When Mike's Away, the Typesetters Play

One Thursday evening, the Advanced Workshop ran itself.

Lindsay, Olivia, Hailey, and I scuttled around the Print Shop, searching for 18 pt Palatino. We found it up in Mike's office, with the rest of the Palatino, and lugged the case down to the Book Arts section of the studio, to the one clear table in the joint. The larger tables, sturdy refuse from the old science building, were already choked with seven cases of type, five trays of set type, boxes of spacers, and unruly gatherings of notepaper.

Mike was away at an Artist's Reception for an exhibit in Washington D.C., about which I'll post more later. His instructions were simple: set the type for the quote for the Project #2 in 18 point Palatino if possible.

First, we had to make sure there were enough of each letter in the case of Palatino to set the quote. I grabbed a pencil and scrap paper to tally while Lindsay counted off each "a," "f," and all the rest. Olivia stood with Hailey over the case to our left, and between them they counted each letter in the case. To be safe, we counted out every punctuation mark and capital letter required for the quote.

"Waitaminute," Lindsay would blurt as I counted tallies, "let me count that again, I think I missed one." The "h"s are hard to count because they hide behind the "t" in "the," and often they are silent, and escape our notice. So Lindsay would recount, and the number would change for the more accurate.

Sure enough, we found after three letters that we were short by seven "d''s. Lindsay and I were still painstakingly counting out each letter, when Olivia and Hailey dashed off to the rescue, in search of another case of 18 pt Palatino.

After a harrowing search of every case in the Print Shop and the entire leaf-riddled basement, they returned triumphantly, waving purloined "d"s and prancing. Apparently the right case was right under their noses in Mike's office, left out on top of the cabinet after a previous project.

Later, Olivia found the missing "d"s in the original case... they had been mis-sorted into the "b"s two spaces over.

I set the first section of the quote so we could determine how it would fit, if it would fit, on its page, but before I finished the first line, Olivia realized we had to figure out how to divide each of the three parts of the quote into lines that looked nice and made sense. For example, it would be rather awkward to end a line with "and," or to have two full lines of the quote above one dangling word that just wouldn't fit.

Olivia fell to that, and Marian, who arrived late, and Lindsay poked each other and giggled. Olivia held up each arrangement of words for our approval, or to ask for an opinion, and the lines shifted in subtle ways on a scrap paper as she worked. Finally, each quote became ready for its transformation from graphite into lead.

She set the type for the second section of the quote and Lindsay set the third. Hailey left early. Marian and I kept ourselves busy by peering over shoulders, and then sat by the computers to discuss our Top Secret Book Project, which was beginning to congeal into a manuscript.

Project #2 is for the Literary House itself, and the Director, Josh Shenk, gave us a brainstorming session and a few things to think about when designing: the Lit House as a haven for the arts, "shelter," and the 225th anniversary of the College. Other than that, we have complete creative control, which is a very nice feeling indeed.

That night, we had creative control of another sort. Without Mike, it was up to us to make sure the 18 pt Palatino would be big enough, but not too big. If the 18 pt hadn't worked or hadn't felt right, we would have had to brainstorm and test another font. We decided to set the type on 30 leads, because they're standard. We decided to center the quote sections - ok, that was a given, but we discussed whether or not to do it because that part of the plan had escaped our memories.

It was weird to work as a group without Mike. He's a solid presence for when we're all feeling a bit flighty, he's a subtle confidence of mastery, and without him we all had to think a bit harder, try to test our recall. But we had each other to ask, or distract, and we got the job done.