In sticking with my 2015 goals, I decided to get more edumacation by signing up for a Letterpress class!! I've had my eye on this class for at least a year. I first became interested in letterpress when I was planning my wedding and saw all those beautiful letterpress invitations. Sadly, I couldn't justify spending that much money on wedding invitations so I never got them. But my fascination with letterpress never waned and I always wanted to learn how to do it.
The class I signed up for is through the Otis Design School and is a 10-week program. I feel like such an impostor for taking a class there because I am so not an artist. We recently had our first class and it was so much fun. I feel like a total weanie for admitting that I was worried about being too tired (it's from 7-10pm, but only one day a week). I should have known that night classes you choose to take for fun are way more enjoyable than those you're forced to take for school.
So what did we learn in Week 1? We learned a bit about safety, terminology, and worked on our first project: printing our names!
We started with a clamping tool and spelled out our names using 8pt letters, which by the way are fucking tiny! Thank goodness I'm near-sighted. A poor gal in my class isn't and she didn't have her glasses so I think she had a difficult time making sure she was selecting the right letters.
I decided to center justify my name, which was more difficult that I was anticipating. Getting those spacers equally divided on both sides of the letters were driving me nuts. We learned that a single space is called an "em", half of an em is an "en". A third of an em is called "3 to the em", a fourth of an em is called "4 to the em", and so on for 5 and 6.
As someone with a math-based degree, this kinda irked me.....I mean, hello, 4 to the em? That sounds so wrong. But, as my instructor corrected me {hell yeah, I got corrected! lol!} she mentioned that she would just like for us to use the proper terminology, and I get that. So "4 to the em" it is!
After our letters were properly spaced, we proofed our names.
It literally looked like text in a book. Nothing glamorous.
But omigod, we were all so fucking enamored! We all reacted like we made an amazing work of art. It was kinda hilarious, but adorable.
Then we learned how to properly keep track of our projects and store everything.
I'm so glad we made something in the first class, even if it was just our names. There's something so satisfying with just making shit. It gets you really excited about all the possibilities and makes you feel like you're really learning how to do something.
We'll eventually be doing a group project that will involve letterpress with just one word, a phrase, and also a design, which we will carve out of a rubber block of some sort {I forget the name of it}. Then we'll finish the course with a final personal project. I'm a bit bummed that I'll be missing the final two classes, but I think we can sign up for lab sessions on the weekend {for free I think....} so hopefully I can finish everything and learn as much as possible!
Apparently Otis also offers a digital letterpress class, which I'm already thinking of taking next "semester", if it's available, I'm available, and I can justify spending that much on an art class again.
The class I signed up for is through the Otis Design School and is a 10-week program. I feel like such an impostor for taking a class there because I am so not an artist. We recently had our first class and it was so much fun. I feel like a total weanie for admitting that I was worried about being too tired (it's from 7-10pm, but only one day a week). I should have known that night classes you choose to take for fun are way more enjoyable than those you're forced to take for school.
So what did we learn in Week 1? We learned a bit about safety, terminology, and worked on our first project: printing our names!
We started with a clamping tool and spelled out our names using 8pt letters, which by the way are fucking tiny! Thank goodness I'm near-sighted. A poor gal in my class isn't and she didn't have her glasses so I think she had a difficult time making sure she was selecting the right letters.
I decided to center justify my name, which was more difficult that I was anticipating. Getting those spacers equally divided on both sides of the letters were driving me nuts. We learned that a single space is called an "em", half of an em is an "en". A third of an em is called "3 to the em", a fourth of an em is called "4 to the em", and so on for 5 and 6.
As someone with a math-based degree, this kinda irked me.....I mean, hello, 4 to the em? That sounds so wrong. But, as my instructor corrected me {hell yeah, I got corrected! lol!} she mentioned that she would just like for us to use the proper terminology, and I get that. So "4 to the em" it is!
After our letters were properly spaced, we proofed our names.
It literally looked like text in a book. Nothing glamorous.
But omigod, we were all so fucking enamored! We all reacted like we made an amazing work of art. It was kinda hilarious, but adorable.
Then we learned how to properly keep track of our projects and store everything.
I'm so glad we made something in the first class, even if it was just our names. There's something so satisfying with just making shit. It gets you really excited about all the possibilities and makes you feel like you're really learning how to do something.
We'll eventually be doing a group project that will involve letterpress with just one word, a phrase, and also a design, which we will carve out of a rubber block of some sort {I forget the name of it}. Then we'll finish the course with a final personal project. I'm a bit bummed that I'll be missing the final two classes, but I think we can sign up for lab sessions on the weekend {for free I think....} so hopefully I can finish everything and learn as much as possible!
Apparently Otis also offers a digital letterpress class, which I'm already thinking of taking next "semester", if it's available, I'm available, and I can justify spending that much on an art class again.
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