Dennis Michael Peterson drew a large arrow on frosted mylar. As an experiment, we thought it would be fun to take a digital photo of the drawing and scale it down to print it on our letterpress printing press. His original graphite drawing is about 2 x 3 feet. In Adobe Photoshop we converted the image to a greyscale, set the image size to 8.5 x 11 inches and set the resolution to 300 ppi. The kind folks at Smartset in Minneapolis, MN made the negative for us and quickly mailed it to us. These plates are actually smaller samples that we had made for printing on a post card. Once the larger version is done, we will add more images to this post.
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Information and photos from Sandra Anible’s paste paper demo will be posted soon. Write me if you did not pick up one of her handouts.

When you select a font in InDesign® from the font menu, check the icons to the left of the font’s name. The icon is there to let you know the type format. The O indicates OpenType fonts, the TT is for TrueType fonts and the red a is for PostScript fonts. Get to know the advantages of each format.

Once you explore all of the characters in your favorite type face or font, you may want to see what else is hidden in the keyboard map for the font. For example, how many times have you wondered were the © symbol is located, or where the ® symbol for registered product names? Better yet, you may have the need to check out the full keyboard map for a glyph or symbol font like Zapf Dingbats or Carta. Glyph fonts like these are  only a few of the available fonts to you in the lab. Alternative type characters or glyphs can be hard to find. Luckily inside of InDesign and Illustrator you can easily find a map of the keyboard layout. InDesign’s Glyph menu can be found by going to the top menu bar > find Window> scroll down to Type & Tables > then down to Glyphs. A window like the one above will appear. Select the font you want to see by clicking on the small arrow that is circled in red.

Click on this link if you need a pdf file of the first handout. We will spend more time in class on different aspects of the assignment.

Click on the thumbnails above to see lots of photographs of student work from the summer session. Please visit and enjoy the work that this group created. It was a great group of students. We had fun making books and some of the students made paper as well. Great time was had by all.

Danika Morphew-Tarbuck gave a demo to the class to teach us how to sew a leather wrapper around two signatures of drawing paper. Below is a photo of a sample that she created.

Danika used leather from a purse that she bought at a thrift store to use as the cover. Heavy weight drawing paper was used for the journal pages. She said sewing is easier if you use waxed linen thread. You will need two needles to sew this book.

Step by step photos can be seen by going to the Read more >. [Read more →]

Shanna Kaczynski, Sarah Ripp and Kathyrn Petke have been collaborating on sheet formation. Kathyrn brought in some puffy plants which I think are called Chinese lantern flowers or maybe they are Bougainvillea. Shanna harvested some dill will. There is no shortage of wild dill weed in Wisconsin during the summer. Sarah Ripp provided some white cotton fiber. The plants were dried under pressure for several days and added to beaten pulp in the vat during the formation process. The result are sheets with randomly placed dried plant matter on a white sheet. The Bougainvillea have lost some color but the texture and shape add visual interest to the sheet.

You can see a gallery of photos illustrating the step to make a two-signature pamphlet binding here.

Concertina demo - brief demo showing how to fold the concertina pleat.
Tool and materials
Sheet of cover stock
Ruler
Pencil
Bone folder - is optional
Visit these photo galleries for ideas.

Once you finish these simple steps, you will have a concertina with 11 pleats. These photos demonstrate an easy approach. If you need real narrow concertina pleats, say less than half an inch wide, you may need to experiment with other methods. I will be happy to show you how to use the vandercook press to score your paper.
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Start with a sheet of paper 22 inches x 8 inches. Draw short marks every two inches along the top or long edge of the sheet. The marks will be used as folding guides. A two-inch interval will produce a concertina pleat that is one inch wide. The marks can be drawn at any desired spacing. Remember, that the pleats will be half the width of the spacing. This is will be cleared up in a few steps.
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Once the marks have been drawn on the top of the sheet, take either side and fold the length toward the opposite edge of the sheet. In this photograph, the left edge is folded toward the first mark on the right side of the sheet and fold the sheet flat. Keep the top and bottom edges aligned and fold the paper straight down. The fold needs to be perfectly perpendicular to the long side.
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Next, move the left edge to the next mark, and again fold the sheet flat, keeping the paper aligned to create a perpendicular fold.
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Repeat folding the sheet by moving the edge to the next mark until the end of the sheet is reached.
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Continue making folds, aligning the marks, using the opposite side of the sheet until the sheet is folded every two inches. In this example, the sheet of paper will have 11 folded pleats.
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Once all the folds have been made, the sheet needs to be folded back and forth to create the concertina. Start at one end and fold the paper forward at the first crease. Turn the paper over and fold again at the second crease. Repeat folding back and forth until all the folds are made.
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This is the basic approach for the concertina structure. It can be used as a support for sewing envelopes or folded pages or for using in a flag book. Conservation binders use thin paper to make small concertina pleats as a guard for the spine of a book. The concertina pleat has many uses. Smaller pleats can be trickier to fold if you need to make lots of them and hope they align. I will be happy to show you how to use the Vandercook Press to score lines for accurate folds.

Visit these photo galleries for ideas. Have fun.