Grant Hart. Letterpress printer?

Bill Roberts of Bottle of Smoke Press and I were in New York City for the JFK/NYC/OMG poetry reading on the anniversary of JFK’s death. Bill printed a beautiful keepsake book via letterpress containing Allen Ginsberg’s poem Nov 23, 1963: Alone to be given away to the attendees to celebrate and remember the evening. One of the readers at the event was Grant Hart. Grant was the former drummer and co-songwriter in the influential 1980’s punk band Hüsker Dü. Afterward, he was the singer and guitar for the alternative rock trio Nova Mob. Anyway, at the post-party at the event organizers’ Greenwich Village apartment, I took the shot of Grant above.

I like shooting photos by holding the camera at waist level to give the image a different perspective. This photo, having a spontaneous feel, popped into my top five favorite letterpress portraits I’ve ever taken, bringing us to this story's critical part.

I’m guessing that life in an 80’s punk band was somewhat different from the experience I had during some of my most memorable days teaching in the Visual Communications Group at the University of Delaware.

Bill and I talked with Grant about music when he mentioned liking the letterpress keepsake. Then out of nowhere, he starts grilling Bill and me about the order of the cells in a California job case. Huh? “What are the top row cells?” We would stammer a bit and start reciting the list. Then Grant would fire another question.

Out of nowhere, Grant said, “Let Me Now Help Out Your Punctuation With Commas." 

In a California job case, it was a mnemonic for the middle row of lowercase cells. Strangely, after almost 12 years of letterpress, I don’t think I’ve ever heard one of these memory aids until Grant blurted out with them. So, sometime in Grant’s lifetime, he had done some letterpress.

“Be Careful Driving Elephants Into Small Foreign Garages.”

Also, how can you not like a guy in a band with two umlauts in the name? According to Wikipedia, the term without the umlauts means “Do you remember?” in Danish and Norwegian. The group added the heavy metal umlauts for effect. I could love Hüsker Dü for the umlauts alone.

Grant was playing a solo performance at the Cake Shop later in the evening, which Bill and I wanted to check out. When we got there, Grant was standing right at the door. He grabbed us, and we headed for the stairs. He told the cashier who was taking money that we were friends and just to let us through. The three of us, connected by letterpress, headed into the basement theater for an hour of great Grant Hart music. Most definitely a night to remember.

I do love this portrait. Now to figure out how to get Grant to want us to print his next CD cover via letterpress.

It seems like I should show Bill’s Bottle of Smoke Press keepsake book (shown below) that was given away free to those in attendance. Some days I like letterpress more than other days. This day was one of the good ones.

I'm sorry to add that Grant passed away on September 13, 2017, from liver cancer and Hepatitis C complications.

July 4th coasters

We did an interesting coaster this past month to celebrate the American Revolution and the July 4th holiday that resulted from it. I had wondered how you might register a round coaster on the press.

Instead, I decided I would design one that didn’t need to be registered.

We had a photopolymer plate made of the word “revolution”, centered it in the coaster and printed it using only two registration pins. The idea was that I would never care how it was positioned. We did this for the July APA bundle. Fun and they make nice gifts today. We will use them at lunch at the Glass Kitchen today while working on our Tour de Lead Graffiti project.

Our Boxcard competition on Facebook

Lead Graffiti sponsored a competition on Facebook for some ideas for Boxcards made from the packaging from 50 cases of Yuengling beer. We ended up with three that we really liked the most, so we awarded three prizes in no particular order. We ended up printing about 120 of each of the three cards.

Each winner got two boxes of cards with their text and a box containing the cards from the other two winners.

Lab results

• first time speaking to Facebook friends so expectations were none

• we like collaborating (Tour de Lead Graffiti, afternoon diversions) and this did connect with some new people

• nice to know people are out there who read your words and then will actively contribute (we'll do this again)

The winners.

TASTES GREAT LESS LANDFILLING - Nina Ardery

BEER. THE OTHER WHITE MEAT - Christiana Del Vecchio

LOOK WHAT SOMEONE ALMOST THREW OUT - Ed Kauffman

Got an idea of a competition we could run online, let us know. Maybe you'll win something just for suggesting a good idea.

My Apple Computer story

I have truly loved being known as a fanatical supporter of Apple.

I bought my first Macintosh (128k version) about 5 weeks after they came out in January 1984 from ComputerWorld in the Astro Shopping Center on Kirkwood Highway in Newark, Delaware. I paid $2,495 for it.

One Macintosh story

From 1988 to about 1997 Cypher + Nichols + Design served as the advertising agency for Alanx Products, makers of wear-resistant parts for hard rock mining equipment. Starting a new campaign for Alanx we designed the “Moon” ad below left.

You had to produce a set of CMYK films for the ad which was sent to the magazines and stripped in for making the printing plates. Our films were produced by LithoColor here in Newark. In the early 1990s, it was no small task to accomplish things like having that product shot lay overtop of the photograph and headline. It was a very time consuming process and required a serious degree of craft. Also, the merging of the “chocolate syrup” border was a huge effort, working by hand with Xacto knives & “Rubylith.”

The first set of film negatives for the “Moon” ad cost our client $2,250.

We were heavily committed to Macintosh, but moving from a mechanical done on Illustration board to one on disk took a serious leap of faith. In the two months between those two ads we decided to bite-the-bullet and give “all digital” a serious try. We tried rather deliberately to not make the retouching Ray was going to have to be doing in Photoshop (I believe it may have been 2.0) any more difficult than we needed to, but those four elements to the product shot were all photographed individually and the headline type does appear to run in behind the product shot.

The cost for those four CMYK films for “Grand Canyon” was $72.50. We never used Illustration board for a mechanical again.

Kalmar Nyckel crew training class keepsakes

We took on the Kalmar Nyckel, Delaware’s Tall Ship, as a pro bono client, without any particular interest or experience with sailing. Because of our interest in printing history we thought printing via letterpress connected to a 3-masted pennice that landed at Wilmington, Delaware in 1638 would provide an interesting creative outlet. At the same time we could help an organization that offers wonderful experiences (the chance to set and douse a sail on a tall ship isn’t your average experience for a fourth grader) to thousands each year. After starting our work with a volunteer recruiting poster, we decided that taking the Crew Training Classes would help us with our ideas along with having a few new experiences.

As we are progressed through the 10 weeks of training from January through April, 2011, to learn to sail the Kalmar Nyckel, Delaware’s tall ship, we produced a keepsake reflecting on each week’s experience. We let the topics ‘pour’ out of each training day. The layout was established fairly spontaneously, with little planning, except that generally we would like to do it in two runs.

The size of each piece is 5″ x 11″, so we get 10 out of a sheet of 22″ x 30″ American Masters and also gave us the deckle edge at the bottom. It is all handset in wood and metal type with a few other objects thrown in for good measure.

We took about 75 copies to the following week’s training session for classmates and the other volunteers. We set aside 50 copies of each that we are going to bundle into portfolios. We might try to sell them for $50 a set to help cover the cost of the paper or give them to letterpress friends or sailors.

Saturday no. 1: In typography we’ve always been attracted to any interesting use of punctuation and you can often see this in our letterpress projects (N’t cards, Mother’s Day, Raven Press). When you like that stuff it is hard to ignore a word with two apostrophes in it (and sometimes you see it with 3). It is a shortened version of ‘forecastle’ which is at the front of the ship. Sheetbend is a knot we learned that connects the ends of two lines so the type layout should be obvious. It was nice that the name ends in end which added an extra touch. The rope image is printed directly from rope that had been glued to a thin board.

Saturday no. 2: The highlight of the day was a fire drill which made you wonder what a fire would be like out on the high seas. If you see a fire on board you yell it out three times. We had to do an extra run for this poster for each yell in order to get the overlaps. Muster is ‘collecting together’ after a fire warning has been given. The shape was an abstract image of fire cut from a piece of scrap plywood on our lead (as in the metal) saw which can cut in very accurate increments.

Saturday no. 3: It was 11 degrees when we started this morning, consequently the choice of pastel colors. Outside. Freezing. Learning how block & tackles (pronounced with a long A) work. We also starting learning to belay (tying off a line and the Kalmar Nyckel has LOTS of lines) which sometimes happens by wrapping the line back and forth between two pins. We cut a tall “zero” in half (removing most of the middle) to get those two Cs combined with an X to illustrate the belaying. Normally we wouldn’t want to be cutting wood type, but in this instance we now have two pieces. We were using one of our pieces of orphan type so it didn’t dig into one of our more complete wood fonts.

Saturday no. 4: Knots, commands, belay points, man overboard drills, etc. were starting to all run together. Seemed like every time you learned something new you forgot two old things. And when you’re doing this when sailing you need to do it right AND QUICK. Hopefully, it will become more and more natural as we drive this information deeper into our brains. Anyway, the questions are starting to get the edge on answers.

Saturday no. 5: The highlight of the day was a low-key race to identify the belay points on the ship. We divided into two teams (yellow and blue). Each mentor had about 20 rings made from rope. They would hand a ring to one of the team members and they would run to put it on the belay point. Then the next one would be given out. Nice excuse to bring out a nice set of Os from our wood collection and our larger metal type (our largest is 96 point Caslon).

Saturday no. 6: Hmmm. More Os. The main focus was on doing a boat check, which while you are under sail, is done every 30 minutes. Look here. Look there. Water in the five bilges? Fire extinguishers in the right spots? Lines properly stowed? Propane leaking? Water running? Head pumps doing anything weird? While the ship is a very contained space, there are lots of nooks and crannies and during the night while you are checking there are lots of people trying to sleep.

Saturday no. 7: We spent a good deal of the day setting (making the sail big so it can catch a lot of wind) and dousing (making the sail small) the fores’l (large bottom sail on the frontmost TALL mast and the mizzen (triangular sail at the back of the ship). It is going to be pretty amazing to be out on the high seas and to have a few people reorganize the sails and have the ship head off in a new direction.

Saturday no. 8: When you are doing “bow watch” (standing watch at the front of the ship) and you see something that needs someone’s attention (i.e. large tanker ship, a speed boat coming straight for you, an iceberg) you need to be able to tell them the direction. Straight in front of you is “dead ahead”, 3:00 is “starboard beam”, 10:30 is “broad on the port bow”, to name a few. The chart that explains this is called a Wind Rose, which is quite a nice name for it.

Saturday no. 9: This piece was designed a bit more around the week proceeding week 10 which included a written final exam and a test of practical seamanship. Jill and I would ask each other random questions, location of belay points, responses to various orders, sequence of events to set and douse various sails, location of fire extinguishers, job obligations in case of man overboard or fire or abandoning ship, names of sails, and how to tie the various knots used on the ship.

Saturday no. 10: We had done keepsakes 1 - 9 using only handset wood & metal type and a few handmade graphics. We had designed the certificate (the first one they’ve given out) to be used for our class so we thought it would be appropriate to refer to it in the 10th piece. So, in this instance the piece also includes a corner of the certificate using photopolymer plates highlight the words “crew training class 26″.

While often a bit hectic trying to schedule a full Saturday, work in 40 hours of maintenance, make a few out-of-class talks & movies, and produce these keepsakes, in the end Jill and I easily passed our final exam and practical seamanship tests. It was a really nice experience, we got a ton of exercise, learned some interesting history, connected something else with our interest in printing & typographic history, and we made dozens of wonderful new friends.

Now to stand on the bow of the ship 60 miles off shore on a moonlit night and feel the wind through my hair. We are ready to sail.

APHA National Annual Meeting program

Maybe as a joke on the new guy, Mike Denker volunteered Ray (the new president of the Chesapeake Chapter of the American Printing History Association) to print the program for APHA’s annual meeting held in January 2011 in New York City.

There are always ideas floating around Lead Graffiti that would be interesting to try and a project such as this provides a great forum for giving them a try. We wanted to do something different (we think our ideas of how we can use letterpress are often different from the normal letterpress you see around) for this particular group who are committed to the history of printing, so we designed the piece to include two of those ideas.

The first came to mind with our Boxcards™. We print their backgrounds in opaque silver ink on packaged-goods boxes to let the printing on the package show through as the type. We though it might be interesting to handroll the paper beforehand and then overprint the silver to essentially trap the type the same way.

Above you can see a sample of Jill’s handrolling using three 3-inch brayers. We decided we needed to seal off the paper under the silver to try and keep the edges of the handrolled areas from showing, so this image is after we had printed two runs of transparent white. Because we had just done the handrolling and the ink was wet the color was coming off and contaminating the transparent white giving it that orange cast. This didn’t matter as we were going to be immediately overprinting with the opaque silver anyway. If you look hard you can see a hint of the type to come.

Below is the outcome after double printing the silver. In case you are wondering, Jill wanted to have some white show through in the type. When she was handrolling and completely covered the type area she thought the color looked too mechanical and she wanted there to be a sense of the handmade which we like in our work.

The second thing we wanted to try was printing right to the edge of the deckle-edged paper. That took a little extra packing as the very edge of the deckle is much thinner than the paper itself. We also had to use a sheet under every print as the ink printed off the edge and would print onto the tympan which would likely offset onto the back of the following print. This part worked great and added a nice touch to the piece as the edge had a nice knife-like quality and was quite stiff with the two layers of ink.

When we stacked the programs to be picked up by those attending the meeting, we put them in four separate stacks so everyone would see that the pieces were different. When we were thanked for our effort at the meeting they even asked for an explanation as to how it was printed. Several people confided in us that they had taken a couple extra for library collections or to show students. Hmmm. We like it.

You might compare it to this sample of handrolling for Columbia University that was finished the same week.