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Lead Graffiti

120 A Sandy Drive, Sandy Brae Industrial Park
Newark DE 19711
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a letterpress lab of sorts

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Lead Graffiti

  • about
    • intro
    • bios
    • 12 DNA projects
    • callouts
    • our lab
    • contact
  • calendar
  • store
    • subscriptions
    • workshops
    • fine press books
    • broadsides & posters
    • cards
    • Cinderella stamps
    • Blank books by Lead Graffiti
    • Blank books by Anne Hessel
    • Tour de Lead Graffiti 2011-15
    • letterpress things for sale
    • New Products
  • workshops
    • STUDIO SUBSCRIPTIONS
    • TECHNICAL LETTERPRESS
    • . . basic type composition
    • . . vandercook
    • . . iron hand press
    • . . floor-model platens
    • . . week-long letterpress
    • CREATIVE LETTERPRESS explained
    • . . meander book online
    • . . werkman druksels
    • . . quotable broadside
    • . . holiday card
    • press rental
    • BOOKMAKING explained
    • . . bookmaking basics
    • . . 6-pocket accordion
    • . . one day one book
    • . . coptic stitch
    • . . clamshell
    • . . paste paper
    • . . bookmaking bonanza
  • blog
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Dunya Mikhail poem "Pronouns"

March 4, 2023 Ray Nichols

Printed : March 3, 2023
Edition : 50
Paper : French Paper 100# Kraft Speckletone
Production : printed from photopolymer & rope
Runs : 4 (poetry text, leaves, rope, copyright / credit text)

Amid recent politically charged discussions of pronouns, this was a great idea for a broadside.

The broadsides were printed for Casey Smith in support of the 2023 Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here. to be given out as an attendee gift at a talk related to Dunya Mikhail’s poetry at a reading at the Pyramid Arts Center on Saturday, March 4.

The printing timing was pretty tight, given that we had trouble getting the printing plates and had to reorder and have them resent. The first set of prints was lost in transit by UPS. Then after an offer from Boxcar Press to remake and resend the plates, both sets arrived the day before the talk. As a result, we had only one day to print the job.

A couple of experimenting & printing moments in the project are worth mentioning.

  • The leaves were taken from a poster we had done for the Winterthur Museum & Library for one of their Terrific Tuesday sessions. These sessions are for kids aged 3 to 10; this was Fantastic Flora. We brought Beech leaves that the kids printed. We kept a couple of samples and scanned one to create the photopolymer leaf.

  • The intention was to start printing the leaves as a single, flat color. Jill suggested we hand roll them to give a sense of degradation. That resulted in much more visually interesting leaves.

  • We initially bought rope from Home Depot that was too soft. When printed, it flattened out too much and didn’t give the idea of rope almost at all. We returned to Home Depot and bought the same rope we had used for a piece we had done while taking sailing classes for Delaware’s tall ship, the Kalmar Nickel.

  • The hardest part of the project was trying to match the vertical spacing for the English and Arabic lines. We received the Arabic as a .pdf file. One problem with the file was that the black was a CMYK black and needed to be 100% black. It took a couple of hours to figure out how to change the color in Illustrator, even though we had done that hundreds of times. Adjusting the line spacing so the two poems would match exactly was a second problem.

  • The fact that Arabic reads right-to-left, and English reads left-to-right. allowed us to gently weave the two blocks of type together, which was fun to position logically.

In broadsides
← AIGA / Philadelphia FEEDBACK broadsideetaoin shrdlu →

Our Lead Graffiti blog is a mass of varied information that is hard to understand. The search option in the top navigation works quite well if you can hit the right keyword (s). In this sidebar, we’ve highlighted some personally meaningful entries that might help if you want to try a couple of entries. To DEEP DIVE, scroll down the left column.

2025

Postcards, political signs, and protest
Liar, Liar.
Just do it!
Bernie Herman

2024

"Ink Pulls:" the hows and whys
Family holiday card workshop
“Liar, Liar.”+3 broadsides @ NAA exhibit
Waldorf diplomas / 2024
More on X-ing the Paragrab
”Concertina spine” book workshop
Lead Graffiti labyrinth
Jill, Ray, & Brodovitch @ the Barnes

2023

Forward for “X-ing the Paragrab”
UCBA member IMHO Meander Mook project
Black History is White History broadside
AIGA / Philadelphia Feedback broadside
Dunya Mikhail “Pronouns” broadside
etaoin shrdlu
Seven Fun Facts about the Linotype

2022

DCAD First-year talks
Cy Twombley. It’s just my opinion anyway.
”No more war. No more Putin.” broadside
Buying our Albion : that story
January 6th assault broadside

2021

Waldorf School of Philadelphia diplomas
Teleport broadside
ONLINE MEANDER BOOK letterpress workshop

2020

A design example of subtle racism
Looking back : Histories of Newark : 1758-2008
Retrospective exhibition at DCAD
Broadside : Black Lives Matter. A lot.

2019

A wonderful film about Ben Joosten
People Were Close (2004 book project)
WHYY-TV / Waldorf School of Philadelphia
What would a good student do?

2018
Alone in Berlin : postcard power
Doves’ type : metal & digital
“Blue Wave” broadside
John Bolton / Lead Graffiti connection
Alan Kitching’s VCUK workshops
U.S. Senators postcard mailing (coming)

2017
Four things you might want to know about Ray
Introducing Stephen Frykholm at AIGA

2016

Saul Bass. A no-show.
Burning Man & Lead Graffiti’s journal
Chris Fritton, The Itinerant Printer
Porter Garnets’s 10 commandments

2015
Best Intertype project #2 : round calendar
The Nash Equilibrium

2014
WHYY-TV’s Best of 2014
London Bombing’s 7th Anniversary

2013
Tour de Lead Graffiti. Sports Illustrated.
Grant Hart. Letterpress printer?
July 4th revolution coasters

2012
Thank You, Craig Cutler

2011
APHA National annual meeting program

2008
Designing Lead Graffiti’s logo
Art Directors Club of NY Grandmasters Award

2004
VCUK’s Alan Kitching letterpress workshops
VC family album pages

2003
Alan Fletcher : Raven Press logo origin
Bukva:raz! - Our first serious piece

2001
Visiting Eric Gill’s Gravesite