Letterpress course at KhiO

I was very happy on Monday before it started and even happier at the end. Teaching others when they are eager to learn, creative, want to learn and has such a drive to actually use the equipment is just a dream.  We started off with wood type on Monday and started setting metal type on Wednesday. By the end of the week they had almost no questions and was printing loads of beautiful prints. It seems like everyone had a great week, and I hope they will use the equipment further.

Here are some of the prints they produced during the week.

I set this to show how to work with wood type.

Load of ink and mixing of inks.

 

I had to show them how the Heidelberg machine works, and they got to try. 

Mini letterpress course :)

Next week, on Tuesday 13th of March, I will put up an miniletterpress course for everyone that wants to try, look, learn, feel, touch and smell what I love so much :)
It will be open for those that want. Because of space, equipment and only my two hands and two eyes, I can take only 8 people on this course. Even with one or two the course will run! If many more wants to come, I’ll try and arrange for another one later :)

Time: 16.30 – (until we are tired and want to go home)
Place: Kunsthøgskolen i Oslo
Price: 300,-

All material is included other than paper. Bring what you got or what you want to try out!

Let me know if you want to come

Letterpress workshop at KhiO

A few weeks ago I had a workshop with mainly letterpress and a bit of book binding together with a MA student Ane Thon Knutsen from KhiO and a printer and teacher from Oslo By Steinerskole Thomas Pfeiffer. The students seemed happy, all of us teachers were happy and I really enjoyed myself.

It felt a bit strange to teach in a studio I've never worked in before. But after a while I felt I got how things were organised there. The students worked very independent which allowed me to learn this amazing Hiedelberg Platen press. I was smiling, printing and loving working with the norwegian letters æ, ø and å.

Thomes Pfeiffer shows how it works!

The lock-up of my design of only æ, ø and å.

The piece printed, and of course in green.

Holding a Letterpress Workshop

To say I'm not overwhelmed and happy would be lying. Last week I went to visit Oslo National Academy of the Arts to have a look at their Letterpress Studio. It was beautiful! With Norwegian letters I've been looking for and sometimes dreamt about (when you got a passion it shows up in your dreams too). There were presses and typefaces I hadn't seen before. Together with Ane Thon Knutsen and few others I've got an offer of holding a Letterpress Workshop there from 28th of February and through that week. I'm very excited! And will take photos to show how it went and to show off the studio!

Good or bad cheating?

There are ways to cheat. Always have been always will be. Occasionally it can be good, but mainly it should be avoid at all time. Considering printing with letterpress only imagination can set a boundary for ways to cheat. To tell you a secret; I do cheat when I’m making a one of piece for a special occasion. Actually I won’t even cheat then if I know for sure a person with good letterpress skills will watch be set and print. Bad cheating or lack of interest and passion in working fully with letterpress is shown on the two images below.

“Locking up” type like this can both destroy the leading, spacing, furniture and type. (Leading is mainly used for line spacing and locking up type with furniture; spacing is used for letter/word spacing.) The designer has here used most of these wrongly, at least according to normal usage. Why do I complain about it? First of all; finding letterpress equipment in good condition is hard, rare and expensive. Second; seeing people (here students) treat this valuable equipment like trash makes me frustrated. Third; how long will universities let behaviours like this happen before they get rid of it? One thing is for sure; I will have a lot of troubles letting anyone near my studio and equipment when I’m fully set up in the future.

(As a small ending; the way to “lock up” type is shown below.)

New year, new projects

Happy New Year:) I'm all ready for this years new possibilities and for more fun! Just had one day in the letterpress studio on Tuesday, and just as a reminder for everyone: mistakes can be beautiful!! :)

A second reminder: please keep the studio clean! I hate it when everything is a mess and dirty. When I get my own studio it will be perfect :) Tidy and clean :)

If you have any ideas to projects, let me know :)

Keep it clean

Working with letterpress is a dirty job, fun and joyful dirty job. But there is no reason for not trying to keep it as clean as possible. I don't own the studio I work in, but I'm the one spending most time in there so it feels a bit like mine. And I hate finding it untidy and dirty.

For sure this is a studio at a Uni, and there is no news that Art and Design students tend to not care how they leave a studio. Every week I'm in the studio I hear complains about students leaving the studio dirty. Last week I found already "cleaned" rollers dirty in the drawer! They were full of ink. One student around asked if they were not clean enough. How can he think things are clean when I got my hands full of ink when I touched it?

Why am I telling you this? Because of the importance of keeping the area you work in clean is huge. At least if the studio is not yours. I hate finding the studio untidy and dirty. It makes me bad and I lose a bit of the joy of being their.

When I get my own studio you need to prove you are tidy and clean up your mess before you get to be in it.

Be tidy, be clean, be happy, make me happy!

Event tomorrow "Letterpress: Forward thinking"

For every person interested in Letterpress this it the thing not to miss tomorrow! I'm very excited and I believe it will be many nice talks and interesting people to meet. It all happens at St Bride Library in London. I will let you all know how it was an share some images from the day.

Pantone Formula Guide

You can say a Pantone fan is both a Designer and a Printers friend. They are expensive to buy, but they will and should last for a long time. There are different Pantone fans for different purpose. The one I love is a Formula Guide (one for coated and one for uncoated) which shows which colours to mix and how much of each to get to one specific Pantone colour. And the names/code of every Pantone colour. But you can't get the CMYK or RGB values of any of the colours.

I love it for the fact that is shows a range of colours (and I love colours), it is simple to understand and it works! A good example is to tell you about my experience the first time I tried to mix the colour brown. It turned out everything else but brown. It sounds maybe a bit silly and you may think I'm stupid, but it was not that logical for me. Most colours I know more or less how to mix, but with this I'm 100% sure how to get one colour that I want. If you haven't seen one, please do. It is amazing!

Letterpress Demo for NKF visitors

On Friday I had visitors from NKF (Norges Kreative Fagskole) in "my" Letterpress studio. Most of them didn't know a lot about Letterpress, and I had a bit over an hour with them. I brought in most of my Letterpress work to show them samples of what can be done. I also brought laser cut acrylic and wood blocks made from photographs of set Letterpress type. The hour went by so quickly. They were all very interested in my work, the technique and all I had to say. Too bad they didn't have time to actually try some setting and printing themselves.

They all made me very happy, not only about my work (which they said they really liked), but to believe in continue working with Letterpress. There is room for the aesthetic of Letterpress. And I think I gave them a good experience in showing my passion and excitement with this technique, the smells, the paper, the "dirtiness" of the working process, the hand craft and simple everything about Letterpress.

I used some old sett type to show how one press works. Funny in a way that all we had time to was printing a couple of sheets, so the cleaning part took longer time.

4 out of the 6 that came from Norway and NKF together with me in the Letterpress studio.

New documentary movie coming soon

This movie is about the linotype machine, and how it speeded up the setting of type for letterpress printing. For those that do not now or understand how the setting of letterpress type work (how I work), please have a look at this short clip from the coming movie :)

http://www.linotypefilm.com/

First proper printing with my logo :)

I was so happy yesterday printing with my logo for the first time. Printed it on some already finishing prints and on new paper/cards ready to be printed! It looks so nice, and I'm happy about it:) This images is not showing how well it looked, you need to see it with your own eyes:)

I got inspired from a girl at twitter to print some Christmas cards, well I was more playing and enjoying myself. When its done I'll show you!

At Knack Magazines stand at Futurising !!

Just showed my work in a video booth at Knack Magazines stand at Futurising. A lot of fun, but it was a bit weird and I have no idea how it looks like :P but maybe maybe it will be shown in their interactive magazine later at some point. Just have to wait and see I guess :)

Got a new letter !!

This time it was a reply from the Prime minister in Norway. My conclusion from this experiment is: someone replies on their behalf every time, even to me! Which I would say are quite good :) Haven't heard anything yet from the Norwegian Ambassy here in London or the Norwegian Sjømannskirke in London. Still they got a nice card for 17. mai.

Next wishes

My new wishes of stuff I want to get my hands on (of letterpress stuff) is big wood type, but I also want to have smaller. But really really big ones would be so fun to work with. Have never had a chance to do work with bigger than 24line. Check out the link to see one example of use of big wood type. I love ilovedust <3

First test-print

Finally got my hands on my type! It was as fun and exciting as I thought it was going to be :)
Small info about my type (I like the sound of that):
• 15 cases with type
• 1 empty case
• 3 cases finished organized and lightly cleaned
• these are the fonts;
- 8pt Gill Sans
- 10pt Gill Sans
- 10pt Gill Sans Bold
- 12pt Gill Sans
- 12pt Gill Sans Bold
- 12pt Temple Script
- 14pt Temple Script
- 18pt Times Roman
- 18pt Times Bold
- 18pt Palace Script
- 18pt Grotesque
- 18pt Imprint Shadow
- 18pt Imprint Shadow Italic
- 18pt Unknown
- 24pt Unknown x2

There are also some cases with italic together with roman, and some are just in capitals. Some are just a few of each letter, but I still love them all! There is still a lot of work organizing each case, but I will manage to do it at some point ;)

Letter from the Norwegian King

Yes, actually I did! :) I sent one of my 17. Mai cards to him with a small personal note to him and his family saying Happy Birthday on our National Day. Of course it is signed by the Cabinet Secretary on his behalf, but still. I hope this means that he actually saw it, but I don't really think so. But still nice :)

MY first complete set of type !!

I'm so excited to start printing next week!! Yes, it is true!! I bought a cabinet of type, and I got lovely Sophia to help me go and pick it up today:) I'm so happy for the help:) thank you sooooooo much!! My first metal type (a set) that is mine, and all MINE!! This is a start of my collection of letterpress equipment that I dream of having in a few years;) I'm so happy now!! Can't believe I got that amount of type. Hopefully I will soon have something printed with it :)

Road trip next Tuesday !!

I can't wait for me and Sophia's road trip to Salisbury to pick up a surprise :D I'm so excited, happy, overwhelmed and eager. On Tuesday or Wednesday I will let you know what the surprise is :)

Feel free to

- ask questions about the work, me, etc
- post comments
- give me suggestions/inspiration for new projects
- hire me to design and print things for you, friends of family

I promise to try my best to answer question, reply, come back to you and so on! <3