typography

How 100-Year-Old Wood Adds Meaning to Christmas

Hamilton Wood Type & Printing Museum, Two Rivers, WI

Last week I spent a hands-on day at the Hamilton Wood Type & Printing Museum in Two Rivers, WI. What a great day! For all you typophiles (yes, there’s actually a forum for you), Hamilton is the largest collection of wood type, wood cuts and historic printing machines in the world. It’s a fully functional museum, which means artists, typographers and letterpress wannabes like me can spend a day playing with paper, ink and über alt alphabets.

Like the cool dudes in this picture.

mural of men who worked at Hamilton Wood Type & Printing

Actually these men may or may not have done printing. As craftsmen for Hamilton Manufacturing Company, they were the oomph of the collections we have today. They cut and sanded logs of wood. They carved and refined letters. They were the master makers of wood type.

The original company, called J.E. Hamilton Holly Wood Type Company, was founded in 1880 and within 20 years was the largest manufacturer of wood type in the United States. Even as letterpress printing gave way to newer technologies, Hamilton continued producing wood type until the end of the 20th century. Today the company is Hamilton Scientific.

Display cases at Hamilton Wood Type & Printing Museum

So now we have the Hamilton Wood Type & Printing Museum! With 1.5 million pieces of wood type and 45,000 square feet of space, it makes for a jaw-dropping, creativity-cranking museum and workshop.

Pantograph at Hamilton Wood Type & Printing Museum, Two Rivers, WI

Before we started with our printing, assistant director Stephanie Carpenter led us on an informational tour. She’s a great guide and knows her stuff well. She proudly explained the museum’s dedication to the preserving wood type production, including carving letters with this original pantograph machine. Once a month a now-90-year-old, retired Hamilton employee tutors two staff members on this highly skilled craft.

Letterpress printer at Hamilton Wood Type and Printing Museum, Two Rivers, WI

How many you dream of owning a letterpress like this? Join throngs of like-minded Ebay shoppers and prepare to spend oodles. In the meantime, the Hamilton museum has a full display of presses from throughout the industry’s history. Imagine the pages they printed back in the day!

Linotype at Hamilton Wood Type & Printing Museum, Two Rivers, WI

After letterpress came linotype. Hamilton Manufacturing Company didn’t produce linotype machines, however the museum has a wonderful display for this era of printing.

print workshop at Hamilton Wood Type & Printing Museum

And then we started our own printing! Probably like most first timers, I completely underestimated how meticulous and time consuming setting type by hand can be. I quickly simplified my design.

print workshop at Hamilton Wood Type & Printing Museum

Caution! Wet Ink! Arcint Architecture owners Edward Haydin and Ryan Thacker made these stunning posters to commemorate their firm’s second anniversary. What a great idea! (This upcoming year marks a big one for Adunate—I may head back up to Two Rivers and make posters of my own.)

Adunate Christmas Card 2014

Ta-da! And here’s my final product. I never got into scrapbooking or stamping, simply because it’s one more hobby I would find myself obsessing over. But, hey, this printing, punching holes and threading jute by hand…after spending hours at the computer, it’s a tactual delight!

Adunate Christmas Card 2014

The best thing about making your own cards—writing your own message.

Adunate Christmas Card 2014

Merry Christmas to everyone, especially my dear customers. God’s blessings to you in 2015!

Wednesday Webs: The Gales of November

turkeys

November is well upon us. What is it they say, the gales of November? I think of this on my morning walks when the air feels dark and the wind has sharpened. On a cozier note, November also initiates the season of togetherness. We tuck ourselves in, light a fire, and begin planning for the holidays.

The Nostalgia of Chalkboard

blackboard art by AdunateI asked my father-in-law to make me a chalkboard for my birthday. Isn’t it cool? You can’t see it in this picture, but the bottom portion of the frame is a storage box for the chalk and eraser. I love it!

Chalkboard art is everywhere these days. Maybe it’s because we no longer use these scholarly slates in the classroom that we’re drawn to their nostalgic quality? Who knows. Whatever it is, we seem to find chalkboard art most appealing. So, my plan was to write a daily note—you know, just kind of whip off something artistically profound and inspire everyone with my wisdom and calligraphy. Yeah, right.

Anyway, because I’m using the board for an upcoming project, I’ve been researching chalkboard art online. Wow, it’s really become a highly developed medium (obviously one I’ve not yet mastered). Here’s an article on Dana Ranamachi, who’s making a career of sketching these stunning boards.

For you DIYers, bloggist Leslie from Gwen Moss wrote this helpful “10 Things You Should Know About Chalkboard Art.” The Dear Lille blog also offers helpful tutorials, as well as lovely pieces you can buy.

And here’s why my daily quips never made it past Day 1: Carla Hackett. I don’t have her speed. I don’t have her finesse. Above all, I don’t speak with the wisdom of Kemi Nekvapil.

Maybe I’ll update my board monthly.

Or quarterly.

 

 

Wednesday Webs: The Art of the Ampersand

ampersand

Ampersands are the funnest typographical character (even more than the letter A, which I also love). And because I’m using an ampersand in an upcoming project, I’ve been obsessing over them wherever I can find them.

Such a bold, expressive character, yes?

 

 

Hamilton Wood Type Preserves a Magnificent Print

Hamilton Wood Type & Printing Museum, Two Rivers, Wis.

This week I dragged my husband and son out of our holiday hibernation and up to the Hamilton Wood Type & Printing Museum in Two Rivers, Wisconsin.

What a cool place!

Hamilton Wood Type & Printing Museum, Two Rivers, Wis.

The museum is located in an age-old manufacturing plant used by the Hamilton Manufacturing Company, now known as Thermo Scientific. The building is as interesting as the wood type.

Hamilton Wood Type & Museum, Two Rivers, WI

Wooden letters are everywhere! The museum has 1.5 million pieces of wood type in more than 1,000 styles and sizes. It also has an amazing collection of advertising cuts from the 1930s through the 1970s.

pantograph at Hamilton Wood Type & Museum, Two Rivers, WI

Back in the day, type cutters used this pantograph router to cut new letters while tracing an old letter. Hamilton manufactured wood type until the late 1980s.

Hamilton Wood Type & Museum, Two Rivers, WI

Hamilton made the drawer pulls too. Aren’t they a wonderful contrast to the modern label-maker strips?

Letterpress ink at Hamilton Wood Type & Museum, Two Rivers, WI

 Ink and supplies from the old days.

Hamilton Wood Type & Museum, Two Rivers, WI

The museum’s 40,000 square feet is packed with antique machinery — presses, sanders and so much more. They’re beautiful.

lithograph machine at Hamilton Wood Type & Museum, Two Rivers, WI

Lithograph printing: An era that followed letterpress.

Learn letterpress at Hamilton Wood Type & Museum, Two Rivers, WI

Hamilton offers letterpress seminars and opportunities to use its equipment. I’m so planning to sign up for a class!

Artists customarily leave a sample of their work so the museum walls are truly a gallery. Aren’t they fun?

Letterpress blocks, Hamilton Wood Type & Museum

Wood Type: I think they’re so beautiful! Their use in letterpress is such an important part of our printing history, and, interestingly, it’s an art form being revitalized today.

Thanks Hamilton Wood Type & Museum for making this happen!

 

 

Wednesday Webs 9-28-11

Adunate Word & Design, playing with type

Since I’m still trying to finish my business logo, I’ve become rather obsessed with type. Typography is a refined art and designers like Louise Fili, one of my favorites, are a highly skilled breed.

Here’s more:

  • Thinking with Type, by Ellen Lupton: Everything you ever wanted to know about type and using it to communicate a message.
  • Mixing Typefaces: Combining typefaces can be hard. This helps.
  • Kerning is the horizontal adjustment of space between letters to improve appearance and readability. Well designed logos and headlines are always carefully kerned and I use this 3-letter method.
  • The font game: a fun way to learn typeface.

 

Mackinac Pro: Bridging Sentiment and Design

P22 Mackinac Pro

Designers love typefaces. Writers love words. And Michiganders love their Bridge. Even though it’s been decades since I’ve lived in the Great Lakes State, when P22 Type Foundry announced its Mackinac Pro, I swooned with the nostalgic excitement of an 8-year-old girl in a Mackinac Island fudge shop.

What’s so special about this typeface? (Or font, as graphic designers acquiesce to saying these days.)

Well, to start, it’s got a mighty name—aptly so, since the type’s designer, Mike Beens, is from Michigan. And its advertising copy is worthy of an award: “P22 Mackinac Pro (pronounced Mackinaw) spans four centuries of type design, bridging the Old World with the New.” Gotta love it—making sure you pronounce the name correctly, as only a Michigander would!

But it’s the letterforms themselves that structurally are as beautiful as the bridge. Mackinac Pro is described as having “smooth shapes, sweet curves and seamless transitions evocative of wind & water.” Yet, it’s an OpenType workhorse that’s as utilitarian for advertising, publishing and signage as the bridge is for motorcycles, cars and semis.

I like the double-story, lower case “a” and “g” (my favorite for serif type). I also like the positive, upward arch of the lower case “a” and the italic “e” (too bad the regular version isn’t arched as well).

Most of all, I love, love, love the ampersand—it’s a Great Lakes wave all in itself!

Arts & Crafts: A Movement of Beauty and Integrity

Prairie-style home, Milwaukee, WI

When I was a kid, my paternal grandparents lived in an awesome house. It certainly wasn’t as grand as this one, but I loved it nonetheless. It was a bungalow, most likely from the turn of the century, and its enclosed front porch was filled with black wicker furniture and fringe-shaded lamps.

Things didn’t get more Arts and Crafts than that front porch.

At the time of my 1960s childhood, such style was beyond its original popularity. Today, however, it’s celebrating a magnificent revival and it’s one of my favorite styles in architecture, interior design and graphic art.

(This past weekend I got to feed my Arts & Craft fix with 14 Milwaukee homes in the Wright and Like 2011 Tour. Jealous? The house above is one of them, along with the one below.)

The linear style of Arts & Craft

The Arts and Crafts movement started in England in the 1870s as a reaction to the industrialized Victorian excesses of the mid-nineteenth century. Here in the U.S., it’s heyday lasted well into the 1930s.

According to Isabelle Anscombe in her book Arts & Crafts Style, “the new idiom of Arts and Crafts was strong and simple in form, rich and intricate in craftsmanship, with a fresh morality based on fitness for purpose.”

Simply put, this was a style that evoked honesty, warmth, informality and unprentiousness. It emphasized clean lines and quality, natural materials.

 

Owen Jones Grammar of OrnamentDigital ID: 818869. New York Public Library

Architect and designer Owen Jones (1809-1874) was a great influence in the Arts and Crafts style. In his book The Grammar of Ornament, he formulated 37 propositions for form and color in architecture and decorative arts. For example, Proposition 5 says “Construction should be decorated. Decoration should never be purposely constructed. That which is beautiful is true; that which is true must be beautiful.”

This could be a credo for life in general, couldn’t it?

William Morris

Digital ID: 118685. New York Public Library

Another leading member of the Arts and Crafts movement was William Morris. Involved in textiles, wallpaper and anything related to interior design, he brought great influence to the decorative arts. He later started Kelmscott Press, where he strived to produce high quality, hand bound books using traditional, 15th century methods. He was dissatisfied with the commercially available typefaces of the day, so he designed Golden, Chaucer and Troy, which he based from historic Gothic typefaces. Many of the popular Arts and Crafts style fonts we see today are based from these three typefaces.

Arts & Craft home, Prairie-style, Milwaukee, WI

Of course, if we’re speaking of leading influences, we have to come back to the Wright and Like Tour, namely Frank Lloyd Wright. This huge icon, as we all know, was an architect, interior designer, writer and educator. His design is likely the most revered by Americans today and many architects have followed his example, including Milwaukee architect Russell Barr Williamson.

Williamson worked as Wright’s draftsman and office manager from 1914-1918, and in 1922 he constructed the house shown above (my favorite on the tour). Note the geometric stained glass windows—definitely a style Williamson carried over from Frank Lloyd Wright’s stained glass designs.

For more information on the Arts and Craft movement, check out this great resource on design history.