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Typography Tuesday

MIKE KOPPA AT HEAVY DUTY PRESS

Do you ever wonder what letterpress printers do when they’re not printing type? Do they go fishing, play with their kids, hang out at the local coffee shop with friends, practice with the band? Yeah, many do. But sometimes when they’re not printing type, they’re also having fun cleaning and playing with their type!

Case in point: our good friend, Wisconsin graphic designer, letterpress printer, stonecutter, radio personality, and collage and book artist Mike Koppa has been posting on his Tumblr site @mrkoppa about the joys of just being with type. He writes:

The process of bathing an entire case of 10 pt Franklin Gothic Condensed began a few days ago. . . .  Used the old fashioned method of tying up blocks of type with string (something I have always enjoyed) and found that string holds up quite nicely when submerged in mineral spirits. . . .  the type is not tied so tightly that the mineral spirits cannot sneak between the sorts, which leads to tedious line-by-line wiping down of type bodies before transferring it all back to the galley.

Quite an affair but worth the effort. . . . The type cleaning and organizing bug is infectious.

But this process leads to a book idea: why not print this type as it is and create a series of page spreads? Which leads to the next idea: “let’s get down to business and fill up the bed, and if the 24 pt doesn’t fill it up, well, then might as well clean and tidy up the 18 point, too.”  What a type nerd!

Let’s not go licking those fingers now, Mike!

View other posts featuring the work of Michael Koppa.

View more Typography Tuesday posts.