This project is my Skill based classroom project done at NID as a part of my Post Graduate Diploma. Through letterpress, I tried to understand type and typography. My major of interest during the project was Hand Composing.

The project has been documented here.

Through various exercises I explored various domains and understood a few terms and details about type compositions. This project brought in me sensitivity to type and typography.

Below is a compostion I did taking lines from John Keats famous poem 'A thing of Beauty.'

 

I understood the nity gritties of working with bigger point sizes and also how to compose in a limited space.

 

I remembered once looking at a graphic poster letterpressed for the EYE magazine by Dom Sylvester.I thought of experimenting with the alphabets of the english language. It needed a set of 21 characters. Therefore, I decided to use only consonants.

The first day I spent composing the characters, but I failed. Then my guide, Tarun, suggested me to create a 8 pt x 8pt (2 pica) grid and then place the characters on the grid and calculate the measurements.

I then started placing the letters cut from paper (proof print that was taken by placing carbon paper between two sheets). Here is the picture of the layout.

I continually measured the distance and then composed the forme onto the galley. Here is what the final forme looked like.