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The design of the page is of course
critical: having good margins and the text block at the 'right' place on the
page. I guess an experienced designer does this by eye, but I tend to start with
Jan Tschichold's book The Form of the Book. In it he describes a number
of schemes for placing the text block on the page.
In this case, I shall be
using much the same imposition as I used for Stanley Morison & 'John Fell',
the only difference being that the measure is 32em rather than 33em. This will
give nice big margins on the demy quarto page.
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Having done my page design, the next task in
the press shop (as I like to call my garage) is to build the forme. I shall be
printing four-to-view, ie four pages at a time, two openings of the book. So I
shall need to place furniture around the four blocks of type for the four pages.
This sounds simple enough but the furniture needs to be arranged so that when
the forme is locked up with the quoins, the pressure moves all the type into the
precisely right place, in particular ensuring that the pages start at the
precise place at the top of the page and are the right distance apart. I discovered
early on that time spent getting the furniture right makes for much more
efficient imposition when the time comes. In this picture you can see the forme,
the two openings running down the bed of the press.
Copyright © Martyn Ould 2004. |
