Biblio: The Magazine for Collectors of Books, Manuscripts, and Ephemera.
Eugene, Oregon. 1:1 (July-August 1996). ISSN 1087-5581. $34.95 per year (12
issues). P.O. Box 10603, Eugene, OR 97440; 1-800-840-3810; or
circulation@bibliomag.com.
Stocked by many booksellers.
Biblio began publication with three issues in 1996 (July-August,
September-October, and November-December) and goes monthly with the issue
of January, 1997. A glossy magazine (printed on four-color web offset presses
by Publisher's Press in Shepherdsville, Kentucky on Frostbrite Coated Matte
60 lb. text and Northcoat 100 lb. cover, per the colophon,) each issue offers
a number of columns (Nicolas Basbanes, Jack Lepa, Frank E. Grizzard, Jr.,
Brian Hodges, Ian McKay and others), several departments (clubs and societies,
bookfairs and shows, etc.) and half a dozen articles. The first three issues
offer nothing specifically on the book arts, but with Priscilla Juvelis and
Sandra Kirshenbaum among the members of an editorial advisory board, articles
will doubtless be coming along.
Bill Gray. Complete Studio Tips for Artists and Graphic Designers
(revised by Paul Shaw). New York: W.W. Norton, 500 Fifth Avenue, NYC
10110. (xvi), 248 pp. $20/US, $26/Can. ISBN 0-393-73000-x (pbk.)
Reviewed by Richard Miller, Abraxas/Peppermint Press
As promised, this is a book of studio tips, though perhaps not complete,
and a studio in this case is a place where illustrations and words - either
typeset or handlettered - are combined into ads, flyers, brochures, books,
etc, usually in preparation for printing. Originally published in 1976 "at
a point midway between the demise of letterpress printing and metal type
and the emergence of digital type and production" (as Shaw says in his preface),
Studio Tips for Artists ... was a distillation of Gray's 50 years'
experience in commercial art. Presented in simple graphic style, one tip
per page, the directions all hand written in a plain but elegant cursive,
the tips cover all aspects of studio activities starting with organization
and including tools, supplies, lettering (and working with words), layout,
painting, etc, ending with some business tips. Following the success of his
first book, Bill Gray issued More Studio Tips... in 1978. Both collections
have now been combined and revised. For a beginner, this amount of information
could be overwhelming but, take heart: most commercial studios don't work
like this anymore. For example, the use of rubber cement has been superseded
by wax, and both are eliminated in the digital studio. I bought both books
when they were first published (together they cost less than the new edition)
at a time when our studio was able to take advantage of the helpful advice
since most production work was done by hand. Today this same work, and more,
is done in front of a computer monitor (such as composing this review, which
will be sent via e-mail to Sid Huttner for setting into type for you to read),
so the tips no longer have relevance for their original intended audience.
But there are calligraphers, marblers, conservators and even a few old-fashioned
studio artists who still work with their hands, measuring, marking, cutting,
folding, painting, pasting, who would find much of interest here, such as:
finding the centre between two points quickly; dividing any line into equal
parts without a ruler; how to draw an oval of any size, or tips on making
an effective poster. As mentioned, there is one tip (sometimes two) per page
which is enough for "shading effects with a burnt cork" but hardly sufficient
for "how to make your own typeface." This page consists of a hundred words
(or so) from Gray: "First design your alphabet,... and then photostat enough
letters to paste into words," followed by another hundred from Shaw: "...there
is now another, more flexible, alternative ... three software programs -
Fontographer, Font Studio, and Ikarus-M." This is true enough, but digital
font design is beyond the skills of most. To be fair, two pages are devoted
to "writing calligraphy." There are hundreds of little tips such as proper
care of brushes after using acrylic paint, or how to proofread printed copy
(with standard proofreaders' marks explained), or how to visualize a design
on different backgrounds. There are other, more esoteric bits of information
too, such as how to copyfit a manuscript, which will estimate how much physical
space a given text would occupy using a certain type size or style, although
the necessity for doing so has been superseded by the computer. All in all
though, it's a good basic book suitable for someone new to studio
crafts, whetheras a first job or as a result of re-training. Perfect as a
bathroom book.