Melbourne Museum of Printing

On the 14th of October we visited the Melbourne Museum of Printing in Footscray. Most of our class was put off by this at first, seeing as it was a far drive or to catch to public transport but most of us went thanks to David for driving us in a minivan. :) We got to what seemed to look like a warehouse, some of us confused, this definetly did not look like a museum! We were told that they were in the process of moving from Sunshine so the warehouse look of it was just for the time being.

Lorry gave us a brief introduction about the place and then our guide, Michael started on the history of typography and printing. We were told about impositions (planning of how pages form in books) and the letterpresses. I found this part interesting to learn about as the negatives of text becomes a positive when it is printed. When we later developed our own printing of our names, its funny to see that everything was backwards and upside down at first, but when printed onto paper it forms the right way up and side. We looked around the front of the museum, a A1 board of fonts interested me with this quote in particular, "with this many amazing headlines, why haven't we been bought out by Rupert Murdoch. I talked to Michael briefly about the amount of fonts just used alone for  headlines, can we imagine how many fonts there is out there if that was just headline fonts?

* Picas and Inches, which were the standard measurements for a font size.
In the USA, the standard size for a pica is 1/6 of an inch to make a size 12 font. An inch is 25mm

* "Printer's pie" refers to the split type, this is when type in the forme can be shorter in one line and then become looser than the next...

* Forme/ Chase: the steel frame that holds the text/words.

*Quoine: pushes the type into the corners of the chase.

We learnt about mats/ matrix, which were used to assemble a word together, followed by type cases. Upper case fonts got its name as they were in alphabetical order in the cases and Lower case fonts were just in the bottom for convenience.
Michael told us about kerning – to create a nicer style for the fonts, as we already knew from Jennine's class, but Michael went into more depth about it which was good.

There was 3 parts to the museum, the composing area, the printing area and the finishing area. 
The composing area consisted of the letters, which you composed the words letter by letter. The printing area which had the paper and press machines, etc and the finishing area for binding.
We were able to create our names on the linoprint machine by Lorry but we got to ink and create a certificate like thing to remember our trip. We had to find the letters ourselves and create the words which Michael then made for us from the melted metal.

Overall it was a good experience that helped us understand the history of printing and how letters were made and how easy we have it now with computers to do all our calculations for a font size for us. The best part was watching Scott do some of the printing using different fonts, text and paper. The work he did looked really unique and vintage like. He made me a print but i wasn't allowed to bring it home, but i got inspiration from it anyway. It looks a little like the 9th picture below but it had fonts and type everywhere with different inks.

Walker Street Gallery

As we found out on Thursday 7th of October, books are a tool of communication. Books were a vital part of communicating ideas and thoughts to others long before facebook, twitter or the internet in general. We visited the Walker Street Gallery for 2 exhibitions being held – 

Tess Edwards Metaphysical Fishing being one of them. Tess Edwards was not particularly Catholic but her artwork was based upon prayer books. She would paint over prayer books, sometimes revealing text, sometimes not.

This was an interesting thing she did to express herself. You wouldn't think one would, i suppose, 'vandalize' something sacred, such as bibles, prayer books, etc, but it gave a new depth to her work. Some of the artwork looked quite random, with no particular meaning behind it to me, or not as obvious as some of the other images she may have painted. 

We looked at different forms of books that were created by Deakin Uni students. Some were fascinating, such as the Trees and Ladders, 1995 by John Ryrie, Alex Selenitsch and Hamish Hill. The book didn’t look as fascinating as the case. The case was a symbol of trees with the wood grains and a hard cover for the book. It had a step ladder on the right side of it that represented growth and more like a ladder of success.

            The boat books were interesting because they represented things that books can be – easy to print, cheap and fun. You don’t need a lot of pictures or text, or fancy fonts, or anything, as long as you can just fold paper and make an interesting shape to add to the content. The idea behind the boat reminded me of in primary school when you would make paper boats/hats.

There was many pieces that were pleasing to look at, the matchbox book, the book with the buttons and vintage photos, however the best one for me was the owl book sitting in the right side corner of the gallery. “An Howl of Owls” fascinated me with its contrast of black and white, like day and night. The stencils and patterns of the owls and even the title in grey lead pencil. It looks like it had been spray painted as well which added a bit of a 3D look to the owls. The combination of the text and stencils, the use of negative space and the simplicity of the book, pictures of owls with no text gave a new meaning to books. You don’t need both text and images!

Even though it was a small gallery, there were a lot of fascinating pieces to look at and learn from. The thing we probably have forgotten is that books are a vital part of communicating and learning.