Day 13

All our fun typesetting the past few days is adding up...and up and up...

WHAT I DID

• Music City Roots poster– complete!
• Met with my client for the Carrie Underwood poster, got my first job approval (this means printing will ensue)
• Mixed the colors for the Underwood poster
• Got lots of reglet splinters– boo!

WHAT I LEARNED

• Before you print your job on the press, we hand-brayer the set type and pull a proof (rub tracing paper onto the inked letters with your hand and/or a wooden spoon)
• Coat proofs twice with corn starch, then brush it off to help keep ink from smudging
• Ink proofs diagonally, and pull the tracing paper off diagonally– it keeps the type from sticking and lifting up

Found this guy and had to photograph, as it coincides a bit with my personal work.

Day 12

650 AM, WSM (just sing the jingle in your head)

WHAT I DID

• Almost finished setting Music City Roots poster
• Petted Huey (photo coming later, everyone loves cat pictures, right?)

LESSONS FOR TODAY

• How to deal with large amounts of type
• What to do when not all of your type will fit in a line (pretty tricky when you're trying to justify type, or get it to line up flush from left to right perfectly)

1. Try a different and/or smaller font
2. Try using lowercase instead of uppercase
3. Utilize catchwords (fancy "and"s and "the"s styled into one block)
4. Try to shrink articles like of, for, at, etc., or set them in a different font
5. Switch "and" with "&"
6. Switch "at" with "@"

According to the Nashville tour guide lady that comes in every day, this poster has sold more than Elvis and Johnny Cash posters

Day 11

A rake block!

WHAT I DID

• Started setting my design for the fall Music City Roots poster.
• Called my client to check out the Carrie Underwood proof.
• Got a customer looking for a John Cage Poster– slightly out of the ordinary

LESSONS FOR TODAY

• To test out how large type needs to be for your poster, bring your composing stick to a type case and use a line of average-width letters to gauge how big words will be.
• Because proofs are a single, arbitrary color, indicate what the actual colors/separations/background blocks will be on the proof.

Our table saw for cutting down blocks.