legend. You don’t earn this badge by fixing printers and copiers. You earn this badge by being willing to try.”



Family Tech Support
“Requirements: You provide hardware, software, and telephone support for family computers and electronics—voluntarily or involuntarily.”

Visit the nerd merit badges site here.

Reno Dakota & Pantone 292

via a capital idea

“. . . A friend has recently rediscovered the Magnetic Fields, a favorite band of mine. We had a fun discussion of the song Reno Dakota, which includes the lyrics:

Reno Dakota there’s not an iota
Of kindness in you
You know you enthrall me
And yet you don’t call me
It’s making me blue
Pantone 292

Listen to it here.

The Pilcrow

via Shady Characters: The secret life of punctuation

“…Taking pride of place at the head of every new paragraph, the pilcrow had carved out a literal niche for itself at the heart of late medieval writing. Boldly inked by the rubricator, pilcrows grew ever more elaborate and time-consuming to add. Unfortunately the deadline is not a modern invention; occasionally, time would run out before the rubricator could complete his work and the white space carefully reserved for the pilcrow went undecorated. With the advent of the printing press, the volume of printed documents to be rubricated grew exponentially and it became increasingly difficult to attend to them all. The pilcrow became a ghost, and the indented paragraph was born in its stead.”

Read Parts 1, 2, and 3 here.

Image of the Day: Loose Change

Found in loose change.