48 hour poster sales

On 20 and 21 January everything on our poster website, www.letterpressposters.co.uk, will cost only £25.00 plus postage and packing, a reduction of 50% on many items.

What are you waiting for?

Great reception for Jekyll and Hyde

We’re very pleased that Books and Vines has had some nice things to say about our Jekyll and Hyde. There are some interesting and complementary comments, too. We learnt there that the correct title of the book is Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, with no definite article, and were pleased to see Edward A Wilson’s illustrations for the Limited Editions Club edition of 1952.

We’ve also had a nice email from a reader in the USA:

‘My friend Chris Adamson,’ he writes, ‘who is the guiding light behind the fine press & private press blog and website “Books and Vines” sent digital photos of the book to me via e-mail and it is a clearcut  ”home-run”, a book I simply could not pass on. The book design is superb and Ms. Barrett’s illustrations are splendid, atmospheric, perfectly in tune with the mood and feel of this small masterpiece.  I look forward to receiving it and adding it to my library.”

Insanely great

‘Evan Davis decodes the formula that took Apple from suburban garage to global supremacy’, says BBC iPlayer of Steve Jobs: Billion Dollar Hippy. Well, up to a point. Interesting though it was, the programme didn’t seem to grasp the importance of design in Apple’s success. Lord Stephen Fry, apparently wheeled out as the voice of the user (why is this condescending, self-important public schoolboy so popular?), told us that when things look good we like using them and they work better. We needed a better insight.

Around the time of the first G5 Power Mac Jobs talked about the way design is central to Apple. How the computer worked, both software and hardware, was designed; design was more than a cosmetic afterthought. They thought about how people used computers and made the computers fit around the people, not the other way round. iPhones and iPads are successful not just because Apple found a way to package up the internet into small pieces, as Davis put it, but because using them is insanely easy.

That is an attitude that we share, despite the vast differences between our companies. ‘What will make this piece easy to read?’ is one of the key unspoken questions when we are asked to design something. The answers are usually pretty simple, things like the getting the right number of words on a line and the right relationship between word spacing and line spacing, but they are what make the difference.

Internship booking open for one day only

It’s been a while since our last post, for the very good reason that we’ve been busy. We still are, but it’s time to take bookings for internships. For today only we’re taking applications for January – March.

If you’d like to apply please send an email to internships@handandeye.co.uk. It’s unlikely that we can answer queries and we’ll only be replying to offer places. Making bookings can take several days, so please don’t expect an immediate answer. We ask successful applicants for a deposit of £25 in the form of a cheque made out to Disasters Emergency Committee. It’s returned at the start of the internship or sent to DEC if you cancel within three weeks of the start date.

Jekyll & Hyde award

The biennial Oxford Fine Press Book Fair was held last weekend, and one of our exhibits was our edition of The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. We’ve been rather quiet about that book for a while, because shortly after publication last year we found a serious typographic error. We reprinted the text over the summer, and had Angela Barrett’s illustrations reprinted by Northend Creative Print Solutions, who did an outstanding job. We’re very pleased with the result, so it was particularly gratifying that Angela was the sole winner the Parrot Prize for illustration at the fair.

We were also pleased that we sold all the copies we had. Smith Settle are now binding the rest of the edition, and it will be available soon from our new book website, www.handandeyeeditions.co.uk.

Imaginary Menagerie

text/gallery have asked us to take part in Imaginary Menagerie, their forthcoming exhibition of tongue twisters. Mary Plunkett, who is with us from Dublin on a three month Leonardo de Vinci project grant, is making two prints with wood type. You can see them at the gallery from 20 October to 22 November, and we’ll be posting photos of them too.

No ephs or cays

We were at the Whittington Press open day once again on Saturday. This time we took along something they had printed themselves some years ago for visitors to print on the proofing press. We first saw the text in Matrix 4, and it amuses us as much now as it did then.

Henry Bowers’ diary

Henry Robertson Bowers was a member of Robert Scott’s second Antarctic expedition, and one of the party of five who reached the South Pole in January 1912. He kept a diary throughout his time in Antarctica. It is now the property of the Scott Polar Research Institute in Cambridge, who are publishing it for the first time. We are delighted that they have chosen us to print the book. It will be set in Monotype Imprint, issued by the Monotype Corporation in 1912.

The book is currently being planned. It will probably be set in 10/11 point, and we’re doing tests, calculations and estimates to decide on paper and number of pages.

We intend to Tweet about the project as it progresses.

 

Unutterable garbage

Sometimes we’re given a job that is truly horrible, and we had one on press yesterday. There really is nothing positive to say about the copy or the design, and there’s rather a lot that’s negative. It would be indiscreet, and bad business, to say it, and our customer may find it a thing of beauty. We certainly hope they’re happy with our printing. But really…

Internship booking open for one day only

We’re really pleased that we get a good response when we announce that we’re taking bookings for internships. It generates quite a lot of work, though, so this time we’re trying a new approach.

Booking for August to October is open for today only, and we’ll be processing applications strictly in the order in which they’re received. This means that if you apply, you may not hear from us for a few days. It also means that we’ll be ignoring any applications made after today, and will re-open booking if we don’t fill all the places.

If we offer you a place we’ll be asking for a deposit cheque of £25. It will be returned when the internship starts, or sent to the Disasters Emergency Committee if you cancel within three weeks of the start of the internship.

To apply, please send an email to internships@handandeye.co.uk