Tag Archives: Shakespeare Press Museum

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

Running the five-color
Pearl press postcard

Posted on October 21, 2019 by Brian Lawler

Last year 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 →

Posted in Art, Printing and Printing Processes, Software, Technology, Typography, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

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 →

Posted in Art, Color Management, History, Photoshop techniques, Printing and Printing Processes, Software | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Prince Bold made Neue

Posted on February 24, 2017 by Brian Lawler

Every really cool font eventually comes out in a “neue” version. The most famous is Helvetica Neue, which was the modernized version of Helvetica, with its normalized weights and corrected curves and very subtle curve changes. Prince Bold is based … Continue reading →

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Printing on a 126-year-old press, and loving it!

Posted on November 24, 2016 by Brian Lawler

I am engaged as a human printing engine this week (and next). The president of our university and his wife want a letterpress Christmas card this year, so have engaged the design and production forces at-hand to produce these cards. … Continue reading →

Posted in History, Printing and Printing Processes, Technology, Typography | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

You wanted kerning! You get kerning!

Posted on July 16, 2014 by Brian Lawler

Last week I promised to write a blog about the next step in making my Lining Livermore typeface. I thought I was farther in the process than I was. Getting letters to fit adjacent to each other is a difficult … Continue reading →

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Drawing the lozenge for Lining Livermore

Posted on July 1, 2014 by Brian Lawler

…continued from yesterday’s blog I’m probably never going to need the lozenge character in any typographic project I do. Nonetheless, it’s there, ready for me, whenever I choose to use it. That’s exciting. The lonely lozenge. I don’t know what … Continue reading →

Posted in Art, History, Typography | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Typographical archaeology for Lining Livermore

Posted on June 30, 2014 by Brian Lawler

Continued from yesterday’s blog… After I created the scan of my type proof, I opened it up in Adobe Photoshop and made some corrections (I rotated the G and the O), and I did some tonal clean-up to make the … Continue reading →

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Digging into history for a “new” digital type design

Posted on June 29, 2014 by Brian Lawler

I am the faculty advisor of the Shakespeare Press Museum at Cal Poly. The museum is a working collection of type and printing presses that collectively represent the history of relief printing from 1850 to 1950. This is one of … Continue reading →

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Rewiring the Linotype machine

Posted on June 14, 2013 by Brian Lawler

I’ve not blogged in quite a while, for which I apologize to my faithful readers. It wasn’t that I didn’t have anything going on. It was that I had writer’s blog. I couldn’t come up with anything to say about … Continue reading →

Posted in History, Imposition and Pagination, Printing and Printing Processes, Typography | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | 5 Comments