Category Archives: Art

These are blogs that relate to art, art photography, artwork reproduction, and fine art in general.

The Gegendruck

Posted on June 5, 2022 by Brian Lawler

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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Printing on the Landa Nanopress

Posted on June 3, 2022 by Brian Lawler

Part II 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 in one … Continue reading →

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Designing a monogram font

Posted on April 15, 2022 by Brian Lawler

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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Drawing the Lining Livermore font

Posted on February 26, 2022 by Brian Lawler

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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The birth of Bauschrift

Posted on February 15, 2022 by Brian Lawler

I went on a journey last week to buy some foam-core board. En route, I saw a handsome metal sign at the Technische Universität München. In English, this translates (roughly) to: MATERIAL TESTINGOFFICE FOR CONSTRUCTIONFACULTY CHAIRLARGE SCALE CONSTRUCTION The sign … Continue reading →

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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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It was a dark and stormy night…

Posted on December 11, 2021 by Brian Lawler

Two of my students and I were searching for Daniel, one of the important people in a community of artists in Munich. I say he is “one of the important people,” but I cannot tell you his title, nor how … Continue reading →

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A refined approach
to repositioned panoramas of Munich street art

Posted on October 16, 2021 by Brian Lawler

Four years ago I was teaching in Munich, and during that time I photographed a number of pieces of street art on Tumblingerstraße in the city. You can read that story and its associated comments here. The photos were taken … Continue reading →

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AppleScript solves my grid mask challenge in Adobe Photoshop

Posted on August 21, 2021 by Brian Lawler

I pride myself on being a competent user of Adobe Photoshop. I know how to make my photos look good by sliding sliders and pushing buttons and applying filters and adding Layer Effects and all sorts of visual things. Occasionally I need … 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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