Fresh

Got a designer’s wet dream for ya, people. Some great stuff here. A while back I was trying to come up with some ideas for wedding invitations (I’m getting married next year). The usual hand-made stuff off my home printer (which is pretty decent) was just not going to cut it. I decided I wanted to learn how to use letterpress and take it up a notch.

In the hunt I came across an amazing Portland resource, the IPRC (Independent Publishing Resource Center). In their own words, “Since its inception in 1998 the center has been dedicated to encouraging the growth of a visual and literary publishing community by offering a space to gather and exchange information and ideas, as well as to produce work. The IPRC is an Oregon 501(c)(3) Nonprofit organization.”

This place is like creative haven, with all the tools for an inspired zinester or do-it-yourselfer to whip out some printed goods and share with the world. They have several resources here, digital and analog, but what caught my eye was a set of letterpress machines that they will offer to school you on for a mere 50 bones. This past weekend was my turn to take a shot at it, and I loved every minute of it.

Over about 5 hours, we walked through a process well over 100 years old with a set of beatifully archaic machines that re-established a firm belief in me that print will always have a place in people’s lives, for those things that are far too special to be captured in pixels. The commiting of ink to paper is one that forces you to make decisions and live with the results, far from the “undo” crutch we all rely on in the digital world.

I also got some knowledge that connected the dots with my type understanding. For instance, the reason for the term “upper” and “lower” case is due to the fact that movable type was organized by drawers and each drawer contained one half of each font. Other good tidbits: em and en dashes were based off the rule that the general width of a character was based off the m character. “Mind your p’s and q’s” came from letterpress printers that would often get those characters flipped wrong (you have to set all your type backwards). I could go on here for all the type nerds, but suffice to say there is much we could learn about design from letterpress. Go dig up those art history books, kids.

The results of my group’s labor was meager, but I felt a great measure of pride in the outcome. There will be something quite gratifying in being able to say that I created these printed pieces of art with my own humble hands.