AIGA prints old school

The AIGA / Philadelphia (American Institute of Graphic Arts) website recently had an item about Ray's former student Laurie Churchman being honored with an AIGA "Fellow" award. Lead Graffiti thought a hands-on letterpress workshop might make a welcome event for their membership. The officers and board wanted to give it a try first, so we hosted ten members for a day-long workshop which culminated in a nice 18" x 24" poster celebrating Philadelphia as the first city chapter of AIGA.

We demonstrated our Chandler & Price platen press, our Vandercook SP-15 and Universal III, and the fun of handsetting wood and metal type, giving everyone the chance to dig through our type collection.The idea of focusing on the number 1 was the idea that rose to the top and here is the result.

Here is part of the group in some pre-workshop conversation.

Some preliminary work was started to see if the idea was viable.

Then the basic form was transferred to the bed of the Vandercook and things started to take shape.

The final image is a kind of jigsaw puzzle that had a couple hundred decisions to be made as to what letters would be put where, how they could be rotated, and then locked into place using spacing and leading. In the end there were probably 400 pieces of 'letterpress stuff' to get the typography locked tightly while the printing was happening.

These budding letterpress printers are spelling AIGA.

A Fig Newton / Chips Ahoy break is always welcome in the middle of the afternoon.

The first one hot off the press.

The whole group with about 60 prints hanging on a drying rack. Not bad for a day's work.

We are looking forward to additional workshops with more graphic fun with the AIGA / Philly membership.