When books went bad: Charting the demise of the well made book February 13, 2014 – Posted in: book arts, graphic design

Graph accompanying Extracts from an investigation into the physical properties of books, as they are at present published, undertaken by the Society of Calligraphers The pamphlet was printed and published by noted American type designer, calligrapher, and book designer W.A. Dwiggins and L.B. Siegfried in 1919 and decried the then current state of book production. For the Society it was unanimous; “All Books of the Present Day are Badly Made” The reason were plenty “to…

A book without trees: Introducing "Straw Editions" from Canopy March 26, 2013

Alert – There were no trees used in the making of this book Repeat – There were no trees used in the making of this book. Canopy is a Canadian non-profit environmental group with a vital mission: protecting the world’s forests, species and climate. As they remind us: Much of the forests logged in North America wind up in paper, so in 1999 we started out with a focus on the world’s biggest paper buyers. Today…

Printing History Timelime March 13, 2013

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The Birth of Speedball October 1, 2012

****SPOILER ALERT: this post is not about drugs**** It was founded in 1899 as the C. Howard Hunt Pen Company and was probably best known for its BOSTON pencil sharpener which adorned most classrooms across this country. Then in 1915 sign letterer Ross F. George of Seattle took his new invention to Hunt. He called it the Speedball Pen. It was a square-tipped pen that could make broad and thin lines. Hunt was soon to produce the…

The Golden Rules of Typography July 19, 2012

The Golden Alphabet; or Parent’s Guide and Child’s Instructor, published by Robert Taylor. This extremely rare miniature alphabet book from 1846 contains some beautiful decorated initials, followed by several pages of rhymes and moral platitudes for parenting and instruction of children. Based on these three images, I can only presume that Taylor was a far better evangelist than he was a printer or typesetter. Damn the wordspacing and to hell with letterspacing! The word kern must have…