“This past summer I took a Letterpress class at the University of the Arts here in Philadelphia. I ended up enjoying it so much I decided to take it again (though this time as a 10 week course instead of 5). I felt so good to jump back into doing this again. And now that I had one class under my belt, it was much easier to experiment and play around with some of the projects.”

“I received a great reader question today from Nicole about how to go about buying a small letterpress, so I thought I would share my answer with all of you in case this is something others have been wondering about.”

“The online world has created a culture of creation among ordinary people. Meanwhile, magazines are still partying like it’s 1899. Writers write, readers read, and never the twain shall meet. Simply put, this can’t last. Magazines need to open their doors to their readers. Instead of thinking of writers and readers as two separate communities, magazines need to realize that they really only have one community: the people who give a shit about their magazine.”

“Modern Mechanix is collecting, among other things, examples of pre-computer ASCII art, found in old issues of popular science magazines. So far, he has found articles on the typewriter art of mill worker Rosaire Belanger in the June 1939 issue of Popular Science (featuring an awesome picture of George Washington)…”

“8 1/2 x 11 inches. I’ve been avoiding this format all my life. At my first job in New York, we used European-sized stationery. It caused no end of complications, but my (European-born) boss was dedicated to it. ‘Don’t you see?’ he asked. ‘It’s so much more elegant.’ And logical, too: the ISO system is modular, all based on consistent ratios, the square root of two, the Golden Section. Our 8 1/2 x 11 size is based on…well, what, exactly?”

“I started letter-folding a few months ago, while letter-folding had caught the imagination of the members of the social bookmarking site del.icio.us. A popular link was to the large repository of folding letter designs at ghh.com. It was from this website that I learnt the florentine fold and instantly fell in love with it, and it is the florentine fold that the designs on this website are based on.”

“John Huey sits atop Time and Fortune and 149 other magazines, ready to have some fun. Only now the good old days of big media are history.”

“Paper notes in a digital world? Absolutely. I still believe in pens, pencils, notebooks, journals, daily planners, letter writing, thank-you cards, and all things that celebrate a life that respects the placing of words on paper.”

“That great bane of contemporary media, the Listicle, made another appearance last week. This time, it was in answer to that nagging question: what were the 40 greatest magazine covers of the last 40 years.”

“The 40 greatest magazine covers of the last 40 years were unveiled today at the American Magazine Conference… Rolling Stone’s January 22, 1981 cover of John Lennon and Yoko Ono was named the top magazine cover to appear since 1965, while Vanity Fair’s cover featuring a naked, pregnant Demi Moore (August 1991), ranked as the # 2 cover.” (More info)

“Be a superstar! Prove to your friends how famous you really are! Currently cranking out 17 covers/hour. Just finished cover 506. You can use this page 5 times in a 10 minute period.”

“People who inevitably have trouble with handwriting and calligraphy write with their fingers. They ‘draw’ the letters. A finger-writer puts the full weight of his/her hand on the paper, his fingers form the letters, and he picks his hand up repeatedly to move it across the paper as he writes.”

“A few years ago, I was hitting a roadblock in my personal work when a series of drawings I was making seemed increasingly to be leading me toward etching. Sketchbook in hand, I drove to the nearest art supply store, thinking someone there might be able to advise me on materials.”

“Hypulp documents the influence of the internet on print design.”

“Okay, so a few people asked me how I do image transfers, so I thought I would show everyone. There are lots of different ways to do this, I think there are several threads on craftster about different techniques, but this is just how I do it. What you will need: A photocopy or laser printer printout of your image, a piece of fabric, a spoon, and a transparent blender pen.”