Lyza Danger Gardner

All about Lyza

Letterpress: Tao Te Ching Cards

December 13th, 2008

My mother gave me a copy of the Tao Te Ching a few years back that was, rather intriguingly, a rendition crafted by Ursula K. LeGuin. I was taken with it.

Of late, I have been having deeper thoughts about the meaning of leadership and the empowerment of those lead and found that the 17th verse expressed those sentiments well. As I–and our company, Cloud Four–move into 2009 with great goals and ideas, I felt like this was the perfect letterpress project.

I was able to use my new 10pt Univers font (I got it for $10!). “LAO TZU” was set in 12-on-14pt Caslon. I could have done better letterspacing there. “AO” is too spacy, “ZU” is a bit cramped.

Verse 17 from Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu, Ursula K. LeGuin Rendition

Verse 17 from Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu, Ursula K. LeGuin Rendition

Univers 10pt, which I chose because of its extreme clarity and lack of emotion. I wanted the verse to do the expression, uninterrupted by my letterforms.

Univers 10pt, which I chose because of its extreme clarity and lack of emotion. I wanted the verse to do the expression, uninterrupted by my letterforms.

Another Detail

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One Response to “Letterpress: Tao Te Ching Cards”

  1. Bill Burcham Says:
    December 19th, 2008 at 5:53 pm

    Them is some sweet cards and you’ve got a cool mom.

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Letterpress: “I apologize!” Cards

November 10th, 2008

I needed to say I was sorry to someone important, so I was inspired to make these cards. Flexible, relevant cards that I imagine I’ll use a lot. Set in 18pt. Caslon Old Style 337e and 48pt. Excelsior Script Bold.

The challenge here was setting the ruled lines, which I found in a package of thin copper & brass spaces I bought on eBay (bonus!). It took a few do-overs, but I think I “get it” now.

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2 Responses to “Letterpress: “I apologize!” Cards”

  1. Literary Feline Says:
    November 10th, 2008 at 8:04 pm

    Those are great. LOL

  2. Mike Solomon Says:
    November 20th, 2008 at 3:03 pm

    That’s too cool. Love that lowercase “z” by the way.

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Letterpress: Little Prince Cards

November 10th, 2008

I made these cards for someone very special to me. I printed 50 but only made eight hand-drawn (colored pencil) finished cards. Set in 18pt. Caslon Old Style 337e. Unfortunately I have no accents; it should really read “embellit le desért”.

Little Prince Card (1 of 8)

Little Prince Card (1 of 8)

Little Prince Card (2 of 8)

Little Prince Card (2 of 8)

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Letterpress: “oh, thanks!” Cards with Gradient

October 28th, 2008
oh, thanks!

oh, thanks!

I obtained some transparent white ink today. I had had this brilliant idea that I’d print thank-you cards in the blind (that is, with no ink whatsoever) but even when I was doing a blunt-force amount of impression it just wasn’t enough, so I printed them tonight using a mix of transparent white plus just a bit of black.

Inadvertently I ended up with a “fading” gradient effect, wherein the bottoms of the letterforms were darker than the top, but I decided that I actually liked this and it wasn’t just laziness at makeready.

These are set in 60pt. Cheltenham Condensed. I made 25 of them. I needed to thank a lot of people for being so nice to me on my birthday.

Update: There has been some (surprising) significant interest in these cards. I initially made a very limited run of 25, and have used about eight for my personal purposes. If you’d like some, I’d be willing to print more if you make it worth my while in some trivial way! Let me know.

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5 Responses to “Letterpress: “oh, thanks!” Cards with Gradient”

  1. Hillary Says:
    October 29th, 2008 at 6:39 am

    pretty!!

  2. David Lindes Says:
    October 29th, 2008 at 10:36 am

    Yay. :-)

    I’m very curious about the gradient: do you know how it happened? Could you do it again if you tried? I don’t believe I’ve ever gotten that effect, and can’t think of how one would, frankly. I’ve done “rainbow rolls” in other printmaking, but with the ink table spinning between impressions (I presume yours does as well?), I’m having a lot of trouble imagining how you’d get a gradient in letterpress.

    And yes, letterpressed thank you cards rock. I made a stack myself at one point, and it’s really nice to be able to give them out… Urgh, now you have me wanting to buy a press (and everything that’d go with it… though I do already have a few fonts.)

  3. Lyza Gardner Says:
    October 29th, 2008 at 1:48 pm

    Do I know how it happened? Likely a combination of a few things:
    1. My platen might not be perfectly balanced vertically, such that the bottom of the letterforms are actually closer than the tops. An alignment sort of thing you wouldn’t see on smaller type.
    2. Rollers might be part of it. They ink from bottom to top and might be slathering more ink on the bottom than the top.
    3. Transparent inks just behave differently.

    1 & 2 can be said to be “faults”, that is, not generally desirable things. So, there may be future projects in which this becomes and issue and then I’ll have to try to fix it.

  4. David Lindes Says:
    October 29th, 2008 at 2:32 pm

    Cool, thanks for the thoughts…

    One further thought from me, on “faults” in art, in general: if it’s something you can control, i.e. get it when you want it, and not get it when you don’t want it, then it’s *all good*. :-)

    I guess that’s part of what leads me to such questions — I like to figure out how I did something when I like it but it’s not the norm, so that I can both do it again when I want to, and avoid it when I want to… Do you ever have that, too?

  5. Rick Turoczy Says:
    October 29th, 2008 at 4:58 pm

    Wow. Beautiful! What a happy accident.

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Letterpress: First Project Teasers

September 23rd, 2008

First letterpress home project complete! Success! Here are a couple of teaser photos. More soon.

First Letterpress Project: Package Detail

First Letterpress Project: Package

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One Response to “Letterpress: First Project Teasers”

  1. David Lindes Says:
    October 20th, 2008 at 11:12 am

    Letterpress at home?? I’m so jealous!!!

    Nice work, too! And ooooh, ligatures! You’ve clearly found a nice font. ;-)

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