DCAD workshop

24 students plus faculty from the Delaware College of Art & Design in Wilmington, Delaware descended on Lead Graffiti for a letterpress typography workshop. If there are times we wonder if we need 2,200 square feet of studio space this kind of workshop answers that concern.

In a London letterpress workshop we had typeset the same poem, Alpha by Edwin Morgan, with a group of Visual Communications students, but during that workshop we didn't get the chance to see how it was printed. We wanted to show the DCAD students the whole process. It took us 5 hours from beginning to end, starting with a showing of some of our portfolio, a tour of the studio and our equipment. Jill then demonstrated how to navigate a California job case and how to use a composing stick and we set 12 of the students, two per job case, setting a line of text from the poem and choosing a unique letterform.

The image above shows the students a few students lined up to proof their work with Jill (red shirt in the back) while others dig through their job cases.

Below are a few photos showing the students working with the composition part of the workshop.

Below is a wonderful photo of a composing stick flying by after proofing. I had wanted to catch the person about two seconds earlier when they were standing still. The movement, which at the time seemed to ruin the timing, ended up being a wonderful image that captured the energy in the room.

A few students taking a break to grab a snack or take a closer look at Lead Graffiti's work while the second group hit the composing sticks.

After students prooofed, turned letters the right way, fixed typos, replaced ! for i and detcerroc directional errors which are quite common for first time composers the final type was brought to Ray for locking up. The image above shows some adjustments to filling out the form taking place.

The image below shows it the finished form locked up and ready for printing.

Once everything was locked in nice and tight we were ready to print. Below are a few photos of the printing process, starting with Jill teaching a bit of body English along with the 'letterpress two-step.'

Each student took a turn at the Vandercook SP-15 printing a couple of keepsakes to remind them of their first letterpress experience. Maybe we felt OK because the temperature was about 50° when we got there early in the morning to get things organized for the workshop.

Philip seemed to think things were going well. You can see the prints hanging on our drying rack behind him.

Looking at these photos we aren't sure we had the heat in the studio set high enough for some of the students.

Above shows how we helped the students keep track of the initial letter and the type they used for the text. We wanted to correct a few flawed sorts (individual pieces of metal type) and to run a few extra poems to give out at the Newark Arts Alliance that has poetry readings every Tuesday night so we kept the form intact. We distributed the type back into the job cases ourselves.

This is a nice project as it works as a nice specimen sheet of wood and metal type (along with some of the holdings of Lead Graffiti), it shows the students what it was like to set type in the past and might help them appreciate what the computer offers them, and then it is a nice example of a group effort and how a bit of work by one person is magnified when the effort of the group comes together.

Thanks to John Breakey of the DCAD faculty for including us in the educational experiences of his students.