Figure 3.The Beach Babe is an old lead cut from a newspaper (which is why she has big dots). She is sporting a parenthetical bathing suit, because Stern didn't get the swimsuit cut.Chris Stern began working as a trade typesetter in Seattle in the
late ’70s, when graphic designers still sent their copy out to be “set
to fit” by professional typesetters. Several years into it, Stern became
interested in letterpress and gradually was able to divide his
time between his day job and his growing typographic obsession.
Stern contrasts the two ways of working: “When I was a trade
typesetter, we worked in code that was always in black, 18-pt.,
typewriter-looking type on a green background. The good typesetters
could imagine in their heads what they were going to produce.
We’d work from comps and thumbnails and construct pretty
much anything. Today, my desktop consists of thousands and
thousands of tiny metal objects that I can configure pretty much
any way I want. My head is my desktop—not the computer.”
Like most letterpress shops, Stern & Faye (Sedro-Woolley,
Wa.) has a large designer clientele. Stern finds that many designers,
particularly those who “grew up onscreen,” are challenged
when designing for letterpress. He offers constructive recommendations,
gives talks to groups in Seattle, and invites students and
clients to visit. He sums up the “digital disconnect” eloquently:
“When you can hold a thing and truly understand what it is, when
you are looking and feeling and maybe even smelling the object,
you have a much fuller sense of it. Working with physical bodies
makes you more conscious of the type and the space it occupies.
It has shoulders, just like we do—so we can have room to breathe.
Our interns, who have grown up on computer type, really like
working up here. They get a much better appreciation for type and
typography, and for space.”
Stern is currently restoring a Kelly-B press from the 1920s.
Once this press is up to speed (well over 1,000 impressions per
hour), he will be able to design and produce broadsides and small
posters (up to 17 x 22 inches) for clients eager to avail themselves
of Stern & Faye’s 150 fonts of real wood type, 900 cases of foundry
and monotype, and 1,000 different mat cases, plus thousands of
cuts, ornaments, and borders (and an adjacent building filled with
another 40 cabinets of type). www.sternandfaye.com
WEB-EXCLUSIVE CONTENT!
