There is a row of printers doing job printing on small clamshell presses. They letterpress print invitations, business cards and the like, same day service and pretty cool to visit. Definitely a must for any print geeks.

There is a row of printers doing job printing on small clamshell presses. They letterpress print invitations, business cards and the like, same day service and pretty cool to visit. Definitely a must for any print geeks.

If you have a cool gig poster you would like to collaborate on in the next few months, you can come on down and we will do it letterpress style. That would give you a good idea of what it is all about.

is there a cheap alternative for beginnners? rubber/plastic letters or something? I did a little looking on ebay- not ready to take the big plunge!

I’m sure people will abuse it, but I would rather have that, than not share it with others.

PixelHustler (or should it be PicaHustler now?), That is some heavy responsibility you put on my shoulders. Just remember that once you get to a certain point of letterpress build-up, it is hard to turn back. It is a seriously heavy side interest. Of course, I am glad that I got into letterpress. Good luck with the table top press. Have you tried the classifieds on Briarpress.org yet? It looks like there are a few others looking for table top press there already. I hear the Pilot is a much better alternative to my Kelsey.

On to the issue of the “rights” to that font/image; Bennett never said “Don’t use this~!” So, debating over the rights of the font seems kind of pointless to me, unless you have a specific desire to mass produce something with that font and sell it. Yes, I understand the implications of posting the image, and that some people will undoubtedly use it to their advantage in a less than ethical way. But, in all reality, Bennett -asked- if anyone would make a font out of it, so he clearly wants it to be used. There are tons of free fonts out there that say not to use them in commerical products. I don’t see how this is much, if any, different.

Lastly, Bennett, I will hold this against you for the rest of my life (or until I get out of this phase), but now I’m on a crazed hunt to find a tabletop letterpress!! I had seen a few letterpressed things before, and thought that they were neat, but this post has singlehandedly inspired me to find a press and learn how to use it. See what you did?! ^_~

I know you didn’t find a printing museum in Mexico but their is a great one in Salem, Oregon. It’s called the ‘Nineteeth Century Operative Letterpress Museum’. Each year the students in the design program at Chemeketa College tour it and they get to run all the presses and create stuff. Really cool set up.

The owner is great and has a ton of presses.

If you come out I’ll buy you and your wife dinner.

Von

Second, I just finished class 2/6 of my letterpress 1&2 classes at San Francisco Center for the Book.

Really amazing to see my first typeset words (lyrics to “The Gambler”) come off of the Vandercook. You should really pay that place a visit sometime. I am sure you would appreciate it.

I once was making some test prints at a letterpress studio of some nice wood type they had. They did, actually, ask me not to digitize the fonts from my prints, since they claimed ownership of the font. Not sure how well that stands up legally. Ethically I can see where they should have first dibs on the rights to make a usable digital typeface from the wood they own, and that’s where I think Bennett’s stance comes in. There’s probably nothing legal to prevent Adrian from digitizing it and making loads of money (hah!), but it’s not the most ethical of tactics.