The Tiny Universe of Dot Screens

all images from John Hilgart's 4CP blog 

 

 

Last post I noted the upcoming American Printing History Association annual conference on color. I'm looking forward to seeing Dr. Sarah Lowengard who will present “Why Color? On the Uses, (Misuses) and Meanings of Color in Printing”. From what I know of her she's smart and brings a multidisciplinary philosophical/critical eye to a seemingly narrow subject. I wrote about her, and her fascinating thesis project on color in the 18th century, in an earlier post, Arsenic, Sheep's Dung and a Yellow called Pink.

Another talk that stood out in the APHA roster is Gabriella Miyares' “Worlds, Dot by Dot: 4-Color Process* in the Age of Pulp Comics.” The look of classic pulp comics— cheap paper, ragged printing, colors made up from overlaid fields of dot screens and a welter of misalignments and fortuitous mishaps— is something that resonates in the collective pop cultural consciousness. From Roy Lichtenstein to designers today who ironically try imitating that haphazard mechanical look with the intensive digital precision of Photoshop filters.

Gabriella is a graphic designer based in New York City, working in stationery design but her background experience includes experimenting with letterpress, screenprinting, and intaglio. Last year she attended a course at the Rare Book School at UVa that had a mini-section on early, cheap "pulp" color printing, which got her thinking about "how superheroes, and comics, have that very specific "look" -- those ragged dots and misprintings and very specific color palettes." Gabriella shared with me some of her research for the talk: 

"Hands-down the best visual resource I found was John Hilgart's 4CP blog (http://4cp.posthaven.com/). In looking at these magnified and cropped examples it became clear that the artists were rather limited by a very imprecise printing process, but at the same time the look has become something iconic and beautiful in its own right. That I think was the germ of the idea for this talk. I wanted to explore how these comics were actually made, how much control the artists actually had, and also how emerging technology made this process/look extinct (though it is still imitated with Photoshop!)"... Another incredible visual resource in The Digital Comic Museum (http://digitalcomicmuseum.com/). This website is all volunteer-run by comics enthusiasts who... scan the comics that qualify as copyright-free and post them for anyone/everyone to enjoy. Many of the represented comics are specific genre comics (romance, sci-fi, crime, and propaganda comics) ...  I'll be covering the idea of nostalgia in my talk and I think this site is proof of nostalgia for this aesthetic. In the forums you can see a lot of people lamenting that the art of comics today just doesn't match up to the beauty of what it once was -- which on one level is very funny because back then the process was so crazy : colorists basically submitted a watercolor "guide" to a color separation house that would then do all the color, and there was usually no time/money to proof so you just had to hope they got it right...

I'm late to the party in discovering Hilgart's 4CP | Four Color Process: adventures deep inside the comic book site where he scans and artfully crops tiny sections from his seemingly vast comic collection— then blows these up to monumental proportions. His meta- musings on the worlds of dot screens on cheap paper is erudite, lyrical, singularly obsessive, and a little bit whacko. John is a former english teacher and his formidable command of language and literary references spar nicely with the simple subject at hand. His lengthy "manifesto" on "the scopophilic impulse that drives 4CP blog" and on the dot screen itself is well-worth your time and attention. A taste:

[T]he dots provide the visual experience of granular detail that the art itself cannot. Every detail is more detailed, while realism is systematically undermined. Crucially, this perforated universe and molecular level of detail are unintended and have no intrinsic relationship to the illustrative content of comic books. Four-color process delivers surplus, independent information, a kind of visual monosodium glutamate that makes the comic book panel taste deeper.

High-tail it over there.
* "Four color process" is the mechanical reproduction — or simulation—of colors created from overlaying fields of dot screens of cyan, magenta, yellow and black-- the four "process" colors. Comics were printed cheaply and fast in a particularly coarse screen (fewer dots per inch) on pulp paper that absorbed the ink. The resulting registration misalignments, ham-fisted color representation, and ink "bleeding" are what we enthusiasts find so compelling.

Seeing Color/Printing Color

APHA conference poster by Doug Clouse of The Graphics Office

Typographer Nick Sherman will speak about 19th century chromatic wood type— typefaces made up of separately registered components which were printed in two or more colors. These types were designed so that the color overlap produced a third color. Nick will focus on William Page's 1874 specimen book, a tour de force of Victorian typographic fantasy. Images by Becca Hirsbrunner

The American Printing History Association's annual conference on all aspects of color printing— antique and modern, fine and pulp comic book style, from practical technique to color theory—is coming up October 18–20. Keynote speaker is Dr. Sarah Lowengard. Her brilliantly written and richly detailed monograph, “The Creation of Color in Eighteenth-Century Europe” (online here) covered "color as an idea and color as the outcome of technological processes." In other words: arcane cultural tangents and obscure chemical distillations, adroitly presented. Coincidentally I had posted about Lowengard three years ago (with lots of pix!) in a meandering commentary on color.

Dear reader, depending upon your point of view, upcoming APHA talks will either sound like parodies of eggheadedness or give you a frisson of excitement at having your esoteric niche interest celebrated thus: “American Currency: Three Hundred Years of Color Printing,” “Chromatic Type and William Page’s Magnum Opus of Multi-Color Typeface Design,” “Adding Color: The Business of the Stenciller in Twentieth-Century Publishing,” and “Worlds, Dot by Dot: Four-Color Process in the Age of Pulp Comics,” among others. This last talk, by designer Gabriella Miyares, sounded so cool it almost highjacked this post. Instead I'll give it it's own spotlight, next.

say it with pencils

Bob Truby's Brand Name Pencils is a bit of an enigma. Although it's obviously a serious collectors blog it's refreshingly clean, spiffy and well-designed. We don't get to know much about Bob or about the endeavor of pencil collecting in general, but I sure like what I see: colors! whimsical finishes! odd names! Deco-ish scripts! The giddy delight I have in seeing all these pencils (142 different brands) goes beyond my affinity for anything in gridded multiples, there's something slyly charming going on here. We tend to forget that although the storied "No.2" pencil looms large in the common psyche there are in fact No.1s, 3s and 4s, Hs, HBs, and Bs—a factor of the softness grade of the graphite. There's more to this story. Surely there should be more links to pencil history?!

Update: A friend alerted me to this paean to pencils on Kottke, which in turn pointed me to Pencil Revolution, a website for hardcore pencil aficionados. While I'm not as zealous as they are, I certainly enjoy the feel of graphite on paper and definitely appreciate the details in my own way... Amongst the comments on the kottke piece are references to two pencil aspects I do feel strongly about, the scourge of dried out erasers that skitter across the page leaving smeary trail, and the delights of sharpening. When I was little we had a heavy steel school sharpener (what is the statute of limitations for pilfering from the Board of Education?). I liked everything about it-- the articulated hand crank, the sphincter-like opening that held the pencil in place, and inside, the rotary sharpening blades were a marvel. I liked the delicate tendrils of of the wood shavings and their distinctive smell. It was built like a tank and I got a sense of satisfaction every time I emptied the chamber. Anyone else have pencil memories to share?
[All images from Bob Truby's Brand Name Pencils]

Off to Atlantic City

Somehow, I think the sights have changed... but I will report back.

recent acquisitions and Rewards of Merit

An early big letter "Greetings From" postcard.
It's postmarked 1935 but the bathing beauties featured within the letters, below, show
that the design is at least 12-15 years older.

The Woolworth Building, featured on this very early "Greetings From" postcard, dates it to 1913 or after.

"Reward of Merit for Ready Obedience to Orrilla (?) Reed".
Note touches of hand coloring.

Chromolithographed reward with metallic silver ink

Rewards of Merit were tokens of recognition for good behavior given to students by teachers.
Popular throughout the 18th and 19th century, by the 20th century I think "official" rewards had been downgraded to "gold star". They are a good source of contemporary imagery and printing techniques. The earliest rewards were virtually always religious. Many 18th and early 19th century rewards were printed or engraved in black and then hand colored, while later they became showy fillips of chromolithography, like the specimen above..

Recognized in Passing, Part II

Mott Street at Canal, c 1905

Mott Street at Canal, 2013

c.1940

Not my most elegant post, perhaps, but it makes up with raw enthusiasm what it lacks in style. I happened to be down in Chinatown, crossing Mott street where it meets the Bowery, and stopped in my tracks. I recognized the view. I knew I had stashed away a vintage image (by way of Shorpy, "the 100 year old photo blog.") of a funeral processing down that very stretch of street, c. 1905. Once you study it, you realize quite a few of the buildings remain, they're just encrusted with a visual blight of signs, altered by bad storefronts and obscured by a welter of street furniture. And of course the cars.

In the first 2 photos, the building at far left with arched windows even retains the shutters and the very same fire escape. Further on (second from bottom photo comparison) you'll see the 2 tenements with ornate cornices as well as their plainer neighbors and the church remain. The Church steeple has lost its ring of tiny dormer clerestory windows on the slanted roof but its otherwise unchanged.

Most puzzling is the fate of the building mid-block on the left, identified in the vintage shot as #5, the Imperial Restaurant. It has beautiful ornate iron grillework on the second story balcony and is hung with paper lanterns. On street level is a pagoda-style entry. It's a 6 story building. Today the stunted yellow structure at number 5 stands only 4 stories tall. Oddly, it too is a restaurant ("Buddha Bodai Nature Kosher Vegetarian Restaurant") and has a second floor balcony, but for no apparent reason. Could it be a remnant of the former building left during remodelling—rather than a new building? Nothing about 5 Mott Street seems particularly logical or planned (a blocked up 4th floor for instance) which led me to think it might be the original building, with an expedient, rather than sensitive, overhaul. A quick look on Emporis lists the construction date as 1910. Although thats notoriously unreliable it does indicate the building is "old." Further research finds the building was described as "new" in 1903. The image, bottom, from the Museum of the City of NY shows the building, full height, in 1940.

Check out my previous Recognized in Passing with Elizabeth Street.