Print Gocco and Holiday Cards 2

Now that the printing of the holiday cards actually seemed real and within reach, we moved swiftly on the next steps: printing the color background.

Most of the cards we're working with are of white cardstock, which is an easy and generous canvas on which to paint. All colors will show true and with some clever negative-space design, you don't need to use any white ink at all. I used that concept for the snow-covered tree in my holiday cards of a few years ago. But as Rebecca showed me, it pays to experiment with different colors of paper... to be seen shortly.

Photoshop goes a long way towards covering the bulk of the work that's required to create a template. I freehanded a prototype card and kept every element of the illustration separate in its own layer. I knew that for printing the card I would want to do the black outline last, so ultimately the sky, monkey's fur, and monkey's lips would go on one stencil. Three different colors, but the ink couldn't be allowed to run, which it assuredly would if I didn't set up any barriers.

The Gocco comes with foam pads that you cut up into narrow strips. One side has an adhesive that mounts onto the stencil, so you can create little walls to hold areas of ink separate from each other. I'd never played with this before and was looking forward to trying it out. It was easier than I'd thought, as the foam was very forgiving, bending in all directions or trimming easily for sharp corners. The adhesive formed a strong bond but, upon pressing, you had a short grace period in which to reapply the barrier if it didn't go where you wanted. It was pretty much an ideal substance to work with.

As seen in the second photo, I walled off the sock monkey's head from the sky (the large dark blob surrounding him) and sealed off a little chamber for the red mouth. It was important to think of this image in two forms: the detailed black lines and the large geometric shapes behind it. Photoshop allowed me to reveal or hide any aspect of the image so, in the course of drawing, I could also plan how much room would be needed by the foam barriers--or, in other words, how close areas of color would be allowed to lie next to each other.

I could have narrowed the space between the colored shapes, of course, by giving each color its own stencil, but that would have been two extra stencils and four more flash bulbs (part of the stencil-making process) down the drain. I'm trying to conserve Gocco resources because it's a deadstock item and no one's making more/new supplies for it anymore. That forces me to get creative with how I'm going to print.

Crafty Advice

I'm still working on the holiday cards but they're not done yet, so I still can't publish the photo-documentation of making these things. Because there's so many of them, it's a lot of work to execute each stage. My wife and I alternate shifts of motivation: sometimes she's all, "We've got to get these out the door this weekend," and I'm stuck playing free MMOs for my other blog. Alternately, I'm all, "Please do your part of the writing on the backs of the cards," because the handwriting would turn out all uneven once the interior mechanism is in place, and she's fixated on World 6 of Super Mario Bros. Wii.

But we are getting it all done, slowly done. I'm also learning a lot throughout the process. A few days ago I was talking with her about what it is I really, really need in terms of stationery. I saw this intriguing Japanese postcard kit--it uses shaped foam brushes instead of hair-tipped brushes--and realized that I already own the most important elements of that kit. It wasn't worth $24 for materials that could be gotten cheaply as individual parts. So I decided what I really needed was stronger cardstock, since I tried using the post office's pre-stamped postcards for a watercolor project and they warped all to hell. I was frankly surprised they reached their destination.

Harder cardstock is easily had, but does that solve all my problems? I can print my own stationery, I can cut out my own envelopes... ah, there we go! I need to create a more attractive laser printing system for address labels! Because I can find some appealing but very busy design on paper, carve it into an envelope, and there's no way I could use any kind of writing implement to scribe an address any person or machine could read (though I wonder if there is a reactive ink that a postal scanner could read better than the naked eye can? And if it's invisible, my gosh, wouldn't that be cool!).

Eventually I realized the problem isn't in the labels, it's in the adhesive. Remember how that one address label fell off of the envelope I sent to a new pen pal? And I've had other envelopes fall apart because the glue stick I used to seal them was grossly inadequate. And now I'm at a point in the holiday card assembly where I need to fold the cards in half and seal them in such a way the internal mechanism can move freely. I would've tried glue stick but actually used it all up on the internal mechanism (sorry to be so cryptic, you'll see what I mean soon) and had to fall back on this cheap Elmer's transparent glue gel, which is entirely unsuitable for this task. This morning I found that much of my binding had come unbound, and with a distinct lump in the center of each card, it's impossible to place a weight upon the card and ensure an even press all over its topography. The solution to that might be a small sandbag or even a bag of sugar/flour, in terms of household items, but I'm not going to fill 50 freakin' sandbags and spread them all over cards on the floor just to get a secure seal!

And then it hit me: I lost my job last Tuesday and, with my new-found free time, kept myself busy by sealing up the windows with sheets of plastic. Annual Minnesotan tradition for anyone who likes to keep warm. It took me way too long to realize that the double-sided Scotch window insulation tape is the perfect item for my stationery jobs!

I bought a spool of so-called double-sided tape before and it was crap. The adhesive itself peeled away from the plastic strip that was supposed to be coated on both sides. It was also unwieldy to use, tended to get tangled and folded, and brought much more frustration than convenience to my project. But this simple roll of Scotch window insulator tape peels off easily, pastes down neatly, trims handily, and whipping off its paper backing is simplicity itself. And that seal will hold! This is excellent tape, and I think I'm going to stop by the local hardware store and stock up on a couple rolls for personal use. Why didn't this occur to me before?

UPDATE: I got the cards finished and am hand-writing address labels to get them sent out tomorrow! I can start releasing my tedious photo-documentary!

Audiobook Debate

Well, in the search for "other things to talk about" until our handmade holiday cards are done, I can muse about audiobooks.

There's a debate about these, has been for a couple years, and it's surprising to see who's on which side of the debate.  It flared up within the periphery of my consciousness when Rebecca got me an Amazon Kindle for a birthday/graduation present last April. I was all excited about it because I figured it was a luxury technology far beyond my reach, so I did some research about what it does, what it requires, what it's capable of, &c.

In this research I discovered one of its features is a voice synthesis program which can "read" aloud the digitized text on the screen. You can choose between a male or female voice, both speaking in an American dialect. The feature is for people who need their hands free, I guess, and can't hold the Kindle to click the Next Page button, or maybe for sightless individuals who can still download books and blogs in this way.

But there's an encampment of audiobook proponents who say that this feature unfairly cuts into their industry. Amazon is not paying for audio rights to these books, just programming the device with an ability to pronounce writing aloud. I think that's a valid concern for the industry, and I confess I didn't even know such rights existed. I know Roy Blount, Jr. is upset at this feature and has spoken against it.

I think he has nothing to worry about, however. If he'd downloaded his own book, Feet on the Street, and listened to it with the Kindle's voice synthesis program, he'd know that in no way is this a viable commercial competition. The program lacks inflection and cannot interpret the rhythm of a piece at all. Sometimes it breaks words into its separate syllables or mispronounces a word entirely. Once--and I've never been able to replicate it--my Kindle started reciting the programming code itself.

I bring up Feet on the Street in particular because I listened to the audiobook version of it. I'm told the abridged version was read by Blount but the unabridged was not, and that's the version we had, and it was read by someone who sounded like the spiritual and cultural opposite of Blount in almost every way. Try to imagine a down-home, backwoods travelogue of New Orleans performed by a young, genteel man fresh out of finishing school, striving to clearly enunciate every word. His soulless rendition of spoken quotes is quite comical. The Kindle would have done a bad job of it, too, but it would have been a different bad job.

As well, the National Federation of the Blind argues in defense of this Kindle feature, such as it is, because it provides access to literature that isn't yet available in Braille or in audiobook format. It kind of sucks to tell someone that, because they're blind, they're not entitled to the newest bestsellers on the market. And of course no one's explicitly saying that (who would dare?), but you can see how an argument against a handy speech synthesis program like this could be construed that way.

On the other hand comes Neil Gaiman's argument, that the audiobook industry needn't feel threatened by the Kindle's voice synthesis program--indeed, it should rally and play up its own strengths. It should explore not just its advantages of a colorful, flavorful voice actor performing a written work, but also what distinguishes audiobooks from print literature. I agree with him on all points: I've enjoyed wonderful audiobooks and developed favorite readers based on their interpretation of the text, a dimensionality not available from simply reading.

This isn't to say I don't like reading: I love it, I love the free reign over visuals I can attribute to my own impression of a book, but I've also come to enjoy listening to a talented recitation of a book.

Print Gocco and Holiday Cards

We're actually doing holiday cards this year! I've done them in years previous when I was single, and then my wife bought me a Print Gocco--which I'd never heard of before and was thrilled with... thrilled to the point of possession. I hold the Gocco very dear, especially as its supplies are increasingly scarce and not cheap to replenish, consequently.

I've used the Gocco for holiday cards one year and also for printing T-shirts for our wedding party. I'm reluctant to whip it out for any small project, preferring to wait for something elaborate requiring many, many prints.

One night, Rebecca entered a certain state of consciousness and delineated several creative ideas for holiday cards, some of which surprised her the next morning. We drew up some prototypes, argued about how to attack this project, and then nailed down a final iteration. When we were absolutely ready, we pulled out the Gocco and started making stencils. The photo here shows, essentially, the main face of the card without giving everything away. This will be my first print with four colors and I'm... insecure! I'm not sure I can pull this off but I'm behaving as though I absolutely can. The print will involve setting up boundaries for the ink, as well as mixing the ink prior to application.

I'm not doing a very good job of keeping these cards a secret. I had to reupload the photo with a crystalizing filter to distort and disguise the images we're working with. I'm very excited to get to work on this project and send it out, but I've been documenting the process and actually have four entries written and ready to go online... but I've been forbidden from posting them until the cards are actually in the mail.

I'll have to find something else to talk about in the meantime.

Lost in the Mail

Bad news: one of my letters was lost in the mail. This is always discouraging when it happens, and it's one of the inherent risks of postal service.

I was using some address labels from Red Horseshoe, and they're very attractive but not entirely practical. They place the return address directly atop the destination address, and my concern was that an automated scanner might interpret the whole thing as one big address. When my recipient e-mailed me to ask whether I'd written her, I knew something was wrong because anything I send from the Central Loop Station usually shows up within 48 hours, in the contiguous U.S.

Sure enough, she e-mailed again to inform me that only the address label made it to her, accompanied by a boilerplate apology from her local post office. I knew the adhesive that came with these Red Horseshoe address labels was weak and ineffectual in all cases, so I attempted to bolster it with glue stick, which is usually pretty secure. But perhaps the paper I used was too smooth or not porous enough to give the glue some hold, and the label still flaked off the homemade envelope.

While e-mail has none of the romance or hands-on appeal of penning a letter and handcrafting an envelope for it to ride in, it is still exponentially more reliable than postal mail. And I'm not advocating a switch from postal mail, no, for I've had many successes and relatively few failures using this system. (The failures have been pretty dramatic, however.) It's just that I'm not a gambling man, and sending something via postal service is always a gamble, no matter how good the odds, and sometimes I lose.

The Big Leagues

Ugh, haven't written in here for a substantial period of time. I apologize for that--I haven't abandoned this place, but I've been relatively preoccupied with other projects.

See, at work I've been recruited to try out copywriting, on top of my copyediting and proofreading duties. This is very exciting for me: I've always had all sorts of creative suggestions for copy crossing my desk, so to actually start with a blank sheet should be more inspiring than asking someone else to tweak something they've written, right?

Yes and no. A first step into copywriting is definitely a desirable direction, but the project I was given was fairly involved and intense. It would be like handing Dostoevsky to a gifted fourth-grade reader, with a time limit. He could certainly parse the bulk of it but would he be able to polish it off in two weeks? There are definitely other copywriting jobs I could handle, but this one was a bit over my head.

And I went from three hours of free time at work to six hours of solid writing. It was great to have more hours to tack onto my time card, but was I producing quality copy, or copy of the quality they required? I began to feel insecure, as though I'd bitten off more than I could chew and that I stood to let some pretty important people down. The project has since been shifted to a more experienced copywriter... and my schedule has lightened considerably.

I wonder whether it would have made much of a difference to take a copywriting class during my college career. I think it could have been helpful, but there were definitely aspects to this project that were exceptional to most copywriting tasks. I'm trying to say that I don't think I'm a bad writer for not pulling this off, and a formal class may have helped but that this situation was exceptional.

So I'm still learning. Maybe I'll practice with other clients--being a contractor, I can work with anyone--or maybe I'll redirect my energy toward short stories and freelance editing jobs. I'm just trying to stay positive about the whole thing. It wasn't my fault, it could've happened to anybody...

We Want the Right to Abuse Our Rights

This is an old picture, I don't remember which protest it's from.  There was some kind of political event, and some batch of random college kids turned out to make sure their voices were heard.

And their voices demanded free speeck.

More specifically, they demanded "free speeck," instilling a sense of irony with the use of open and closed quotation marks.  They wanted their speeck to be "free," that is, not free at all, and what they wanted free was their right to speeck, that is, not actually speeck at all.  Whatever that might be.

This quotation mark scramble comes up all the time.  ALL THE TIME.  As a copyeditor working with adults on every level, it is surprising and discouraging how rampant this misuse is.  In fact, it has been abused so widely, so frequently, throughout such a protracted period of time, I'm a little surprised that Merriam-Webster hasn't canonized it and declared it yet another valid convention of speech.

I tried to create a little mnemonic device to help people remember what effect quotation marks have: fresh fish.  Would you eat "fresh" fish, or even fresh "fish?"  It helps if I'm there in person to do the hated air-quotes.  This drives the point home, and hopefully it gives them something to remember next time they're writing anything out.  It's just an interesting semiotic breakdown, to me, that someone could look at quotes being used ironically but interpret them as emphatic.  Fresh "fish," to them, means it's fresh and it's doubleplus fish.  The freshness is regular and the fishness is superlative.  But gods preserve anyone to whom that sounds especially delicious.

As for the egregious misspelling of "free speech," I don't know how to address that.  It is far beyond my ken what may have been going through his head when he thought he would defend the nation's right to free speeck, but first he should have made sure he knew what the hell he was saying.

Or!  Maybe that's what he was protesting!  Maybe there was a parade of editors and proofreaders, and he was defending his right to abuse spelling and punctuation!  That thought only occurred to me just now, and it makes total sense.

Daabs-Attest, 1888

This was a funny little project that went nowhere. I'm tying it into stationery interests because it involves an antique, old handwriting, and very old newspaper.

My wife brought me out to yet another thrift store last year--she's a great fan of these places and I can't deny she's come away with some impressive scores at local outlets like Saver's, Salvation Army and Ragstock. They're just not my thing unless I'm trying to assemble a Hallowe'en costume, though I used to hit Ragstock quite frequently as my source for military surplus coats and bookbags. Anyway, this time we went to ARC Value Village and I was surprised to find three very nice sweaters, a satisfyingly terrible Conan the Barbarian comic, and this thing.

I'm not saying I'm mystically inclined or anything, but when I pulled this frame out of a sloppy array of other frames, I couldn't put it back. It looked like an important document some family lost--I couldn't imagine someone selling it to a thrift store, so perhaps it ended up here after an estate sale, like, all leftover and unclaimed property could have been distributed to a thrift outlet. Is that reasonable? Does that happen?

It was a certificate in a stout wooden frame, and I couldn't understand the language in which it was written. Something about it seemed very important to me so I picked it up for a couple bucks. Once home, I immediately began to disassemble it into its component parts (with my cat's help, pictured). I polished the glass, which was unevenly cut on a couple corners, with jagged teeth extending beyond the intended dimensions of the pane. It's like someone wasn't paying attention or didn't like their job.

It had seen a lot of action in its day, as evidenced by the damage sustained to the wooden frame at the corners. When the glass was out I spent a lot of time polishing it up and saw that some flaws were inherent to the manufacturing process, like interesting little striations of bubbles and warps in the glass here and there. Time had also marred it with little stains and scratches, those couldn't be helped. As for the frame, I took to it with wood soap and tried to replenish this parched fiber as much as I could. I have no idea whether I improved it at all but it did look a little nicer when I was done.

I bent the tiny nails in the back, removed the wood panel behind the pane, and extricated the document. Online research suggested to me it was written in Norwegian and was a birth certificate for someone. That's quite reasonable: my area is typified by its population of Norwegian Lutheran settlers (see also: the Coen brothers' Fargo). I figured, once the frame was reassembled, I might contact Mindekirke and see whether they had any interest in this thing, or else the Minnesota Historical Society. Out of reverence for the object, I hope they do and that this testament to someone's birth isn't kicked to the curb yet again.

Behind the birth certificate, however, between it and the wood backing were a couple sections of folded newspaper. This is the kind of find I dream about but only hear about happening to other people, usually when they're tearing a house down or stripping the upholstery off an old couch. Someone had packed a couple pages of the now-extinct Minnesota Times. Research shows me this started as the Daily Times in 1854, then soon converted into the Weekly Times. Now, the information I'm reading, the Minnesota Historical Bulletin, says that the Times merged with the St. Paul Press in 1861, but the issue I scanned here shows the death of Colonel Albert Lea which occurred in 1891, suggesting the Times was intact three decades after it was supposed to have been subsumed by the other paper. I don't know what to make of that.

...Oh, wait, this is the Minneapolis Times, which ran from 1889 to 1948. Never mind, that's completely reasonable. Anyway, I scanned in the birth certificate--too large to fit my scanner, I'll reassemble it in Photoshop--and all the newspaper stored in the frame. I think these are all marvelous documents and I wonder whether anyone besides me will think them useful at all.