Tuesday
21
October
2008
Find out about this new group based at Glasgow School of Art
Friday
7
November
2008
Letterpress printing is alive and well in the twenty-first century. Share and learn about how and why.
Thursday
20
November
2008
Evening reception celebrating this milestone in the Library?s history
Thursday
27
November
2008
Jost Hochuli discusses typographic detailing
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October 2008
Glasgow 501: Out of Print
Steve Rigley and Edwin Pickstone
- An illustrated talk at St Bride Library, Tuesday 21 October 2008 at 7pm
- In the Bridewell Hall, St Bride Foundation
- Admission £7 · concessions £5 · Friends of St Bride £3
- Pay on the door
Set within the context of recent celebrations to mark 500 years of printing in Scotland, Steve Rigley will discuss the aims and ambitions of the newly formed Out of Print research cluster. Based in the Visual Communication Department at the Glasgow School of Art the work of the five members moves from the typographic elements and traditions of letterpress through comic books, landscape photography, international graphic foraging, through to the interface between digital media and colour perception. In the second half of the talk Out of Print member Edwin Pickstone will introduce his own work, in which he seeks to find value in, and evaluate the position of, the now commercially redundant process of letterpress.
Steve Rigley is the Programme Leader for Graphic Design, whilst Edwin Pickstone works as Artist / Designer in Residence, spending the majority of his time caring for and working within the School’s sizeable letterpress facility.
An article by Steve Rigley on the value of letterpress in design education appeared in Eye 57.
November 2008
Book tickets online
Letterpress: a celebration
One-day conference, Friday 7 November 2008
9.30am–5.00pm
Letterpress is again to be celebrated, or so the growing popularity of the process would certainly suggest. Increasing numbers around the world are setting up their own small studios, looking for tuition, or commissioning letterpress within commercial design work. All this thirty years after the process effectively became commercially obsolete. And in spite of the fact that letterpress can be messy and slow, often requires a lot of space, not to mention the considerable constraints it brings to layout, colour, artwork and type. So why do so many people still want to get involved, and how do they make a success of their efforts?
Join us at St Bride Library to review and discuss the phenomenon of letterpress in the twenty-first century through a packed one-day programme of talks, demonstrations and displays of work. Meet practitioners and exchange stories as we bring together the different communities working with letterpress, from printers and designers to students and general enthusiasts. Be inspired and maybe even find out what you need to set up on your own!
Speakers
- Phil Abel – Hand & Eye Letterpress
- Claire Bolton – The Alembic Press
- Alex Cooper & Rose Gridneff – London College of Communication
- Alan Kitching & Celia Stothard – The Typography Workshop
- Alan May – Press builder
- Harry McIntosh – Compositor and typecaster
- John Randle – Whittington Press
- Patrick Walker – dust
Tickets
- Full rate: £60 / £50 Friends of St Bride Library
- Students, over 60s: £30 / £25 Friends of St Bride Library
More information
November 2008
Grand re-opening of the Library Reading Room
Thursday 20 November 2008, 6–8pm
Following the relocation and refurbishment of the Library Reading Room an evening reception, hosted by St Bride Foundation on the eve of the Library’s 113th anniversary, will be held to thank all funders, supporters, friends and benefactors who have helped achieve this milestone in the Library’s history.
November 2008
Jost Hochuli: Systematic book design?
Lecture on Thursday 27 November 2008 at 7pm
- In the Bridewell Hall, St Bride Foundation
- Admission £7 · concessions £5 · Friends of St Bride £3
- Pay on the door
The adjective ‘systematic’ (from the Greek word ‘systematikos’) means, in one dictionary definition: ‘proceeding from a system, methodical, planned; corresponding to a system’. Systematic book design thus means: book design that follows a plan fixed before the work begins. A conscious, rational procedure sooner or later reaches an end: the unconscious – or that which is a matter of feeling – plays a large and often decisive role in design. Using examples from some of his own works, Jost Hochuli will try to show where the irrational has resolved rational decisons.
After this talk Jost will be happy to answer questions both on book design and aspects of typographic detailing, the subject of his new book 'Detail in typography'. Copies of this book published by Hyphen Press will be available for on sale on the evening at a specially discounted rate.
About our speaker
Jost Hochuli is a Swiss typographer and graphic designer. After study at the Kunstgewerbeschule St.Gallen, he trained as a compositor with the printer Zollikofer and at the Kunstgewerbeschule Zürich; his education was completed in 1958–9 in Adrian Frutiger’s class at the Ecole Estienne. Since then he has practised as a freelance graphic designer, eventually specializing in book design. In 1979 he co-founded the co-operatively run publishing company VGS Verlagsgemeinschaft St.Gallen, for which much of his book design work has been done. He has taught at the schools at Zurich and then St Gallen since 1967. As writer and editor, his books include Book design in Switzerland (1993), Designing books (1996), and a major monograph on his work: Jost Hochuli: Printed matter, mainly books (2002). An English-language edition of his Detail in typography was published earlier this year. He has edited and designed the annually published ‘Typotron’ series of booklets (1983–98) and the Edition ‘Ostschweiz’ (from 2000).
