Author Archives: Brian Lawler

About Brian Lawler

Brian Lawler is an Emeritus Professor of Graphic Communication at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo and was a Guest Professor at Hochschule München from September, 2021 to September, 2022. He writes about graphic arts processes and technologies for various industry publications, and on his blog, The Blognosticator.

The Smyth book sewing machine is now running!

Some of you may recall my obsession with a 1935 Smyth book sewing machine and all of the steps it took to restore it and get it running again. After my return from Germany last September, I worked a lot … Continue reading

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Ink-jet trompe l’oeil buildings

I spent the last year in Europe, mostly in Munich, and I had a wonderful opportunity to visit several countries as a tourist before returning to the USA. My wife and I became vagabonds after my final semester teaching at … Continue reading

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Pushing the limits of repositioned panoramic photography (updated) (three times)

In several previous articles I have written about the process of repositioned panoramic photography. It works best when there is no perspective – strictly two-dimensional subject matter. With my experiences with street art (see the most recent article here), this works perfectly. … Continue reading

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The Gegendruck

In our industry we throw around lots of arcane terms – offset, litho, ink-jet, gravure, roto, screen printing, make-ready, prepress, flexo, etc., etc. I’ve been doing my best recently to learn similar terms in German, some of which don’t have … Continue reading

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Running the Landa Nanopress

Part III [Part II] [Part I] After numerous visits to the printing plant where the Landa Nanopress is running, I have a pretty good idea of how that machine works. I am assisted by a very nice diagram on the … Continue reading

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Printing on the Landa Nanopress

Part II [Part I] In the fall, my Master’s degree students and I worked on a project to write and publish a book about street art and street artists in Munich. We chose to photograph the work of these artists … Continue reading

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Working with the Landa Nanopress

Part I Last September I moved to Germany to teach for a year at Hochschule München in the Print and Media Technology program. This is my second time teaching here. The program is very similar to the program at Cal … Continue reading

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Designing a monogram font

Years ago I made a reproduction-quality proof of a type font in the Shakespeare Press Museum at Cal Poly. This font is comprised a sets of three letters that can be assembled into monograms. Monograms were quite popular for business … Continue reading

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Lining Livermore, der zweite Teil

This is a continuation of a blog I wrote two days ago. To read the first part, click here. After I put all the letters (called “glyphs” In typography) into a master Adobe Illustrator document, I built the destination environment for the … Continue reading

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Drawing the Lining Livermore font

Deep in the recesses of the back room of the Shakespeare Press Museum at California Polytechnic State University is a cabinet. It contains about 20 drawers of hand-set metal type. We never use this type because it is difficult to … Continue reading

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