The E. Longated Roman Orchestra

This is the first of three albums that emerged from The Norlu Press in the summer of 2016 as an entry in the juried exhibition, “The Art of the Album Design and Printing Competition” during the 2016  Los Angeles Printers Fair at the International Museum of Printing in Carson, California.

 My original sketch of the E. Longated Roman Orchestra album cover with an image of a 1920s record jacket.

Given the requirement to create a fictitious band named after an historic typeface and to design and print in letterpress and/or screen printing an album cover for the band, I set out to create something unexpected. As is often the case, I looked to history for inspiration. The design of 78 RPM phonograph record jackets printed in the 1920s seemed to be something that others may ignore, so I chose some of these very early phonograph record sleeves as a starting point. For my stock, I acquired blank  78 RPM record jackets (10 3/8” x 10 3/8”) that were already die-cut, folded and glued in Kraft Brown paper that was not unlike the brown paper sleeves of the era I wanted to evoke and began setting the types that I would use to print the album covers.

Although it was not a requirement, I decided early in the process that I would incorporate the actual font that I had chosen for the recording artist’s name.

Detail of the Stephenson Blake (SB) 36-point casting of the Elongated Roman font, with a foundry-cast 12/36-point quad bearing the S&B manufacturer’s mark.

For the E. Longated Roman Orchestra, I used an attractive 36-point Stephenson Blake (SB) Letter Foundry casting of Elongated Roman. The Sheffield, England-based foundry sold this font to American printers as premium lead foundry types through arrangements with various merchants, and it appears in the 1967 American Woodtype Catalog. Other typography in the design includes Caslon for body text, a well-worn circa 1900 Combination Gothic and ATF Outline Gothic and Stradivarius for display.

The design includes three graphic elements beyond the typography. Along the right side of the album cover I placed an early 20th Century oval-shaped  copper photoengraving of a dapper-looking gentleman whom I named Edward, or “E.” Longated, the leader of the celebrated and quite fictitious orchestra that bears his name. Body text below the portrait tells Longated’s story, which is actually a discussion of the Elongated Roman font.

Hand composition of an antique metal cut with Outline Gothic, Century Catalog, Stradivarius and Elongated Roman fonts.

Opposite this, on the left side within a mitered rule box, is a circular lead cut of a man operating a platen-style printing press that is not unlike the circa 1863 Gordon Jobber I used to print these album covers. Display typography describes this phonograph as “7.8 Impressions per Minute for Extraordinary Fidelity.” This is the first of four plays on printing and record album terms I included in the design. While these albums were played at 78 RPM (rotations per minute), I changed up that idea by adding a decimal point between the two numerals and changing the description to the approximate number of impressions a printer can achieve on a hand-fed platen-style printing press. A magnesium-on-wood cut of a classical music performance appears at the bottom left of the design, with body text re-imagining the recording of phonograph as a letterpress printing process.

 Detail of the album cover showing the recording artist and title (Caslon, Elongated Roman and Combination Gothic metal types.)

At the bottom right of the design, the name of the recording artist appears, printed in VanSon oil-based process blue ink, mixed with opaque white, to produce the “gas-blue” color that became popular at the end of the 1920s, as gas-powered stoves were gaining popularity in America. The text states that the E. Longated Roman Orchestra is performing “The Letterspacing Overture” from Schoeffer’s .918 Symphony. Peter Schoeffer worked under the direction of Johann Gutenberg, as Alix Christie wrote in her historical novel, Gutenberg’s Apprentice (Harper, 2014). The .918 Symphony reflects the requirement that American types be a standard .918 inches in height (type-high) and “The Letterspacing Overture” is, in fact, set in Combination Gothic with exaggerated letter spacing.

Printing one of the black forms on the circa 1863 Gordon Jobber press.

I printed these album covers on a relatively small platen-style printing press, the platen surface of which measures just 7” x 11. Positioning of the paper on the platen surface and the physical limitations of the press’ early industrial age workings limit the area that is available for a printed image to less than half of the platen size, which required me to work in four 3.5” x 9” bands of image areas on the jacket. Within those areas, each color of ink required multiple steps to position and transfer the images. The print, therefore, is the result of seven complete iterations of the centuries-old letterpress composition/imposition/makeready/printing process.

Once I had printed the ten album covers that the competition required for submission, which I believe must have amounted to 175 impressions, I decided they required a record with printed label to achieve the effect I was seeking. My friend Tonja Scott at Tonja’s Lil Shop kindly die-cut from black card stock a quantity of 10.25″-records with a spindle hole in the middle. To these, I affixed a 3.75″ label die-cut from blue 120lb Classic Crest Patriot Blue Linen stock that nearly matched the gas blue text of the album cover.

Printing the labels in metallic silver ink.

Prior to gluing the labels to the records, I printed them in metallic silver ink with text set in Canterbury (alternate caps), American Caslon Italic (alternate caps), Steelplate Gothic and Caslon metal types and a 1930s publishing ornament. The “Co” ligature of Steelplate Gothic in “Phonographic Record Co.” is appropriate for the era.

The last task was to print the back of the album cover. This was not a requirement for the competition, but I was having so much fun that I didn’t want to stop! I have had, for many years, a beautiful antique copper engraving of a pressman at his work that my dad, who taught me letterpress printing, acquired when he was just beginning to learn the trade in the late 1930s.  As such, it most likely came from one of the many printing houses that existed in the early 20th Century in Rochester, New York. I had never proofed the image, but from a very young age, I can remember it being in the original Norlu Press that my dad established in Fairport, New York and I chose to include it as a manufacturer’s logo on the back of the jacket. While it does not connect directly to the content or theme of the front, I used some “artistic” license and added the phrase “a clean sheet every time” to associate it with text that appears on the front of the album cover.

Detail from an early 20th Century copper engraving from the collection of Lewis “Hobie” DiRisio.

Some additional photos of the project are included below.

 

 

The Norlu Press and “The Art of the Album” Design and Printing Competition

Earlier in the summer, Mark Barbour, founding curator at the International Museum of Printing, announced that a juried letterpress and screen printing contest would be part of this year’s  Los Angeles Printers Fair. To complement the fair’s theme of The Music of the Presses and an exhibit of the Vinyl Sleeves printed by the Stoughton Printing Company, the contest required artists to design and print an album cover for a fictitious band whose name must be derived from the name of a font of type.

Clearly, Mark and his colleagues had me in mind when they devised “The Art of the Album Design and Printing Competition.”

Having been steeped in great music as the Gen-X baby brother to three Baby Boomer siblings who each introduced me to their own preferred bands from a young age, I cannot remember a time when I was not keenly aware of music, bands, album cover art, lyrics and liner notes. Being the son of a trade printer and typographer who passionately printed for  more than 70 years, I began learning letterpress printing from him before I could reach the delivery board of a Chandler & Price platen printing press. I also attribute my desire to design and print an entry for this competition to studying journalism at St. Bonaventure University, working for a short time at Flower City Printing and later teaching media graphics as an adjunct professor at my alma mater.

And so, despite having other projects in various states of completion at The Norlu Press, I initiated the creative process in June to have an entry complete by the September 15 deadline. As it evolved, I embraced the challenge in the competition rules to incorporate printing and typographical terms and historical references into my work. In the end, I had three album covers for three different bands. I printed each on my circa 1863 Gordon Jobber with one hundred percent wood and metal types, cuts, engravings and ornaments from my dad’s collection, or reclaimed from other shops, and in a few cases, cast by 21st Century craftsmen who adhere to the old ways…no photopolymer plates here.

I will post more details about each design later, and if I am fortunate enough to be recognized at the competition on October 1, I will share that as well. For the time being, here is the front of each of the album covers and a brief description of the entry. Winners, or not, it was a whole lot of fun designing and printing these!

(Note: My medium was the 78 RPM album cover, as this was the largest format my 7×11 press could handle, and even at that size, I had to divide the design into quadrants to accommodate the positioning of the paper and gauge pins on the platen.)

The name of this fictitious recording artist is the Edward, or “E.” Longated Roman Orchestra, which is derived from the Elongated Roman font. Inspired by the design of 78 RPM phonograph record jackets printed in the 1920s, this design emphasizes function over form and reflects an era when individual recording artists were often less prominent than the titles of the works they performed. The ink is primarily soy-based Dense Black by Southern Ink. VanSon oil-based process blue, mixed with opaque white, produced the “gas-blue” highlight color that became popular at the end of the 1920s, as gas-powered stoves were gaining popularity in America.

The name of The Concave Tuscans comes from wood types that became popular in the second half of the 19th Century. On this record jacket, it is set in antique 10-line Concave Tuscan Condensed wood type attributed to Bill, Stark, and Co. circa 1856 and made popular by William Page (1829-1906). In recognition of the role he played in popularizing wood type in the United States, the affected Billy Page fronts the band and his name is set in 24 point Ray Shade, a 2014 revival of a 19th Century font by Hill & Dale Type Foundry. The inspiration for this design is the 1950s/1960s garage band genre.

The formal covers of Liberace albums in the 1950s and 1960s inspired both the design and the selection of a mononymous artist for this album cover. Theodore De Vinne,  a 19th Century printer, was not much like De Vinne the imaginary recording artist. He collaborated in the 1880s with the Central Foundry to replace the popular ornamented typefaces of the day with a simpler display face. Nicholas Werner and Gustav Schroeder (who receive credit as producers of this album) released the font before the end of the century and named it De Vinne, in recognition of the printer who first promoted its requirement.

I also want to thank Tonja Scott at Tonja’s Lil Shop for helping out with the large format die-cutting that I couldn’t do in my shop. Having full-size “records” cut from black card stock in the ten album covers I had to submit for each entry was a last-minute idea, and Tonja made it happen!

Those are the entries from The Norlu Press in the 2016 “Art of the Album” Design and Printing Competition. Please come back again for details about each one.