Fast/Good/Cheap

I first came across this quote as 'Coppola's Law' on my film degree. Reportedly, legendary director Francis Ford Coppola (The Godfather, Apocalypse Now, etc.) had the following quotation displayed on his trailer door during filming:

"Fast, Good, Cheap - Choose Two"

The gist of the idea being (in case it isn't clear):
Something made quickly and on a low budget will be a bit crap.
If you want something cheap and good, you'll have to be patient.
If you want something made fast and high quality, it's gonna cost ya.

So, clearly very relevant to film production, but certainly to many other industries as well.

Alongside Grey Letter Press, I also have a 'day job' at the inimitable children's book publisher, Usborne. I work in the Production department, where this quotation is very relevant indeed!

So, I decided a letterpress print of this quote was exactly what the department needed as a little "farewell (for now)" gift from me as I went off on maternity leave.

A lot of our printing gear is still in semi-storage as a result of all the renovation work we've recently had done on the house, so I had limited typefaces to choose from. We found this rather dusty wooden type in the loft:

Interestingly, we purchased this from Italy, so it comes with some lovely accented letters and a rather unfortunate letter distribution for the English language:

Good old Gill Sans Bold was luckily also to hand:

For the ink, I mixed up a sort of inky blue, and a then a sobering black for the reality check part of the quote:

Ooh, glossy:

I'm pleased to say the print was very well received. Here it is taking pride of place amongst the snacks, until someone gets around to putting it up on the wall:

A Trip to Ditchling

We recently paid a visit to the beautiful village of Ditchling in Sussex. Ditchling has a rather interesting history and for such a small place has hosted more than its fair share of artistic residents. Indeed, it was something of a creative hub in the earlier 20th century and now boasts its own museum, showcasing the work of local artists and craftspeople.

This museum of course was the main reason for our visit to Ditchling, and of chief interest for us were exhibitions on typographic legends Edward Johnston and Eric Gill.  

I assume most people reading this know who Eric Gill is (Gill Sans, guys) and his friend and mentor Edward Johnston was the genius responsible for the London Underground font (Johnston Sans). Johnston has featured on this blog before when we visited the London Transport Museum Depot in Acton. Ooh we do love a good museum.

It was absolutely fascinating to see their work on display, especially that which shows the development of their respective typefaces.

Johnston's original profession was as a calligrapher or hand-letterer, so it was lovely to see some of his work in this area as well.

You'd think this would all be exciting and interesting enough, but Ditchling's delights were only just getting started. Most of the rest of the museum was dedicated to displays on (our very favourite thing)... letterpress! Woohoo!

Their print shop set-up had me green with envy and did a great job of laying out the basic process for those unfamiliar with proper printing.

Just look at the patina on the wooden type... and the massive old type case... and the beasty Stanhope press...! Sigh.

In an absolutely inspired (and slightly bonkers) move, the museum had also been involved with an (ad)venture called the Big Steam Print. This involves printing giant lino-cut designs with a dirty great steam roller. Why not??

Image from artfund.org 

At the museum, they had a huge communal linocutting thing going on, where you could contribute your own little design to a massive linocut sheet that will be printed as part of Big Steam Print at the Ditchling Fair on 18th June (hey, that's not yet! You could totally go and see it!).

Whilst I was running around taking photos of everything in the print shop, Sam Boy and our mate Kathy were doing just that.

All in all, it was an excellent day out. We drove down, but my friend Kathy came on the train, so can confirm it's definitely do-able as a day trip from London. The train station is in Hassocks though, which is a bit of a trek on foot from Ditchling itself, you may want to consider a taxi depending on how much you like walking!

If you fancy getting in a spot of exercise whilst you're there, a stroll up on Ditchling Beacon proved bracing. For lunch, there are plenty of options, we had some lovely sandwiches in the garden at the The Green Welly Cafe, a stone's throw from the museum. The museum shop itself also had some incredibly tempting cakes on display.

Noted

Apologies for the hiatus, we've been a wee bit busy in the run up to the festive season. Much fun has been had with various craft markets, epic Christmas card print-runs, typing letters from Santa etc.

Most of our time has been devoted, however, to another new project, about which we're very excited... Personalised Notebooks!

This started off as 2015's solution to our annual 'massive family, no time' Christmas present dilemma, but we're pleased to say has proved popular with our customers as well.

I don't have as many 'work in progress' photos as I'd like, so will be sure to take some more detailed shots next time we're making.

The covers are letterpress printed with the text either being blind debossed or printed with black ink:

We've given a choice of two 24pt fonts. Gills Sans Bold:

Or Bernhard Gothic Light:

We were able to stick with our ethical sourcing policies by using recycled board for the covers. This is from the lovely Eco-craft, and we selected a range of 11 very sexy colours:

The few work in progress shots I do have:

To bind the notebooks, we use a simple 3-hole pamphlet stitch, like so:

Using our very lovely Bookbinding Tool Kit from the LCBA:

Here's hoping we'll be making plenty more of these in 2016.

Read All About It

It's letterpress, but not as we know it.

We came across a fascinating video this week, showing the process of printing newspapers "pre-computers".

The film was made in around 1950 and it's a great snapshot of printing history. You can see linotype and teletype machines in action, proofing, plate-making, photographs being developed and some bone fide 1950s scouts. It has everything. It certainly filled a few gaps in my knowledge. Hope you enjoy this as much as we did...

Bon Voyage Emily :(

A dear friend and colleague of mine is relocating from London to Bristol. I am both delighted for her, insanely jealous, and already missing my cinema buddy.

It's also her birthday coming up, so inspired by our joint frustration with our overcrowded metropolis, we made this card for her.

From that angle, it may just look like your average beautifully letterpressed birthday card (!), but if you look closer, you can see we've been playing with blind impressions again, and a hidden message is revealed...

Here are some pics of the type being locked-up and inked. This was a bit of a messy one, our roller's too wide to do this with any finesse so we had to wipe it off before printing!

I'm pleased to report she loved it. Bon Voyage Emily & Jon, missing you guys already!