Category Archives: Printing and Printing Processes

Various printing processes.

Late to the party for Shepard Fairey

Posted on January 6, 2022 by Brian Lawler

It gets late early here in Munich in winter, and sometimes I find myself being ready for bed only to discover that it’s 8:15. So, I have taken to watching documentaries on Hulu (and elsewhere) or refining that day’s effort … Continue reading →

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A visit to FOGRA

Posted on January 4, 2022 by Brian Lawler

A few days before Christmas I rode a subway to a regional train to another subway, then walked a bit to reach the headquarters of FOGRA, the Research Institute for Media Technologies in the town of Aschheim, just outside Munich. This for me … Continue reading →

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An analysis of the Image P3 color space

Posted on November 13, 2021 by Brian Lawler

About four years ago, Apple changed the color space of the iPhone from whatever it was (maybe sRGB?) to a new color space called Image P3. This is the color space used by flat panel TV screens. This was a … Continue reading →

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From variable-frequency drives
to hand-bound books

Posted on March 20, 2020 by Brian Lawler

It’s been about a month since I wrote my last blog. It was about variable-frequency-drive high voltage motor controllers and a 1935 book sewing machine. The relevance of that is cloudy, but suffice it to say that I have been … Continue reading →

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Electronic motor control
and my obsession with a 1935 bookbinding machine

Posted on February 25, 2020 by Brian Lawler

This is the second part of my obsession story. To read the first part, please click here. And that’s where my odyssey began. Alternating current induction motors use the frequency of the line power (60 Hz in our case) to … Continue reading →

Posted in Bookbinding, Education, Imposition and Pagination, New technology, Printing and Printing Processes, Technology | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Obsessing on a 1935 bookbinding machine

Posted on February 22, 2020 by Brian Lawler

I get obsessed about my projects. My current obsession is the restoration of a 1935 Smyth book sewing machine in the Shakespeare Press Museum at Cal Poly (I was the faculty advisor before I retired). That machine sews the spines … Continue reading →

Posted in Adventures, Bookbinding, Education, History, Imposition and Pagination, New technology, Printing and Printing Processes | Tagged , , , | 7 Comments

Running the five-color
Pearl press postcard

Posted on October 21, 2019 by Brian Lawler

In 2019 I began the restoration of an 1895 Pearl press, a treadle-powered letterpress that was donated to the Cal Poly Shakespeare Press Museum. That press was a rusty machine when we took delivery of it. I took it to … Continue reading →

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Reminiscences of a prepress guy

Posted on September 12, 2019 by Brian Lawler

I am an old prepress guy. I owned one of the first PostScript service bureaus in the U.S. I was there at the beginning. It was painful, but overall it was a great business. We had been traditional typographers, and … Continue reading →

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Cal Poly’s TAGA students win the Kipphan Cup at TAGA 2019

Posted on April 17, 2019 by Brian Lawler

The Cal Poly TAGA team has won the prestigious Helmut Kipphan Cup at this year’s conference of the Technical Association of the Graphic Arts. The Kipphan Cup is awarded to the university team whose technical journal is judged to be … Continue reading →

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A pretty good argument for using ProPhoto RGB
as your working color space

Posted on June 4, 2018 by Brian Lawler

Photographers discovered 20 years ago that sRGB is a really bad color space for professional photography. So we all changed to Adobe RGB 1998. The reasons for doing so are important: Adobe RGB has a larger overall gamut, and conversion … Continue reading →

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