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A Letterpress Calendar for 2024

Leah Rosen is a fourth year Industrial Design and Psychology student at the Rochester Institute of Technology, in Rochester, New York, USA. Since 2020, she has been a Student Assistant in the RIT Cary Graphic Arts Collection. Her roles vary from setting up the new Cary Pressroom, shelving rare books and handling archival items in the collection. This year Leah was also the Teaching Assistant in RIT’s Letterpress Printmaking course. She initiated a personal letterpress project. Despite her busy schedule, she was not discouraged to dedicate a significant amount of time and effort to typesetting and printing a calendar for 2024. She shares her process, challenges, and some valuables lessons. The outstanding outcome speaks for itself.

The 2024 letterpress Calendar by Leah Rosen.

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Very Cool Thing: Words on Type

The last time Lisa Huang shared a Very Cool Thing on Alphabettes, she published her research on Noto Sans Nüshu script, and the community of women behind it. Two and a half years later, Lisa is back to answer some questions on her newest Very Cool Thing, Words of Type.

Tell us about your new project and Kickstarter campaign!
Words of Type is an encyclopedia of typography, with each term illustrated, described and explained into multiple languages. Each term is explained in concise and straight forward terms to be easily understood, and illustrated by multiple artists to bring visual variety and fun. To bring the various typographic cultures closer together, there will be not only terms from Latin typography, but also those of other writing systems. To give a (literally) better access to typographic knowledge, it’s going to be a website that gives free access to everyone, everywhere. And it will grow and evolve over time, with more languages and words.

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Type Revival for Film & TV

Screenshot of subway scene in the Marvelous Mrs. Maisel looking down stairs at crowd of people coming off train.

“The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” Season 5, Episode 2.

The Job

As a Graphic Designer for Film & TV, I work in the art department and create anything that is seen on screen with text and or imagery, such as storefront signs, food packaging, patterned wallpaper, stacks of bills, newspapers, lost cat flyers, or even children’s drawings. The range of items we create is incredibly broad, and the cool thing about that is it reframes graphic design from an exclusive, professional pursuit into a universal human activity. If everything is design, everyone is a designer. So instead of creating as “Leah Spencer, graphic designer,” I have to create as a shopkeeper, as a sign painter, as a college student, as an accountant, and so on.

Array of graphic designed items: newspaper, contract, kid's drawing, map, burlap bag, mail, plumber sign, hotel key, phone map app, binder

Some of the many items considered graphic design in the context of film and TV. In addition to designing these items, the graphics team is also responsible for physically making them in-house or sending them out to a vendor for fabrication.

Considerations for Typography

In addition to the challenges of forgery, I specialize in graphic design for period productions, and when you approach period typography, you wind up with several restrictions. Firstly, many typefaces that were used for letterpress or used in typewriters were never digitized and only survive today in their original forms or in their printed materials. Secondly, there are lots of existing digital period typefaces like Futura or Garamond, but they too have issues. We lack (or are logistically unable to use) historical production methods, such as mimeograph, Letraset, offset printing, Linotype, etc., so the kind of roughness you expect of period graphics is lost. We also have legal restrictions on font foundry use, so each production’s clearance team will tell you, for example, “you can only use Adobe fonts on this movie.” This can be restrictive, particularly for period or highly stylized productions where only a small portion of the available fonts are appropriate. And thirdly, there are lots of instances of lettering that were never a typeface in any sense, such as sign painting or handwriting.

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Leaving a Mark: Ezhishin Interviews

Next month, the Type Directors Club will present Ezhishin, a conference focused on Native North American typography. From Friday November 11 – Sunday November 13, the virtual conference will feature the voices and work of Native North American type designers, lettering artists, design educators, printers, researchers, and more. This Q&A with four the Ezhishin presenters, Violet Duncan, Jessica Harjo, Monique Ortman, Sadie Red Wing, and Kathleen Sleboda, highlights some of their ways of working, recommended readings, and what leaving a mark means to them.

Violet Duncan

Violet Duncan is Plains Cree and Taino from Kehewin Cree Nation. Touring nationally and internationally since 1991, she has performed for audiences across the United States, Canada, and Europe through work as a Native American dancer, hoop dancer, choreographer, storyteller, and author. Violet is a former “Miss Indian World”, representing all Indigenous people of North America. After becoming a mother of 4 and seeing the need for Native representation in literature, she took it upon herself to author three award-winning children’s books: I am Native, When We Dance, and Lets Hoop Dance! She has recently joined the family of Penguin Random House with two new children’s books and a middle school novel coming out 2023/24. Violet is the Creative Director of Young Warriors, where she aims to create space for programming of Indigenous performance and practice.

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Protest Scribes

“The nation is victorious”, The revolution of Iran, approx. 1979–1980 (43 years ago)

Protest art refers to the artistic works created by activists and social movements. It is a traditional means of communication used by a cross-section of collectives and the state to inform and persuade citizens. The slogans of the revolution, movement, or demonstration are written on walls and buildings while the writer is in distress. This usually occurs at night in the cover of darkness. The scribe is not worried about letterform correction or aesthetics, they aim only to express themselves by writing their thoughts on the surface and informing the public. But their action surpasses this; they are creating art. They represent a specific cause or message from furious people that need to be heard. Protest art is an essential technique for increasing social awareness and developing networks. It has long been a powerful platform for conveying ideas to the masses, as it can promote conversation and highlight social, political, and environmental issues.

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Ukrainian type design heritage in modern context

We have a strong type tradition in Ukraine. Over the past few years, Ukrainian type design has been growing rapidly. I believe that now, during the war, when Russian invaders are destroying not only our nation but also our cultural heritage, it is even more important to highlight Ukraine’s graphic and type tradition.

I enjoy creating letters that are inspired by Ukrainian architecture (for example, my Misto font), works by Ukrainian graphic artists of the last century and vernacular typography. The lettering I did for Alphabettes was inspired by the 1954 book cover created by Mykhailo Dmytrenko. I like to take historical samples as a basis and rethink them more or less in a modern context. In this way, you can build a bridge between the past and the present. Visual communication becomes stronger and makes sense.

Mykhailo Dmytrenko, 1954

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АБЕТКИ

Ukrainian type designers often emphasize the historicity of letters. And we are no exception.

We have been working with letters for about 12 years and we always love receiving orders for Cyrillic — here we can show all our knowledge about Cyrillic in some specific work.

For inspiration, very often we look at historical samples of such Cyrillic handwritings as: Ustav (pic.1), Napivustav (pic.2), Vyaz (pic.3) and Skoropys (pic.4).

We, Ukrainian designers, have long set a course to distinguish our Abetka (alphabet) from the Russian alphabet by focusing on the historicity of the Cyrillics. Nevertheless, we make it modernized, we work with it as with a living organism.

In these sketches (pic.5) we just wanted to demonstrate the “Ukrainianity” of the Cyrillic lettering. It is written here “АБЕТКИ” (“Abetkи”)—alphabettes in Ukrainian.

different examples of lettering

We are now in Ukraine and, as you know, there is a war. Unfortunately, there is no way to write this word in a calligraphic way, as we love and know how to do (see our Instagram profile: @vikatavita and website: vikavita.com).

Therefore, the lettering was done on the iPad in between running into the bomb shelter and after that there was work on the vectors.

Thanks for attention! And greetings from Ukraine💛💙

Woman’s Search for Meaning

In a prison cell in Turkey sits an award-winning artist and visual journalist. With little sunlight and few materials, he creates astonishing art. This powerful essay by Greg Manifold, creative director at The Washington Post, tells Fevzi Yazıcı’s story.

I am breathtaken at Fevzi’s courage and persistence. His latest artwork, limited to pencils and pens, is astounding. I think of Viktor Frankl’s words: “What then matters is to bear witness to the uniquely human potential at its best, which is to transform a personal tragedy into a triumph, to turn one’s predicament into a human achievement.”

Quote

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Clumsy lettering with personality

My initial motivation in learning lettering was to be able to create perfect, elaborate, admiration-inducing letters. In 2011 I completed a type design masters at EINA school in Barcelona, which also opened up the world of calligraphy and lettering in all sorts of styles for me. I ended up loving the brush. I wasn’t too good at first but after additional workshops, reference books —Brush Lettering: An Instructional Manual of Western Brush Lettering by Marilyn Reaves was particularly helpful— and hours of after-work practice, I finally tamed it. I even gave a brush lettering class. I felt pretty good about it. Then… I felt stuck. Most of what I was achieving was by the book but somehow felt bland and impersonal.

Brush lettering class example

Reference alphabet I prepared for the brush lettering class I gave at the Spotify offices in Montreal in 2015.

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