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Hello. I am Bodini.
The first job on my Adana Eight Five using the Bodini Bodoni 12 point that arrived yesterday from Don Black Linecasting. More photos of the process here.
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Mrs. Rachel Lynde
Did you know that the first sentence of the first chapter of Anne of Green Gables, a paragraph long, contains 148 words? It just goes on and on and on. There are 831 characters, punctuation marks and...
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Sorting Type
It seems that my recent acquisition, 30 pounds of Bodoni 12 point, is a little less “sorted” than I would like it to be. The type arrived in California Job Case, which is essentially a drawer with...
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Simplifying my Telephony
For the last seven years I’ve been a happy and enthusiastic voice-over-IP user: since I moved into the office here at 84 Fitzroy Street in 2003, all of my telephone calls have been handled by the...
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Mrs. Rachel Lynde (on Straw)
With all my lowercase Bodoni sorted into place, I needed a break from the pitter-pat of sorting type, and so I turned my attention back to setting the type for the (marathon) first sentence of Anne of...
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As in letterpress, so in web design
In the excellent 1889 book The young job printer: A book of instructions in details on job printing for beginners, from the chapter on job composition: Who among us has not encountered the retailer or...
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First Sentence Set
This afternoon I finished setting the type for the first sentence of Anne of Green Gables in Bodoni 12 point. I took a photo of the type in the chase and then digitally mirror-imaged it to allow me to...
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Since brains cannot be got rid of...
In Harper’s, volume 75 from June 1887 there’s an article by R.R. Bowker on how books are printed, part of the magazine’s “Great American Industries” series. My favourite paragraph concerns attempts to...
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Type Hacking
We think hacking was invented in the 1960s. And maybe that’s when the word came into common use to mean “inventive workaround.” But inventive workarounds predate hacking; take this example from The...
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Meet my new e-book reader. His name is Shawn.
Regular readers will recall that I briefly flirted with a Kindle before selling it due to general discomfort with the physical force required to turn the pages. Since that time I’ve continued to keep...
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As in letterpress, so in web design (more)
More useful insights from the The Young Job Printer from 1889 that foreshadow issues we face every day with web design. The importance of standards: Simple is better:
View ArticleThe Hole Story
Our colleague Heidi at The Old Farmer’s Almanac has put together a great little video about the hole that’s in top-left corner of every copy of the book:
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Mrs. Rachel Lynde’s Proof
The opening section of The Young Job Printer contain a very useful glossary. In particular, three terms have served me well today: Planer.—A smooth block of hardwood used for leveling the surface of...
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Adjusting the Adana Press Bed
After using my Adana Eight Five largely unchanged from the way it arrived on my doorstep, I decided it was time to see about making some adjustments to the press bed to get more even printing. I...
View ArticleKentucky Newspaper Slams Charlottetown
From the Maysville, Kentucky newspaper The Evening Bulletin, October 3, 1896, I’ve come across “PRINCE EDWARD LAND: The Simple Capital of a British Province and Its American Visitors”, which reads as...
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Grade Four
Today was the start of Grade Four for Oliver. The first day of Grade One seems like an eternity ago: Several good friends from previous grades are in Mr. Doucette’s class with Oliver this year; a...
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Annals of Wrist Bracing
A decade and a half ago, when I was keying in data on hundreds and hundreds of crafts suppliers as part of my job at the PEI Crafts Council, I started to have repetitive stress issues in my right...
View ArticleDress Code
I must admit to complete ignorance of fashion (no doubt you already know this if we’ve ever met in person). When I last paid attention, “rugby pants” were all the rage. I’m still trying to figure out...
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Mrs. Rachel Lynde
After a lot of detailed futzing around – setting the type, justifying the type, proofing, correcting, proofing, aligning the bed of the press, adding a heading – here’s the latest print of the first...
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