Letterpress’d Check

Legend has it that the Burns clan were ‘a roving band of poets who could, according to ancient Highland Custom, billet themselves on whomsoever they liked for as long as they liked, eating their involuntary hosts out of house and home’ According to the tale, my ancestors decided to set upon the Clan Campbell, declaring themselves a sept of the clan and pinching their tartan design too. Cheeky. I thought it was a bit sad that we didn’t have our own tartan, and I’ve been trying to make one in letterpress…

So this is what I’ve making lately:

Type set in 12/14pt Walbaum with lovely old 12pt decorative blocks creating the beginnings of a check…

Proofing…

Printing the grey base (436C) and colour-matching (yellow 123C, blue 313C, red 185C)

Then I moved the decorative columns across one unit so that over-printing created the check

The finished cards are like little pattern swatches, measuring 85 x 45 mm. I like them. They’re cute.

Local Philosophy

The Local Philosopher is Introduced

Shades of Diogenes in modern guise;
Looking at Truth with half-beclouded eyes;
No selfish axe to grind, no spoil to seize,
No foe to punish and no friend to please;
He draws, by gazing through the lens of Fact,
Conclusions less enchanting than exact;
Tearing the veil from Fancy’s grand domain,
Though it may give a fellow-mortal pain,
Yet in a kindly was re-decorates
The hours we fain had yielded to our Fates.
Despising shams, he may be often stirred
Into a seeming sharp, ungenerous word,
Yet not unwilling on a soberer thought,
To be with better grace and manners taught.
Does some one tread upon his favourite corn?
He launches forth a thunderbolt of scorn;
Yet doth the grim old fellow in his way,
His debts of gratitude delight to pay;
As doctors, tender even while they kill,
Prefer to slaughter with a sugared pill.

Poor old Philosopher! Thyself a sham,
Condemned in many a self-writ epigram,
Preaching to others in thy cynic mood,
How one excels, while one fails short of good;
Pointing for us, with egotistic pride,
A path which doubtless though hast never tried;
Rasping thy satire, heartless and unkind,
Yet to thine own faults bigoted and blind;
What art thou but a humbug? To reflect
The veriest errors thou wouldst fain correct;
More worthless even in thine own conceit,
Than is the humblest dirt beneath thy feet;
Know that the poor philosophy of Earth
Possesseth but a transitory worth,-
Scarce given life enough or show of power,
To smooth the trials of a passing hour.

Yet doth grim old Diogenes grind on,
Though tongues may wag and critics frown anon,
And if the kindly reader shall discern
Some helpful lesson he may easy learn,-
Some thought which truer peace of mind invokes,
Then his philosophy is not a hoax

Henry W. Colby, 1899
Rhymes of the Local Philosopher: A Bequest to the Younger Generation
Archived here

Inky fingers

New year, new letterpress project – this time I’m making something for ‘A Case for Letterpress’ – a session to be held by Rose & Alex as part of the College Art Association’s annual Conference in Chicago this February.
I’m making a giant crossword. Like, giant. It’s A1 (because they don’t have A1 in the US). So large, in fact, that I’ve had to print it in sections. That’s a bit of a pain, but it’s looking pretty snazzy and should be finished by the end of this week. I’m using type-height rules and spacing blocks to make the grid, with a much-forgotten serif typeface called Walbaum. I found it hidden and untouched at the back of the workshop and it’s really, really lovely.

This is how I feel today:

Einstein

“We cannot solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them”

Albert Einstein

Music-making

The wonderful Rose singing her beautiful tunes for Wap wap wow’s outing in Peckham last night.

Image thanks to LuckyPDF/Ted.W.

Haunting

Little-brother Nic just posted his latest snaps up. Chilling and beautiful.

So that’s what happens to my babybel wrappers…

I finally popped in to the Royal Academy at the weekend to see this with my own eyes:

After multiple attempts at avoiding the queues, we managed to stick this out:

And it was so so so worth the wait. The most giggles I’ve had at an exhibition for a long long time.

It’s just, like, a big lesson in fun.

We were dying to climb all over this stuff,

Almost fell into the the happiest colour in the world,

And finally discovered what happens to all those Babybel cases:

Basically, it’s great and it closes this Friday. Go!

Multiplication

Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen.

John Steinbeck, US Novelist (1902-1968)

 

Reading Week

There were some interesting people about this week:

On Wednesday, it was back to LCC for another installment of the Talking Graphics series, this time with a new twist focussing on an area which I seem to be hearing & learning more and more about – service design:

“At a time when design thinking is reaching way beyond the design profession, it’s time to take stock and ask: Is design thinking the way forward for solving complex ‘wicked’ problems such as security and development? Can designers really design anything they turn their hands to? Are there limits to design thinking and, if so, what are they?”
Speakers & Panel included Derek B Miller & Lisa Rudnick (Security Needs Assessment Protocol, U.N. Institute for Disarmament Research), Daniel Dickens (Southwark Circle – who have been letting me help out with stuff recently), Alison Prendiville (LCC/Cranfield), Joe Heapy (Engine) and the think tank for the 2020 Public Services Trust at the RSA  (read more about that here)

There’s a podcast of the talk somewhere in the Internet -  if anyone’s interested it would definitely be well worth a listen…

Next up was another trip into the D&AD bubble, this time with Paula Scher at the helm:

She is a fascinatingly entertaining woman with mountains of great work to tell stories about, including this lot:

and she said this:

” the goal of design is to improve the expectation of what design could be”…”corporations aren’t bad. they’re just made up of lots of people. And people are difficult.”…”be culturally literate, because if you don’t have any understanding of the world you live in and the culture you live in, you’re not going to express anything to anybody else”