Kain White

Before offset and digital printing, the text on a page of printed material had to be composed by hand. Later, this was done with a keypad and a machine; but right up until the 1800s there were teams of specialised craftspeople called ‘compositors’. Their job was to pick up each individual letter and punctuation mark; position it, with spacing, to form a word and fill out a line; and in this way construct a sentence, a paragraph—and, finally, a whole document, newspaper or book. When you think about those huge broadsheet newspapers they had back in the day, all in 6 point font, you’ll see this was no small task!

A classic image of a printer inspecting the set and ‘locked up’ pages (or ‘the forme’)

Compositors at work for The Brethren Publishing Co, typesetting for ‘The Wellington Enterprise’ in Ohio in the late nineteenth century.

Aside from the type…

The Harebrained Press Project is my attempt to fulfill a dream to undertake each stage in the process of creating a deluxe, handmade, limited edition run of my own book. This means carrying out as much of the printing, binding and publishing as possible myself, and without the resources of mainstream industry. Instead, I hope to rely on traditional methods and local support (with the exception of online marketing).

I have decided to do this for two reasons: firstly, because I would like to have the creative freedom to publish my book in the way that is best suited to its content; and, secondly, because I believe letterpress printed, hand-bound books have the potential to add to the quality of the reader’s encounter with the work.

After having spent ten years writing my book, I have completed stage one of my project: it is ready for printing. I am now…