Archetype Press

Binary Shift

Subtitled, Typographic Explorations of the Narratives of William Gibson, Binary Shift was produced by the students of Archetype Press in 2005. Regarded as the originator of the literary genre “cyberpunk,” Gibson is best known as the author of the novels Pattern Recognition, Necromancer and Virtual Light. Seventeen students each took a quotation from Gibson and created a 17” x 8” double-page spread incorporating unusual typefaces and text layouts.

The book is plastic spiral bound, opening from right to left while the inner pages shift to unfold from left to right. The covers are museum boards covered with a black plastic-coated book cloth, and the front cover includes an opaque sheet that resembles wire mesh.

Artist: Collaborative Work
Press: Archetype Press
Date: 2005
Number and Edition: Unnumbered of 60
Size: 8.5” x 9.675”

Lost & Found

Lost & Found is described by its creators as a “Diverse Collection of Words and Phrases of Our Evolving Lexicon.” To produce the book, 37 students took one word each and created 5” x 7” cards using letterpress printing on Vandercook proof presses. Metal foundry type, wood type, woodcuts, linoleum cuts, silk screening and photopolymer plates were used to reflect the students’ interest in creative page layout. The cards are housed in a burlap sack with a pull-string tie and a postal mailing tag attached.

Gloria Kondrup, director of the press used to produce Lost & Found, said: “At Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California, students study the finer points of composition, typographic design, and presswork on the hand-operated flatbed cylinder printing press. The Press has 2,400+ cases of American and European metal and wood type and nine presses (Heidelberg, C&P, Vandercook).”

Artist: Collaborative Work
Press: Archetype Press
Date: 2005
Number and Edition: Unnumbered of 65
Size: 5” x 7”

Thingmajigs

Thingmajigs was produced in honor of Benjamin Franklin, inventor of bifocal glasses, the lightening rod, the Franklin stove and the glass armonica, etcetera. To create the book, 37 students each took an invention and created a 10.5” x 12.75” broadside incorporating elements from the product. To depict inventions such as Liquid Paper, Crayola crayons and tutti frutti ice cream, they used letterpress printing with metal foundry type, laser cut masonite, digital polymer plates and other materials blended into creative uses of imagery and page spaces. The title is embossed on the front board cover.

Gloria Kondrup, director of the press used to produce Thingmajigs, said: “Students explore handset metal-type composition techniques and standards (and their relation to computer-set digital type), as well as the integration of text and image. Students are exposed to printing from metal type and photopolymer plates.”

Artist: Collaborative Work
Press: Archetype Press
Date: 2005
Number and Edition: Unnumbered of 80
Size: 13.25” x 10.875”