Category Archives: Education

These are blogs about education and training.

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 , , , | 2 Comments

Photographing the portrait-in-stone

Posted on July 29, 2017 by Brian Lawler

In April, my students and I visited the Landesamt für Digitalisierung Breitband und Vermessung in Munich (Read that story here). In English, this is the state office of digitization, broadband and surveying. Among the things they do is to manage … Continue reading →

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The Rathaus GigaPan

Posted on June 9, 2017 by Brian Lawler

I have a GigaPan device. It’s a computerized camera mount that moves a camera to take a photo, then moves the camera, and takes a photo, and continues doing that until a series of images are taken that complete a … Continue reading →

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Learning letterpress in a 14th century town

Posted on April 19, 2017 by Brian Lawler

One of the three classes I am teaching in Munich is Advanced Typography. The students are in their third year in the Print Media program at Munich University of Applied Sciences. Five of my students are exchange students from my … Continue reading →

Posted in Education, History, Typography | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Meet Lorem Ipsum

Posted on February 15, 2017 by Brian Lawler

I’m not making this up. Three years ago I was looking at my roll sheet for my Introduction to Graphic Communication course at Cal Poly. About a third of the way down the list I stopped at the name Lauren … Continue reading →

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My mission to Mars, continued

Posted on October 17, 2015 by Brian Lawler

In a blog I posted last year, I described how I developed a series of AppleScripts to control Adobe Photoshop to crop, then increase the canvas size, then draw crop marks on a series of image parts to make a … Continue reading →

Posted in Adventures, Art, Color Management, Education, Imposition and Pagination, New technology, Panoramic Photography, Photography, Photoshop techniques, Software | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Our night on Mount Wilson
with a really big telephoto lens

Posted on October 21, 2014 by Brian Lawler

On September 26, my wife and I joined a group from the local astronomical society on a field trip to Mount Wilson, just east of Pasadena, California, where we spent the entire night observing objects in the sky. My wife … Continue reading →

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Danish designer’s logo makes a nice Chinese ideograph

Posted on November 15, 2013 by Brian Lawler

While participating in the ICC Symposium in Hong Kong this week I had a chance to visit and tour the Hong Kong Design Institute, a public post-secondary institution devoted to graphic arts, graphic design, interior design and industrial design. The … Continue reading →

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French TAGA chapter captures the Kipphan Trophy

Posted on February 6, 2013 by Brian Lawler

This year’s TAGA Conference featured something completely new: the French student chapter from Grenoble won first prize in the TAGA scientific journal competition. This is the first time a student chapter outside North America has captured the prize. The students … Continue reading →

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