Typesetting and Printing the Stories of Paper Dolls

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Typesetting uses individual letters and spacing made of lead to construct the paragraphs which are then printed with a letterpress. The inked letters press into the paper leaving the printed image behind. This method is full of rich tradition and craft.

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More than half of the authors came and set their own type. None had done it before so they needed to use a diagram to find the letters. 

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photo courtesy Dottie Guy

 The letters are placed in the composing stick (shown) upside down and backwards.  Definitely a tedious task.

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Careful proofing is needed as letters, spacing, even entire sentences can find themselves way out of place.

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Intricacies and finesse are needed for just the right amount of impression, ink, margin and correct placement. 

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Riza and Habib were our typesetters from Diablo Valley Community College. They came every week to set type.

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Margarita’s (U.S. Air Force) story ready to be printed, along with the item of her Air Force uniform that inspired her story.

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Dottie (U.S. Army) working through her story. She set her whole story in about five hours. Way to go Dottie!

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Jo (U.S. Air Force) and Luana (U.S. Army) came for several days all the way from Nevada!

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Pam and Michele (U.S. Army) collaborating.

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Susanne (U.S. Air Force) proudly displaying her completed page. She was our first typesetter.

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This is our letterpress. A 10 x 15 hand-fed Kluge.

Printing

Left: the ink is on the disk.  The rollers pick it up and then pass over the type which then presses into the paper.
Right: Pam hand-feeds the press. Over 6500 pages were printed one-by-one for the book.

Posted by: on October 30th, 2013