Klang (Not a popular typeface these days)
Jan. 9th, 2006 11:52 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hirezOne of the odder things I did at big school (other than turn up regularly) was work at the school press. This was an ex-book cupboard (ex-cupboard, rather than store for things that had once been books and were now embarking on second careers as rocket salesmen or wing-loss adjusters) that ponged of printing ink, paraffin, cardstock and teenage boys and filled with things like Adana 8-5s, leads, woods, quoins, founts and compositing sticks.
The worst things to try and print are traditional wedding invitations. The scalloped cards with the gold bits on were well expensive, the cursive typefaces are a bastard to read upside-down and backwards and getting the platen pressure right so as to ensure even printing is a nightmare if you don't do it regularly. Which you don't, because... And people really get a strop on if they're invited to a 'receptron'.
Anyway. The two worst non-printing jobs were dissing old jobs (not in the 'Yo! Typeface! Etc! sense, but in the 'dismembering badly-cleaned type and trying to work out if that's an 8-point Times New Roman 0 or TNR italic O') and cleaning out the dregs-bin.
Letterpress printing gives a chap a terrible thirst, thus we swilled tea like Tony Benn on a building site in the middle of August. However, there was no sink, so the tea-leaves, rancid milk and remnants from mugs (and indeed careful hot-water swillings in the mugs to 'clean' them on a Monday) were deposited in a large ice-cream tub. When this became over-full, some poor sod would have to carefully lever it out of its nest of congealed mank and walk it round at arm's length to the lower forms changing-rooms where it could be disposed of.
The worst things to try and print are traditional wedding invitations. The scalloped cards with the gold bits on were well expensive, the cursive typefaces are a bastard to read upside-down and backwards and getting the platen pressure right so as to ensure even printing is a nightmare if you don't do it regularly. Which you don't, because... And people really get a strop on if they're invited to a 'receptron'.
Anyway. The two worst non-printing jobs were dissing old jobs (not in the 'Yo! Typeface! Etc! sense, but in the 'dismembering badly-cleaned type and trying to work out if that's an 8-point Times New Roman 0 or TNR italic O') and cleaning out the dregs-bin.
Letterpress printing gives a chap a terrible thirst, thus we swilled tea like Tony Benn on a building site in the middle of August. However, there was no sink, so the tea-leaves, rancid milk and remnants from mugs (and indeed careful hot-water swillings in the mugs to 'clean' them on a Monday) were deposited in a large ice-cream tub. When this became over-full, some poor sod would have to carefully lever it out of its nest of congealed mank and walk it round at arm's length to the lower forms changing-rooms where it could be disposed of.
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no subject
Date: 2006-01-09 02:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-09 02:38 pm (UTC)I want one of Those Catalogues. If this is the future, why aren't there plasma cannons at the RS Trade Counter?
no subject
Date: 2006-01-09 04:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-09 07:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-09 10:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-09 10:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-10 11:51 am (UTC)There are, they're for staff use only.