PRODUCTION IS RECEPTION (54): THE NEW MANIFESTO, SECOND ITERATION (4)

It was so much fun to make the modular titling type for The Heads that I wanted to do it again for the second iteration of the New Manifesto. In the first iteration I used the face Placard Condensed for the titles, which has been a longtime favorite of mine, even before I realized that it is essentially, at least in the capital letters, supposed to look like the lovely, generic, “Gothic” wood type that is common in letterpress studios. The thing that I don’t like about that typeface is that it often looks too condensed for my purposes. This is a major typographic confession—I’ve often used it and widened the glyphs 20% – 30%. As far as I know no one has ever noticed, but after I started looking carefully this time around, it became awkwardly obvious. So it was time for some new titling type.

Why modular type? The main answer, for me, is constraint & how that drives formal & structural decisions. I am drawn to the aesthetics of modular type, and it fits nicely with the formal qualities & structure of books—books (often) have rectangular pages, and they are at their core modular constructions—page after page after page designed on grid over grid over grid.

The complication (or perhaps luxury) that I gave myself this time around was the inclusion of a second modular unit—a triangle that is one half of the base square. I knew that I was going to print these letters from photopolymer plates, so why not, you know, get crazy?

I played with shapes & contours of the individual letters themselves for a while, trying out different shapes and refining. I needed numbers for this book, and that complicated things a bit, as the shapes of “S,” “Z,” “2” and “5” are very similar once curves & angles are eliminated. I could have used the same shape several times and relied on context to make the glyph, but I wasn’t sure that context would be enough in the case of the titles.

As the shapes of the letters developed I realized that there was something else to consider—proportion. While I was trying for letters that weren’t as narrow as Placard Condensed, I still needed them to be somewhat condensed so that they would fill the marginal space of the page. The width of the individual glyphs is one thing, but how narrow they are depends on the relationship of width to height. (This is all basic stuff, I know, but I am a beginner when it comes to type design, and these small realizations are an important part of learning.)

After I settled on the proper proportions for the letters, I was able to refine the contours within those proportions and determine the final letterforms. One challenge with modular type (at least in how I’m approaching it at this point) is its monotony & rigidity. It often looks forced into the flexible space of the book, particularly when paired with a great text type—like Palatino Linotype, which is what I was using for the main text of the book. The last tweak I made to the modular face was to change its base unit from a square to a vertically-oriented rectangle that was half of that square. The original square was still used for most of the letters, but that rectangle allowed for some small subtle differences that gave the letters more character and made some of them appear less awkward. The “F” and “G” are two examples.

Using the rectangle of the base unit also gave me more flexibility when typesetting and spacing the letters, allowing me to stay within the modular system when spacing but giving me enough options to balance the spaces out better.

The above images show the actual setting of the titles. I did not make these letters into an actual, usable font—I just drew them as vector objects within InDesign and cut & pasted them into place. Once they were set I could just copy them into the actual book document and scale them appropriately. Even during typesetting I still played with the letterforms a bit—it’s just so hard to resist the impulse to keep refining the letters. But there was a deadline & I had to get to printing. So here are some images of the type printed from the photopolymer plates:

PRODUCTION IS RECEPTION (53): THE NEW MANIFESTO, SECOND ITERATION (3)

The second iteration of The New Manifesto of the NewLights Press is essentially complete (though I need to reprint exactly half of the covers and then finish binding, due to a, shall we say, minor incident), but won’t be released for Internet sales until Monday, April 22. Right now most of the edition is acting as an installation-ish piece in a show here at the Coburn Gallery in CO Springs. So this next series of posts, detailing the production of the book, are not as in-the-moment as the “Production is Reception” posts often are. But here we go.

The Second Iteration has been percolating, marinating, for quite a while. For more than a year, perhaps two. It was never quite a real thing until I decided for sure that it was going to be a (major) part of the latest show. For most of its existence it has been a bunch of notes, some pieces of sketchy text, and some vague design ideas, like this:

The idea was always to make this new iteration a revision-ing or rewriting of the first book, similar in structure, design, themes, etc. But not simply an “updated” version of the same text, same book. I didn’t know exactly what all of this meant until I really got in the thick of the writing-design. In fact, the specificity of the relationship between the two iterations did not fully emerge until I was just about ready to start printing. The books, when they’re working, funnel themselves towards a precipice. They crystallize at the edge, silent in their poised, posed, paused ideal. Time restarts & they fall, not in a beautiful, freefall dive, but in a clumsy tumble, banging against the side of the cliff all the way down.

Such drama, such wounds to be sustained. To be continued.

PRODUCTION IS RECEPTION (51): THE NEW MANIFESTO, SECOND ITERATION (2)

Work on the second iteration of The New Manifesto… continues, and the NewLights mission statement continues to be tweaked. Here’s the latest:

The NewLights Press is an independent printer & publisher of experimental writing and artists’ books, concentrating on where the two can and do overlap. All of the books are printed & bound “by hand,” using a variety of techniques, ranging from the obsolete (letterpress) to the utilitarian (laser printing) to the meditative (delamination). We try to maintain inclusive (& purposefully problematic) definitions of such mutable terms as “experimental writing,” “artists’ books,” and “printing techniques,” and to be similarly inclusive in the kinds of books that we produce, in an attempt to allow the different kinds of production to merge, separate, and converse with one another. We believe in the actual use value of art objects as soft, temporary spaces in and against which individuals & communities can envision & articulate their relationship to, and shape in, the world. We are not searching for the Ideal Book—we are looking hard at & reading closely from the book-in-the-world. We represent only one of the many geographical/historical meeting points of a vital and diverse community of active, thoughtful people, and our work would mean nothing without that community. The production of books is our own, weird way of saying to the world: we believe in you. & you & you & you & you & you & you & you & you & you & you […]

PRODUCTION IS RECEPTION (50): THE NEW MANIFESTO, SECOND ITERATION (1)

Because the new New Manifesto is being written:

The NewLights Press is an independent printer & publisher of experimental writing and artists’ books, concentrating on where the two can and do overlap. All of the books are printed & bound “by hand,” using a variety of techniques, ranging from the obsolete (letterpress) to the utilitarian (laser printing). We try to maintain inclusive (& purposefully problematic) definitions of such mutable terms as “experimental writing,” “artists’ books,” and “printing techniques,” and to be similarly inclusive in the kinds of books that we produce, in an attempt to allow the different kinds of production to merge, separate, and converse with one another. We believe in the actual use value of art objects as soft, temporary spaces in and against which individuals & communities can envision & articulate their relationship to, and shape in, the world. We are not searching for the Ideal Book—we are looking hard at, & reading deeply of, the Book-in-the-World. We represent only one of the many geographical/historical meeting points of a vital and diverse community of active, thoughtful people, and our work would mean nothing without that community. The production of books is our own way of telling the rest of the world that we believe in them.

PRODUCTION IS RECEPTION (48): THE HEADS (7)

Now we’re getting somewhere. Not sure where that where is yet, but we’re almost there.

PRODUCTION IS RECEPTION (46): THE HEADS (5)

& The Heads will contain my first (somewhat) legitimate foray into type design. As you may have deduced from earlier “digital sketches” that were posted here (here & here), the design of the book is tied to the idea of RGB color, in particular to the RGB phosphors that allow our precious & pernicious & delicate screens to show color.

Fig. 05.12.01
First sketches. The grid was set up on the computer and printed out so that I could work by hand. 12 pt. en quads, a 1:2 grid.

So, a grid, then, in red, green & blue. And type for the titles composed of, built out of, that grid. Letterpress printed from spacing material, flat rectangles of lead, ordinarily the physical component that makes a blank space on the printed page, now arranged in a pixel grid, raised up, inked and printed. The trace of the non-space, the brilliant color of the mutable absence.

Fig. 05.12.02
Working with variations on the letterforms.

The design of a modular typeface is a pretty basic typography exercise. But since I don’t know much about type design it seemed like a good place to start. (Thinking with Type by Ellen Lupton and Lettering & Type by Bruce Willen and Nolen Strals, have been my guides.) & it has certainly been instructive. Even within a rigid system there are many variations of a letterform that can be created (see Fig. 05.12.02).

Fig. 05.12.03
The top alphabet contains some lowercase forms. The bottom is closer to the final designs, with each letter being made up of an odd number of “pixels”—1, 3 or 5. Except for the ampersand, formed from an “E” and “t,” and four “pixels” wide.

The titles for the poems are in all caps, so the designs are only for those letters (& the ampersand), done at actual size. These initial drawings were done by hand. I think that when they’re actually printed, they will rest somewhere between the unevenness of the drawn versions and the cleanliness of the digital renderings (see Fig. 05.12.08).

Fig. 05.12.04
Drawings for the potential “decorative” letters for the title pages. Some tests of kerning the letters, and variations of the “Y” in context.

I liked some of the earlier versions with a “modulated” stroke, but after conducting a few tests with the actual titles I determined that the best option would be a “condensed” typeface. And then it was a matter of refining the system and looking for workable, related shapes for the letters. I experimented with lowercase forms for some of the more problematic letters (B, D, R, K), but eventually settled on only using the lowercase form for the “N,” while the “Q” is both capital and lowercase (see Fig. 05.12.03).

Fig. 05.12.05
The final alphabet at the top, and renderings of the actual titles.

But there is always the title page(s) and cover as well. So maybe there will be a more decorative version (see Fig. 05.12.04). Bigger though.

Fig. 05.12.06
More renderings of the actual titles. Playing with word spacing and the “TT” and “TTT” ligatures.

Putting the letters into use in the actual configurations of the titles yielded new problems. The form of the “Y” was determined by how it looked in a specific title (YSYSYS, see Fig. 05.12.04), as that title was the most heavily patterned. Problems of spacing also became apparent, particularly with the “T,” so I decided to use ligatures when there was more than one “T” in a row (see Fig. 05.12.06).

Fig. 05.12.07
More titles. Some redrawn with the ligatures. The letterspacing is still not perfect on the grid, but the ligatures work better.

These letters, honestly, are the put of the book that I am most unsure about at this point. Partly the design of the letters themselves, partly the technical aspects of actually printing them, and partly how they will drive the overall design and feel and experience of the book. Too much? Too weird? Too bright? Too big?

Fig. 05.12.08
The clean, digital alphabet with some title tests. The printed versions will not be this clear and consistent.

But these are the risks that come along with a challenge.

PRODUCTION IS RECEPTION (45): THE HEADS (4)

& that’s when things started to get strange (any Thing that is strang).

I always wonder about how much I want to detail in these process posts, about how much of the book I want to show before it’s done. But here we go again, anyway, what else can we do?

One of the primary concerns whenever a NewLights book is being developed is how to make the book GO—how to reach into the text (whatever that “text” may be maybe) and pull out its strangeness and translate that to the physical-temporal book object itself.

This process often terrifies me, because it runs the real risk of real failure.

But hopefully that means that I’m on something. Still, the doubt is always there, twisting in my stomach. What follows is an example, the first nervous part of The Heads.

All of the poems have bizarre titles, in all caps, like:

IMATAYM
ATTWD
WAPAUSHTGOWYLD
NSIILTOBIGOTB

I am very intrigued by these titles. I don’t know what they “mean.” But I do know that I want to draw attention to them, and that they could or should be a major design element of the book.

“Design element?” Maybe that doesn’t go far enough. I struggle with the word “design” in this context. It’s too removed, too after-the-fact. Too much about “presenting” the text. What we want is to produce the text(-book-object), enact it. Not to make a crystal goblet, but to distill the complex, intoxicating drink itself.

A writing alongside the writing. A writing underneath the writing. This process often terrifies me. The book twists in my stomach.

PRODUCTION IS RECEPTION (44): THE HEADS (3)

It is not so much a case of determining the success (or in this case FAILURE) of the experiment—it is a matter of bringing to light problems not seen in the original hypothesis.

SPACE TO WORK

A couple of years ago a good friend let me borrow a copy of Lawrence Weschler’s Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonder (New York: Vintage Books, 1995), which is about The Museum of Jurassic Technology in LA. I recently bought my own copy, mainly because of the following passage, mainly because I think a great deal about finding or making the necessary space to do the necessary work. The passage in question (p. 59 – 60) talks about Hagop Sandaldjian, a microminiature sculptor from Armenia:

[…] I ended up speaking with the master’s son, Levon, who explained that there was in fact something of a tradition of such microminiature art back in Armenia (he knew of two or three other such instances), although, as far he knew, his father had been the world’s only microminiature sculptor. “He would wait until late at night,” Levon said, “when we kids were in bed and the rumble from the nearby highways had subsided. Then he would hunch over his microscope and time his applications between heartbeats—he was working at such an infinitesimal scale that he could recognize the stirrings of his own pulse in the shudder of the instruments he was using.” […]

That is an excellent description of what it takes to find the necessary space. I often think about, try to imagine that infinite quiet, just a brief interruption in the unstoppable flow of the world.

FIRST STEPS

Towards what will be a long (and hopefully significant) project. These images are of some very quick tests—the same image/text printed twice on the same piece of paper, run through a laser printer two times. The question: is there poetry in that dislocation?

PRODUCTION IS RECEPTION (38): AS-OF-NOW UNTITLED (4)

Still working on refining the text for the next book. Lately I’ve been thinking of it as an unpacking of the book as a domestic object, or a domestic space. The repetitive structure of time & duration and the repetitive structure of the book. Here’s some more text:

& this is where we can begin, thankfully. The pages of the book turn. With each page we are confronted with the repetitive structure of the design. The text hangs in a grid, suffused with light and legible in its predictable frame of negative space. In the spaces of the structure meaning takes its shape. The thick void that is the page articulates the letters, the words, the sentences. The shape of the margins tells us about the flow of the text. When the blankness interjects itself into that flow we sense a pause, a break, a breath. If the text area changed shape and position from page to page we would wonder how to read—is this one text? Or many? Where do we begin? In what order do we proceed? We, as readers, gather purpose from the repetition and predictability of the structure. We may ask for innovation in content, or even in literary form, but we often do so with an insistence on established and conventional visual structure. Visual structure is literary form. The text that will shatter your days is completely illegible until the right moment. And at that moment and, and that moment &

—light like that and dreaming just right; the light falls in layers over these sheets; it must be morning, and waking; and waking; and waking; and waking; and waking; just like that, just like that; unbelievable; and gorgeous; and waking; just like that—

—this beginning; this middle; this beginning; this middle; this light; this beginning; this middle; this beginning; this middle; this beginning; this middle; this light; this light; as broken; as such; as necessary; this light; this beginning; this middle; this beginning; this middle; this beginning; this middle; this middle; that middle; this beginning; this light; this light; this light; this middle; this beginning; this middle; this beginning; this middle; this is a holy place, the most human place of our everyday defeats; & morning; & morning; & morning; & morning; & morning; & morning; & morning; & morning; & morning; & morning; & morning; & morning; & morning; & morning; & morning; & morning; & morning; & morning; & morning; & morning; & morning; & morning; & morning; & morning; & morning; & morning; & morning; this beginning; this middle; that morning; just like this—

& this is where we can begin, thankfully. The pages of the book turn, the days fold into one another and stack up. The structure of the design of the book asks us not to pay attention, asks us not to see it. We read. We do not see. It is a space that we come to occupy, but we never see it—it is there, all the time, so frequent & familiar. All that we ever see are its stops & gaps. What if we were to look around, at this space, at this structure? What would we see? Could we see? How do we experience its repetition? How do we live inside a repetitive structure of time? How can we not live inside a repetitive structure of time? The book is our home, is our ultimate defining experience &

PRODUCTION IS RECEPTION (37): AS-OF-NOW UNTITLED (3)

The book continues to take shape. Yesterday I found out that I have more time than I had initially thought. So now it can be really shaped, shaped well. I want to really write this one, construct the text of this one. But these things, of course, take time, take it away, away. The base layer of the text is there, so now it’s a matter of starting to insert it into its contexts, it spaces, its form, and seeing what happens. And more shaping as a physical thing. And more shaping as a textual thing. And at some point the light will hit it just right—

[…]

& this is where we can begin, thankfully. The pages of the book turn, and in them we recognize our own days, each one folding over the one before. The space between them is essentially a non-space—the fold of the gutter, the impossibly thin fore-edge—these are the dreaming spaces of the book, the times when text and pages sleep and pass into the next day. If only we could always breathe so calmly. The book is our ideal self, our ideal time, perfect and uneventful, artfully arranged and bursting with light and meaning. Our lives, unfortunately, are chaos, overwhelming fragility, no meaning beyond the raw and gorgeous fact of what is &

—light again, again; in the creaking, stirring; movement begins; again; another morning; like the last; but better, always better; the raw and gorgeous fact of what is; the light, the window, the bed, the warmth, the cold, the creaking and stirring of bodies to movement; suspended in the air; stripped to the bones; exposed to the elements of the morning; suspended; hanging; above; on top; and pushing; pushing through; this terrifying machine begins again; again; this ascent; and hovering; above; and exposed; the cold; the warmth; this light against these objects; raw and gorgeous; this paleness in the air; it moves, barely; bare; the windows covered; still dreaming; still suffused with sleep; with paleness in the morning; against these piles of days; now slight, now slightly stirring; the past is there, but gone; gone; bare and now moving away; bare and now huddling close; to the warmth; the warmth exposed to the cold; this light; fantastic and soft; clutching and pushing; suspended; bare and scraping; this clerestory; constant in its explosions; this clerestory, suffused with light and meaning—

& this is where we can begin, thankfully. The pages of the book turn, and in them we feel a ghost image of our own days—an image flattened, thin, tattered, and marred with frantic scribblings. The book, always empty, always pointing away, like a window or a dream, reminds us of the fullness of our days. They both repeat, but these things in which we live, chaotic as they may be, are thick and heavy, a volume to each sagging page. The book is our phantom self, a fragile extension of our time-soaked consciousness back into our object-laden world. We use it as a lens, a filter, to view our own duration. But it will never supplant the breath, the heartbeat, the raging silence of our mornings. The book is lovely, but it is not love. For it we feel nothing but sadness—shabby, sagging thing that it is &

—the window, the mirror, the door; closed and secure; bashful; the blushing of the light; uneven; pushed to one side; pushing; suspended; that paleness exposed in the pushing of the morning; gorgeous; white and brown and blue and gray and white and cold; the light; this shabby entreaty; this breath; again; again; everyday; this heartbeat; quickens; this is terror; love; exposed to the raw light; a string of windows; a string of days; a thread of text intertwined with pale legs in the morning; text bare and scraping; worship; worship bare and scraping; this clerestory, this scriptorium; another day’s dream is written in pale ink and paper, this light on these objects; immaculate; the constant scriptorium; the writing of trembling pages; white and warm; the constant scriptorium; these are days, already turning; always turning; there is no stopping, no going back; just pushing further into the light; shabby thing that it is; the ceiling; the floor; illuminated; illuminated again; and shaking; and shaking; and shaking; the cold; the cold exposed; the cold bare and scraping; against warm sides; ribs and spines; folding—

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