Legendary- Honestly, where would we be today without the letterpress or Gutenberg? Reading about this history of the letterpress was captivating. The thought of having to create and place every letter of every word of every page made me truly appreciate the physicality of books and print media. I learned a great deal about language from this exercise (why we say lowercase, uppercase, and justified type), but I learned even more about how much readers take the printed word for granted.
In this TP, I was acutely aware of spacing and shape. When creating and cutting out the letters for “printing,” I kept asking myself if I (and others) would be able to clearly see the letters and the words. It made me think about the materiality of this interface and how to produce the best results. I was working with cardboard, poster paint, glue, and glitter. Since the cardboard absorbed the paint, I had to make sure there was enough paint on the letters for the words to be seen but not so much the letters would smear and the words smudge. I had to be sure I had enough glue to make sure the glitter stuck enough for the letters to be visible but not so much the letters would run.
Having this experience made me appreciate the work of early printers and type setters working with all types (pun intended) of materials (soot, ink, metal, wood) and how each of these affected how and what they printed. I was working with three letters to make one word/sign. I cannot fathom doing so, and doing so precisely with an entire galley lifted onto a printing press (which reminds me a great deal of Kafka’s apparatus from “In the Penal Colony”).
