recreational pamphleteering

Some printing fun. This is an improvised way of getting fairly close to the feel of actual letterpress printing on large sheets which are then folded and cut — while still using a desktop printer. It’ll have no practical application outside of this, really, but is something I wanted to document.

It came about as I’ve finally found a suitable method of making Francesca Lisette’s as the rushes were, which Grasp Press will publish soon (basically, when I’ve made them all). The process involves cutting the 1000x700mm original sheets into strips; 1000mm on one edge, and 210mm on the other — equal to the short side of an A4 page, and therefore the widest which will fit through my Epson. It’s then folded, stitched, and cut.

I spent long enough working it out that there’s only had to be one test printing, which worked fine, luckily (this paper is expensive). This has though left one of these strips spare (each copy of as the rushes were actually requires one and two-third of these strips, for reasons I won’t go into here), and I decided to print something else on it. The method here, because it’s only one strip, is simpler than that for Lisette’s pamphlet, but the basics are the same.

Each side of the strip is divided into six sections, each being a side in the final pamphlet. It’s folded (after printing) into thirds, initially:

A

B

C

A bit of fairly arbitrary decision-making about where I wanted the ‘clean’ edges to fall (as opposed to the ones which will later need to be cut) means here that C is folded over onto B, and then A folded over onto them both. This is then folded in half again, into the shape of the final pamphlet. This last crease is the spine.

Obviously, dividing a 1000mm page into six gives some irritating figures, but Adobe InDesign is pleasingly good at handling these. I could I’m sure have made it numerically simpler by cutting the strip to a length which divides more readily into thirds and sixths, but, well, the proportion from this method of the final pamphlet (rounded, 210x167mm) is one that I like. I also can’t be bothered doing any more cutting than necessary. This is one pamphlet: for as the rushes were, this will have to be done (I’m doing it all by hand) over fifty times.

Further playing gives the following layout for the two sides of the strip in terms of where final pages will appear:

4 [title reverse]

9

12 [back cover]

1 [front cover]

6

7

 

8

5 [text begins]

2 [inside front]

11 [inside back]

10

3 [title plate]

Excluding the front cover, back cover, inner front cover, inner title page, its reverse, and, ideally, the blank inner back cover, this leaves six pages for text. I chose to print a ‘miscellanous tract’ from 1684 by one of my favourite writers, Sir Thomas Browne. There are thirteen overall, and one fragment. Some are longer, some are very small; the one dealing with the subject “of Hawks and Falconry, Ancient and Modern” was just the right size for this purpose.

I laid out the spreads according to the Van de Graaf canon, a 1946 geometrical construction based on the proportions used by e.g. Gutenberg, and then fed the text through. That page construction was useful here because not only is it a good fallback for proportions, but it’s very easy to do. Ideally I’d have been more attentive to the layout of the internal text and the overall design, but this was basically a quick copy and paste job because I still have to do the dishes, and pack my bags to go away for a few days, before I sleep. I can’t imagine there’s any easy way to design this page-by-page and then transfer it pre-printing onto sheets in the manner required (the strips shown above), so just designed straight onto those (see below). It’s a very complex (and because improvised, very weird) imposition which even software specifically designed for such things probably wouldn’t do — this causes no problems here as it can be done manually, but for larger texts, things like automated page numbers would be a difficulty.

The typeface used here, as well as in as the rushes were, is a gorgeous and striking labour of love called Gina; its designer Daniel Rhatigan has very generously given Grasp Press a beta version to play with.

Here’s a few images of the process:

A raw material!

Laying out the pages on the strip

Possibly the longest bit of paper this printer has ever seen

Folding it up...

... stitching...

... and cutting. This is the most satisfying and pleasing thing it's possible to do, I think.

The final pamphlet:

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