iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

The Printing Stewards @printingstewards.bsky.social · 17/06/2025

Our workspace tour video is now available on YouTube! youtu.be/YdxOL5cm-Ik This short video gives you a tour of the work space we've created over several cleaning work sessions. Meet the five casters (of the 46 in the collection) that we will be working on in the near term.

youtu.be

Stewards Casting Diary 1.5: A Clean, Well-Lighted Place

A short tour of the five main machines we will be working on.

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The Printing Stewards @printingstewards.bsky.social · 04/06/2025

To really give you a sense of the progress we have made at the foundry, I have posted a short tour of our work area on Patreon. We've got five machines on deck, and the space around them to do our work. www.patreon.com/posts/stewar...

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The Printing Stewards @printingstewards.bsky.social · 02/06/2025

We have 16 casters from ATF, and 3 are on a clear restoration track. This Saturday we cleared even more space around the machines so that we can actively work on them. I just sent a project management email this morning to establish our repair timelines. $3/month helps all this happen faster.

PS Machine No. 57: The American Type Founders Barth Caster, 72pt Mold, ATF Machine 149

PS Machine No. 71: The American Type Founders Barth Caster, 14pt Mold, ATF Machine 233

PS Machine No. 48: The American Type Founders Giant Pivotal

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Meanwhile...Letterpress @meanwhilelttrpress.bsky.social · 01/04/2025

We agree with every single one of these!!

Posters that read Trans Kids Are… Loved, Real, Slay!, A Vibe, strong, complex, worthy, cool!

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Ryan Cordell @ryancordell.org · 01/04/2025

Dropped by @skeuomorphpress.org to check on @transbookhistory.bsky.social’s community print for Trans Day of Visibility & found it bustling, full of kids & families happily setting wood type & printing these incredible broadsides. If we founded Skeuomorph for anything it was for events like that

Letterpress printed sheets reading

TRANS KIDS ARE REAL
TRANS KIDS ARE SPECIAL
TRANS KIDS ARE LOVED

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Trans* Book History @transbookhistory.bsky.social · 01/04/2025

Adding this to my very short list of things I’m most proud of during my graduate career. It was exactly what I needed during these difficult times and I could tell it was what they all needed too!

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Trans* Book History @transbookhistory.bsky.social · 02/06/2025

New acquisition inspired by @literaturegeek.bsky.social. I just couldn’t resist! Had to have it!

Brass belt buckle with image of a jobbing platter press and the dates 1882 /1982

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The Printing Stewards @printingstewards.bsky.social · 01/06/2025

We had a great work session on Saturday! Join us on Patreon and learn about all of the progress we have made preserving and restoring historic typographic machinery, including some of the last remaining machines from the American Type Founders. www.patreon.com/posts/forwar...

patreon.com

Forward! | The Printing Stewards

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Fritz Swanson @fritzswanson.bsky.social · 01/06/2025

My non-profit, @printingstewards.bsky.social , had another work session on Saturday. Join our Patreon and learn how we are saving historic typographic machines. www.patreon.com/posts/forwar...

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Forward! | The Printing Stewards

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Farran Smith Nehme 🇱🇧 @selfstyledsiren.bsky.social · 20/05/2025

This suggests to me that the insert was produced by some other entity that makes deals for their stuff to be included in newspapers? I can't wait for the part where we find out what the hell happened. bsky.app/profile/elec...

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Leor Galil @imleor.bsky.social · 20/05/2025

This is the end result of the Sun-Times gutting its arts and entertainment staff through layoffs and attrition

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Hari Kunzru @harikunzru.bsky.social · 20/05/2025

Trying to get my head round how this could make it to print. Many warning signs for all of us

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Pavel @spavel.bsky.social · 20/05/2025

This is exactly what I mean when I say that it is impossible to reduce friction, only to move it around. The text-making-up machine dropped the friction of "research" to zero, but every single person downstream of that "research" who has to act upon it now shoulders a double workload.

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Jason Weidemann @fiveoclockbot.bsky.social · 20/05/2025

I just feel an overwhelming sense of sadness this morning over this? There are thousands of struggling writers out there who could write a brilliant summer reads feature and should be paid to do so. Pay humans to do things for fuck's sake.

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Farran Smith Nehme 🇱🇧 @selfstyledsiren.bsky.social · 20/05/2025

Funnily enough, I was just talking to someone who is researching his book in the library. We agreed that one day, AI might trash-ify the internet to the point that anyone doing any research will be back at the library, leafing through paper books like the good lord intended.

Robert Preston flirts with a reluctant Shirley Jones over a dictionary in the River City Library, in 1962's THE MUSIC MAN

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Benjamin Dreyer @bcdreyer.social · 20/05/2025

"Honey, could you give this a once-over before we print it with our name on it?" me (I'm Honey), approx. 20 seconds later: "That first book doesn't exist. You want me to read the rest, or is it time to just trash the whole thing?"

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The Printing Stewards @printingstewards.bsky.social · 20/05/2025

But our baseline mission is to keep skills alive, and to celebrate skills themselves as expressions of humanity. We want to maintain human capacity through skill preservation. And that's what I want of my writing students. I want them to develop their own ideas, so they can maintain that capacity.

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The Printing Stewards @printingstewards.bsky.social · 20/05/2025

The tools we preserve, which made metal type, likewise erased older skills while creating newer ones. The printing revolution itself created and erased skills in that same way. AI is the direct lineal descendant of metal type and the print shop. This is not an easy story with clear villains.

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The Printing Stewards @printingstewards.bsky.social · 20/05/2025

AI tools are complicated. They are not uniform in their character. But at this moment as we incorporate them into our work, we risk injuring ourselves when we misunderstand what we are, what skills are, and what the AI is doing for and to us. I am going to continue to think on this.

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The Printing Stewards @printingstewards.bsky.social · 20/05/2025

A skill is mapped physically in the brain. The brain IS the network of skill maps you have embedded in it. Every skill that has ever existed is part of the great corpus of ways in which we have been human. We are a skills platform, beings made of skills. Every time we de-skill, we lose something.

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The Printing Stewards @printingstewards.bsky.social · 20/05/2025

I (Fritz Swanson) am sharing this from this account because we are an organization dedicated to skill preservation. We don't preserve objects alone, but instead we wrap the objects in what Scott Russell Sanders called the "double inheritance" of a tool, it's "cloud of knowing".

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Jason Koebler @jasonkoebler.bsky.social · 20/05/2025

I spoke to the person who AI-generated the Chicago Sun-Times reading list. Says he's very embarrassed. This was part of a generic package inserted into newspapers and other publications, so likely to run elsewhere. He didn't know it'd be in Chicago Sun-Times www.404media.co/chicago-sun-...

404media.co

Chicago Sun-Times Prints AI-Generated Summer Reading List With Books That Don't Exist

"I can't believe I missed it because it's so obvious. No excuses," the writer said. "I'm completely embarrassed."

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The Printing Stewards @printingstewards.bsky.social · 11/05/2025

The machines are coming alive! Here is the first casting diary. Hopefully one of many. Spoiler, it did not kill me. But, I think most of our videos could go under this title. In this video we cast 144pt type! The largest in the world! And we learn what needs to be fixed. youtu.be/KAv3mX0CLRA

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Stewards Casting Diary One

YouTube video by The Printing Stewards

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The Printing Stewards @printingstewards.bsky.social · 20/05/2025

Ah, thanks for the clarification. I appreciate your expertise.

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The Printing Stewards @printingstewards.bsky.social · 20/05/2025

Sponsored inserts are a long-standing revenue vehicle for newspapers. They are printed by the advertiser and sent to the newspaper's printer for collation into the issue. The newspaper doesn't exercise editorial control. And yes, they can go into multiple publications as part of a campaign.

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The Printing Stewards @printingstewards.bsky.social · 11/05/2025

youtu.be

Stewards Casting Diary One

YouTube video by The Printing Stewards

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Glenn Fleishman @glennf.com · 07/05/2025

Please join me tomorrow in watching novelist, colleague, friend, and now fellow Jeopardy! player @dmoren.com on his first of ??? games! Check your local listings!

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Val Lucas - Bowerbox Press @bowerbox.com · 01/05/2025

The last poster wall iteration for a while- students need all the press time for their finals. Grab a poster if you need one for a May Day march and resist this rights-snatching bullshit that's going on. #letterpress

Wall of posters printed in red, blue, and black

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Val Lucas - Bowerbox Press @bowerbox.com · 03/05/2025

Today's nerd purchase (with bonus cat foot): Nineteenth Century American Designers & Engravers of Type, a collection of biographical essays from the Inland Printer. #letterpress #typefounding

A hand holds up a copy of a book titled Nineteenth Century American Designers & Engravers of Type, and a grey cat foot peeks into the frame under the book

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Val Lucas - Bowerbox Press @bowerbox.com · 06/05/2025

Scoring some new morel mushroom cards on the trusty C&P today. #letterpress

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Fritz Swanson @fritzswanson.bsky.social · 16/03/2025

A student confessed that they produced an essay draft with AI, but that they had intended to revise it later so that it would "sound like" them, and therefore they intended to do right. I feel as though I have failed this person so so utterly. What a work "sounds like" has no bearing on its value.

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Fritz Swanson @fritzswanson.bsky.social · 07/05/2025

Letterpress, vinyl records, film photography, cassettes… everything is collapsing at once? I’ve written an essay attempting to capture the crisis in one framework.

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The Printing Stewards @printingstewards.bsky.social · 07/05/2025

"Our entire system for preserving cultural artifacts (museums, scholarship, libraries, etc) has grown up WITHIN the Industrial Age. We need a new perspective that can better describe the problem we are facing so that a proper solution can be imagined." www.patreon.com/posts/five-l...

patreon.com

Five Levels of Preservation: An Approach to Preserving Artistic Systems | The Printing Stewards

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Carley @thepresswoman.com · 03/05/2025

Back in Feb, @ryancordell.org shared this incredible woodcut from @skeuomorphpress.org collection. He shared the original illustrator file for all! I was so inspired by this woodcut, I wanted to clean it up and redistribute it to the public 🧵 1/2 #printsky #academicsky #typophile

A digitally drawn recreation of a woodcut image. A printing press is in the center with clouds and a sunrise behind it, with a banner above that says, “the tyrants foe, the people’s friend”

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The Printing Stewards @printingstewards.bsky.social · 01/05/2025

Metal type has a body which supports the face. The face is driven into a brass matrix which sits as a die at the head of a body mold. This allows the castor to adjust the width of the body, and the position of the face on the body. A "kern" or overhang is one consequence of this design.

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Benjamin Dreyer @bcdreyer.social · 01/05/2025

Em dashes, of course, were named in honor of Emily Dickinson, because she used so many of them.

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Glenn Fleishman @glennf.com · 01/05/2025

This caused a significant problem for…Garry Trudeau. youtu.be/NkiXxeF6aho?... I also explain (with Trudeau’s help) in a chapter in my upcoming book, How Comics Are Made—in your local and online bookstore in June, worldwide!

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The Week In Doonesbury That Wasn’t – May 7, 1973

YouTube video by Glenn Fleishman

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The Printing Stewards @printingstewards.bsky.social · 01/05/2025

Speak clearly, friends. I think it is what the Holy Father wished of us. And it's just good, on its own terms. [I've relied on the Oxford English Dictionary for my citations.]

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The Printing Stewards @printingstewards.bsky.social · 01/05/2025

And what's especially useful about the term "letter spacing" is that it adequately describes what sign painters and stone cutters did just as well as it describes what typographers did. No jargon needed. Jargon is the use of language to exclude, and should be avoided. We should clarify, not occlude.

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The Printing Stewards @printingstewards.bsky.social · 01/05/2025

In traditional printing, letter spacing has always been called letter spacing. It's not mystical, though its perfect practice takes skill. Kerned characters (and mortised characters), as well as coppers and brasses, were the traditional tools of letter spacing. But were never confused with it.

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The Printing Stewards @printingstewards.bsky.social · 01/05/2025

And this is why the coverage of Pope Francis' unfortunate sepulchral inscription is so unhelpful. A metal type term, transposed incorrectly into digital design, and then pushed back out into a critique of stone carving, is just jargon of the worst sort. Precision is good. But jargon is bad.

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The Printing Stewards @printingstewards.bsky.social · 01/05/2025

In contemporary design, kerning is not technically possible. Because the type has no physical body. Instead, we use "kerning" as a vague metaphoric reference to the physical past of design. But without the physical context, the reference has lost its precise meaning.

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The Printing Stewards @printingstewards.bsky.social · 01/05/2025

But here, "to kern" means to either design the type such that it is cast with a kerned stroke, or to cut the type during the manufacturing process to produce the kern (IE, to cut the shank below the stroke). Or often, both. Cast kerns usually need flash trimmed away. The Barth has knives for this.

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