A postcard showing chromolithograph color overlaid with a letterpress halftone under varying magnification, as shown in Graphics Atlas.

Admit it: you are among the special set of people, like me, who carry around a loupe to examine dot structure on demand. If so, the Graphics Atlas will become your new favorite web haunt for educational reading and pure delight. [Read more]

This fragment was discovered after removing the old packing on the tympan of the Kelmscott/Goudy Albion Press.

The Kelmscott/Goudy Albion press arrived at RIT on January 13, 2014. It had been expertly packed and carefully shipped 300 miles from Manhattan to Rochester, making what would hopefully be its last long-distance journey. The press has received a warm welcome at the Cary Graphic Arts Collection, with classes, friends, and reporters visiting to catch a glimpse of the famous machine, even while still disassembled. [Read more]

Orbis Typographicus featuring text by Walter Crane & Hippocrates. Typeface: Delphin, Calligraphy by Hermann Zapf, 1980.

Orbis Typographicus is a letterpress portfolio tour de force that was released in 1980 after ten years of close collaboration between Hermann Zapf in Darmstadt and Philip L. Metzger of the Crabgrass Press in Kansas City. This title offers the reader a typographic world that only Professor Zapf could envision: full of alphabets and aphorisms, all handset and exquisitely printed by Metzger in a multitude of styles that make the reader believe that she is party to some wonderful typographic time travel. [Read more]

Extreme halftone close-up from John Hilgart’s Four Color Process Blog.

Twenty-first century comic book aficionados have a feast of media choices at their disposal: glossy offset-printed comics on bright white paper, special wrappers, and even digital distribution through vendors like comiXology. So why would they even deign to taint their eyes by reading off-register comics with low resolution and limited tonal range halftone screens on dingy newsprint? [Read more]

Specimens of Chromatic Wood Type, Borders, etc. Manufactured by Wm. H. Page & Co., Greeneville, Conn. : The Co., 1874. 655.241 P133sp

Rob Roy Kelly wrote that Wm. H. Page’s Specimens of Chromatic Wood Type, Borders, Etc., 1874 “has been rightfully acclaimed as containing the most superb wood type specimens ever printed.” This tome of 100 plates featured Page’s fantastic character designs, intricate borders and tint blocks, precisely printed in up to 7 colors each—sometimes with metallic inks, and always with interesting overprinted hues. About a dozen copies exist in libraries nationwide, and it is this rarity that encouraged curators at RIT Cary Graphic Arts Collection to have RIT’s copy digitally photographed. [Read more]