by Administrator on February 2, 2012
Upside Down, Left To Right: A Letterpress Film from Danny Cooke on Vimeo.
Ahhhhhh………I love letterpress!! There is simply nothing like it. I had the good fortune in school to visit several different types of printers and processes and letterpress, by far, has the most lasting appeal.
In my own experience I have replicated the process as close as possible without the actual equipment, with hand pulled prints. For me it is the most satisfying work. Slowing down, having unpredictable, unexpected results!! No delete key, no undo, no computer screen!!!
Just across the river in Newburgh, NY resides Thornwillow Press, one of the leading letterpress binderies in the US. Creating the highest quality limited edition books, restoration and rebinding, engraving, monograms and more, all by hand. We took a tour there recently and it was amazing, historic machinery dating back to the turn of the century! The founder, Luke Ives Pontifell, was a most gracious host taking the time to show us around the 3 floors himself.
Step into the s/pace of letterpress, and enjoy the film.
fkp
by Administrator on April 17, 2010
As I continue working on the Haiti Poster Project, I have my regular work, which this week included 2 event posters for shows coming up at the Bearsville Theater in Woodstock, NY.
First, for Grizzly Adamz, a collaboration featuring John Medeski, Jamie Saft, Danny Blume, Ben Perowsky. I was given their logo and promo pic to use. I felt the logo really dictated the color scheme and I chose to stick with black, white and red. The photo was a short, wide horizontal, sepia toned image of the 4 heads. It was a tough fit on an 11 x 17 vertical layout so I decided to break it out into 4 separate images.
I settled on House Industries Soiled for the font. It seemed to fit with the logo better than anything else with it’s rough edged, grunge look. I played with the image placement for a while and wanted to be sure no one player was featured over another. A few false starts, one with a simple quadrant which was ok, but created a cross in the negative space which didn’t feel right, so I that rejected in favor of the final choice. I brought the red back into the fold with the lines extending off the image edges leading through the date & venue text. I felt that gave it some movement and visual interest. I strive to maintain legibility, as these posters are distributed not only at the venue, but in shops, stores and on telephone poles and lamp posts, so it’s important they grab attention quickly and are able to be read even from a passing car.
The next assignment was for The New Pornographers. There have been some really amazing posters done for them so I definitely wanted to do them justice. I was given their website and one promo pic of the band on the ice at an empty hockey rink. I had the option to not use the picture, so I didn’t. (!) I have a small collection of old Kodak Brownie cameras (of course I do! I’m from Rochester, NY!), and I had the idea to photograph one or the group of them. That meant a trip to the attic to find them. As I was digging around for them, this crazy little toy clown fell out and presto! I knew I wanted to use that instead. (Sorry Brownies, maybe another day…)
When I was in school my favorite teacher, Jim Downer, gave us an assignment where we were to scan a small object to use as our graphic. So that’s what I did. I used a shadow box built of foam core, which Jim also shared with us. I have two, one white and one black. It really helps give a background for scanning objects and then you do not have to close the scanner all crooked over your object. Anyway I think it came out pretty cool. I dropped in the text and ended up actually keeping the default Times Roman. It just seemed right. I tried a few other fonts but none of them seemed to make it better. I really let the image be the focus. I played with the leading and making the odd letter sizing, white felt right and it was done!
(You can see a larger image of both posters if ya click on ‘em.)
More of my posters can also be seen on my website and on GigPosters.
Til next time!!!
fk
