… ; it rests in the hand; it breathes.
This is Robert Bringhurst’s review of Moon, David Romtvedt’s first book-length collection of poetry, letterpress printed with handset type by Gerald Lange. I thought that line was quite beautiful, and hope I can print a book one day that deserves that sort of praise! You can see a few more pictures here. And read one of Romtvedt’s poets here.
The other day on Letterology, I saw Norman McKnight’s 2013 calendar, which uses 19th century copper blocks for the illustrations (see several of them below). You can see McKnight’s calendar on his blog, as well as lots of photos and notes about type and typography.
I often think the best artist’s books are children’s picture books. The other day on Brain Pickings there was a post entitled Little Big Books: What Makes Great Children’s Picture Book Illustration about a book that documents some of the best contemporary children’s book illustration. I noticed the spread below from Laura Varsky’s Lady René. (The font for this book is available here and Varsky’s website — with more books and illustrations — is here.)
In a comment to my post the other day about my current prompt challenge, Steven said
When setting em dashes the typesetter should not place space on either side of the dash.
When I started editing the PCBA Ampersand and put together a style sheet, I asked several people about em-dashes and spacing, and got several different answers. I decided against spaces. And for the haiku in all my calendars, I’ve not used a space. But Steven’s comment made me notice that wordpress (which I use for this blog) has its own idea about dashes and spaces. It turns a double dash into either an en-dash or em-dash, depending on whether the dashes are at the end of the line or have spaces around them.
A quick look at some style guides here on the web gives a variety of answers to the spacing question. Some say it is optional (Yahoo), no spaces (Chicago Manual of Style), spaces (Associated Press Style Book). And the British, in the Guardian style guide, ignore the issue by saying “Dashes should be n-dashes rather than m-dashes or hyphens.”
I recently ran across a new website: Lettering vs Calligraphy, a collaborative project by Giuseppe Salerno and Martina Flor. Every day they create a letter responding to a keyword given by a moderator, one using lettering (drawing) and the other using calligraphy (writing). Who knew there was a difference?
This being the web, visitors are invited to vote for their daily favorite. Below is J — lettering on the left (by Martina), calligraphy on the right (by Giuseppe).
Several weeks ago, I wrote about using ligatures in my book One More Blanket on the Bed. In response to that post, Louise Phillips sent me her lovely little accordion book, below. Do check out her website where she’s got photos of her artist’s books as well as a section on clouds with a print called Alphabet x 5 (language of clouds).
