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          Tour de Lead Graffiti 2012
P R O L O G U E :
          Liège > Liège / 6.4 km

the project | clamshell | title page | descriptions | colophon | postcards | composite

Prologue | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | Rest | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | Rest | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20

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In 2 words:
  Fabulous Fabian

. . .

Start time today: 8:00 am

Completed: 11:37 pm

Time today: 15 hours : 37 minutes

Time to date: 15 hours : 37 minutes

Runs: 5 (sequence: dark red, handrolled green, cream, handrolled red & black, and yellow)

Runs to date: 5

370 > 800 pixel wide enlargement

The day's story

Description: Ray and Jill were in Liége for the opening day Prologue of the Tour de France on 3 July 2004. We were on a University of Delaware study abroad in London at the time. We had a 4-day break that allowed the students to do a bit of traveling so we took a bit of a break. We took a flight to Frankfurt, Germany and the train the Mainz, Germany, where we visited the Gutenberg Museum (we were only about 2 years into letterpress, but starting to get serious). We did the entire trip without any plans except that we had a ticket to Frankfurt and back from Antwerp, Belgium. No reservations. No plan. We were past the backpacking stage of our lives, but it was great fun. We should write up that whole story. In Liége we had a great vantage point right at the 1 km marker from the start / finish so we got to see everyone in both directions. It was a great day watching everyone on a prologue—Lance ARMSTRONG riding for U.S. Postal, Andréas KLÖDEN for T-MOBILE, and Ivan BASSO for Team CSC, and Fabian CANCELLARA who won that day. Armstrong would win his 6th Tour de France in 2004.

Fabian Cancellara (Radioshack Nissan Trek) winning again was a nice touch as there will always be a special place he shares with us and the Tour de France.

Overall, a prologue is about as difficult a stage as possible to translate as we can imagine. They didn't have one last year so we didn't have to deal with it.

Each rider goes it alone 1 minute apart for hours. The course was only 6.4 km so 7.5 minutes was pretty good time. Every so often someone would set a new best time. When we got to the studio the first piece of music we called up on our iPod was Michael Jackson's "Beat it." We thought it was fitting as each new faster time laid down another.

We focused on the winner and his time with a callout to 2nd & 3rd.

We like the 'go' in prologue. It has a nice amount of messing around with the words. We also think the typefaces we chose for the larger type is going to work OK. Ray was a bit disappointed that the larger type would still require so much manipulation to get it flat. We had those made into copperplates which we thought would solve our technical problems from last year. Oh, well.

General classification leaders & favorites

Yellow Jersey / Fabian Cancellara: 00:07:13

     Bradley Wiggins:+ 00:07(our favorite to win the Tour came in a nice second)

     Sylvain Chavanel: + 00:07

Printing details

Signatures: Ray Nichols, Jill Cypher, Tray Nichols, Megan Zottlemoyer, & Dana Mancias

Size: 14.75" x 22.5"

Stock: Somerset Textured White 300 gsm

Main typography: 12 line Agency Gothic Outline, 12 line Stymie Bold Condensed, Euro Bold Condensed (metal)

Production notes: handset wood & metal type. The stage / signature block was preprinted using photopolymer plates.

Press: Vandercook Universal III

Three of today's photos

Lockup:

     

Abstraction:

     

Scene: