Typesetting for letterpress printing presents multiple challenges: aligning each letter, ensuring ideal word and letter spacing, kerning if necessary, then locking it all up… even defying gravity in a chase. Daredevil typesetting becomes even more challenging as type is formed in circles, curves, waves, and complex illustrations such as landscapes or buildings.

Jessica will give us a look at the tools and techniques typesetters have employed to achieve amazing and inspiring feats of composition, followed by some P, Q & As.

This free event is open to the public; students enrolled in Jessica's March 9/10 "Daredevil Devices: Revolving Text & Image" workshop are required to attend.

About the presenter: Jessica Spring began her interest in typesetting and printing as a phototypesetter in the 1980s. Her introduction to letterpress printing paralleled the birth of desktop publishing: an exciting time to explore graphic arts. She has been a letterpress printer ever since, researching historic type composition and inventing Daredevil Furniture to help other printers set type in circles, curves and angles. Her work at Springtide Press—artist books, broadsides and ephemera where typography plays a central role—is included in collections around the country and abroad.