MEANDER BOOK ONLINE : creative letterpress

The image above resulted from an online Meander Book workshop with Baylor University in Waco, Texas. The students did their page designs, and we did a Zoom call with each of them, showing the process of locking up wood and metal type, which were printed in two colors to produce the 4” x 5” hardcover book.

MEANDER BOOK ONLINE :

OUR MEANDER BOOK HAS BEEN LEAD GRAFFITI’S BEST, hands-on, in-studio, concentrated, all-day creative letterpress workshop you can sink your teeth into for more than a decade.

NOW, WE ARE OFFERING that experience as an unleaded ONLINE cooperative group workshop while maintaining your design style and upping the technical and creative nuts & bolts that go into basic letterpress printing and simple bookmaking.

WE’VE ADDED IN-DEPTH instructional and explanatory reference videos (Step 2 & Step 3 on our YouTube channel) that you can view at your convenience. You can link to each of those videos in the “Upfront homework of participants” section below.

Best of all, you get an individual 1-hour, 1-on-1 Zoom meeting to watch over our hands (from 6” away) and direct any required adjustments as we handset and proof your page. With your input, we handle the type and troubleshooting on the spot, as anything can happen: running out of letters, tricky, if not impossible, overlaps, measuring errors, from-the-gut second thoughts, etc.

Once you’ve been included in a workshop as part of a group of 12, you can sign up for the four online sessions at the bottom of this page.

Is this workshop for you?

No design or letterpress experience is required. Are you a little adventurous? Curious about wading into letterpress printing and bookmaking? If you are experienced, maybe you want to see how someone does angles that does angles a lot. And curves.'

Then please join your friends, family, classmates, colleagues and Lead Graffiti for some typographic fun. Each workshop will typically have 12 participants or teams and will generally be populated in one of the following ways:

A GROUP OF ASSOCIATES OR FRIENDS who are connected in some way (a business retreat group, AIGA professionals or student affiliates, birthday party, club, etc.).
A GROUP OF STUDENTS enrolled in a common class (design, art, writing, history, etc.), maybe working under some thematic umbrella; or
A GROUP OF INDIVIDUALS who may or may not know each other.

Upfront homework for participants

TO TAKE FULL ADVANTAGE OF THE WORKSHOP BEGINNING TO END, it will take about 6 hours spread over the total workshop (typically a maximum of 14-18 days). We have put together 4 YouTube videos that show our studio and the Meander Book process.

1 Introduction to our studio and some of our favorite letterpress work (15 minutes)

2 Step 1 : an overview of the Meander Book project (14 minutes)

3 Step 2 : using Adobe Illustrator to design a Meander Book page from beginning to end (54 minutes)

4 Step 3 : Locking up a form that is used to print the book’s text block (58 minutes)

The step-by-step the Meander Book online workshop

NOTE : When working with student groups it is clear that doing the group Zoom sessions works better if done during class time.

IN STEP #1, Lead Graffiti hosts an introductory Zoom meeting to answer questions and make sure everyone is aware of their responsibilities.
STEP #2 FOLLOWS, with a 3- to 5-day window for you to create your page layout by either

If using Adobe Illustrator to design your page, click the following 3 links to download files that contain : 1) the page frame, 2) 33+ digitized fonts (last edited November 30, 2022), and 3) 100+ ornaments.

If you are just interested in giving the Illustrator method a try, feel free to download the 3 files above. If you also want a reaction to your page design, email us the digital Illustrator page layout file. Warning : we try to be honest given our design background. If you teach typography or design and want a free project, assign this to your class, including the critique, maybe just for extra credit. Free

If using the TRACE or PASTE method to design your page, click the following 3 links to download files that contain : 1) the page frame, 2) 33+ digitized fonts and 3) 100+ ornaments. The layout of these files are different than those used for Illustrator.

AFTER E-MAILING THE DIGITAL FILE OR A PHOTO of your completed page design, you’re ready for the most exciting portion in STEP #3. You’ll schedule a 1-hour Zoom meeting to oversee the hand composition and transformation of your page from paper to wood & metal type. This is typically focused on your more complicated lock-up of the 2 colors.
A 90-MINUTE GROUP ZOOM meeting for STEP #4 allows for plenty of close-up observation and Q&A during the PRINTING process. This includes printing the text block (on our Vandercook Universal III), cover and spine (Vandercook SP15).
When all the pieces are printed, Lead Graffiti will mail each participant (or possibly to a single person to distribute) 3 sets of all the parts necessary for binding 3 complete copies of the book.
IN STEP #5 a final group Zoom meeting takes everyone through the simple “no-glue, no-sew” binding process for this meander book. If pages are designed by teams, additional copies are available for a $15 upcharge requested before STEP 4..

COST

COST IS BASED ON A PRICE-PER-PAGE with a minimum of 10 participants. As of January 2022, the price is $200 per page.

THERE IS ALSO A TITLE PAGE AND A COLOPHON which Lead Graffiti contributes to make the book 14 printed pages total. The names of participants are typically cast in HOT METAL on our INTERTYPE C4. We can Zoom that experience if you have members that would like to see that.

Schools buying out an entire workshop will receive a 20% reduction in the total cost providing the minimum of 10 participants is met. We may include other participants to fill out the pages.

IN THE INSTANCE OF A RATHER LARGE CLASS, it may be more logical to create groups of collaborators with teams of 2 or more. As long as the number of pages is the same, the price is the same. In instances where there are fewer than 12 students, as long as all 12 pages are paid at one time, you can consider offering the extra pages to graduates, other classes, or faculty for the full price. This could reduce the cost for the original in-class students. If you have a question about how such a situation might work, just drop us an email and tell us your story.

ADDITIONAL COPIES OF THE BOOKS are available if ordered before any of the printing occurs. As part of the base cost, we supply 3 books for each page. If you are a class instructor doubling students per page, you may want to order additional books so each student gets the full complement of books. The price of extra sets of book parts is $15 (each will make 3 complete books).

A school or a business may want to order additional copies to be used for promotional purposes. For a cost of $8.00 per book we will score, fold and bind them, supplying them to you as finished books.

Sign up

If you think you may want to sign up for this workshop to fit into a class, get in touch with us via email so we can help you work it into your schedule.

The standard schedule for the 22-day workshop

Until 2 days before your 1-hour lock-up Zoom session : design and critique time. The focus of our critique will be “typographic playfulness.” Execute your design in one of the 3 ways we encourage. Do a design & send it to us. We’ll likely respond within 24 hours. Feel free to do this back and forth as much and often as you are comfortable within the available time.

Day 9, Sunday - Day 13, Thursday : individual lock-up Zoom meeting. We offer 4 one-hour time slots over each of the 5 days (20 total) for you to choose from. The sessions start every 2 hours. We are hoping they don’t go beyond 90 minutes and we are typically shooting for 60 minutes. We’ll then have 30 minutes for a breather between sessions or some time to talk and answer specific questions you may have. If you warn us early enough we could likely do an evening session, if necessary. But these are long, stressful days and we want to be cautious with them. Our advice is to sign up early for your time.

Day 15, Saturday : group Zoom meeting showing the printing of your book’s cover & text block. We will have started printing the 1st color of the text block which we will finish during the meeting. We will clean the press, move everyone’s color to the bed of the press, switch over to the 2nd color, proof, and correct for as many of the problems as we can. Then, we’ll print some of the 2nd color trying to allow for time for a Q & A session. It is critical for us to get the piece printed as quickly as possible to give it some drying time and before mailing it on Monday. We’ll send everything priority mail so you should have it within 3 or 4 days.

Day 22, Saturday : There will be a group Zoom bookbinding session to explain the process of taking all of these piece and producing a quite sweet Meander Book.

If you are an instructor in a class, we can make a specific schedule so you can do the group Zoom meetings during class time if you like. Instructors could start the project early to include in-class critiques and to allow additional instruction.

Left : a full lock-up of a Meander Book lock-up for the red run.
Right : the final printed 2-color text block / broadside.
The 1st & 3rd rows have been rotated to make all of the page bottoms coincide.

This shows about 2/3rds of the books produced during this workshop in our Newark, Delaware studio.