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Whitten-Appleton, Inc.Learning to Set Type (1959)

Demonstrates basic principles of manual typesetting.


This movie is part of the collection: Prelinger Archives

Producer: Whitten-Appleton, Inc.
Sponsor: N/A
Audio/Visual: Sd, B&W
Keywords: Communication: Typesetting

Creative Commons license: Public Domain

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Reviewer: ridetheory - - April 19, 2004
Subject: Letterpress is still in use, and the film is still useful!
I work at an arts center (www.iprc.org) where we have a press room filled with this kind of type and presses. Many people use them to create posters, chapbooks, art prints, etc. We have day-long training workshops about every six weeks, and they consistantly sell out, while our computer graphics classes don't do nearly so well. One of our workshop instructors was VERY excited by this film, and asked me to download it for use it in future classes.

Reviewer: cashel - - September 18, 2003
Subject: luxury
We cannot afford this old method..But, it is the real thing..Look at an old page and appreciate its human individuality..

Reviewer: Spuzz - - September 18, 2003
Subject: I-M_A_L-O-S-E-R
Learning to set type is one of those relics where we relish where we are now in this day and age, with nice Macs and Computers to automatically do the stuff for us. Why, in this film, it required us to get our HANDS dirty! Yes kids, setting type is not exactly clean work. You've got to find the letters, make sure they're UPSIDE DOWN and LEFT TO RIGHT (this is all explained to you) and make sure you have the right hand method for taking type out! What a relic this is.

Reviewer: dynayellow - - September 10, 2003
Subject: For what measurement will you set your stick?
Not so very long ago, if you wanted something printed, you had two choices: you could give it to the secretarial pool to be typed, or for larger jobs, it would go to a print shop, where every single letter of every single word had to be set, often by hand.

This short is an instructional video for the beginning apprentice. It shows he proper way to pull the type tray out of the drawer, how to set the type, and how to distribute (put away) the letters after use. Not terribly interesting, unless you want to see how much work used to go into mass printing. Simply astonishing how far we've come.

Humorous moment: the narrator explains what "upside down and right to left" means.

Shotlist

DEMONSTRATES BASIC PRINCIPLES OF TYPESETTING & DISTRIBUTION. STRESSES CORRECT WAYS OF MANIPULATING THE TYPE, "SPOTTING" LETTERS BEFORE THEY ARE CHOSEN, & THE IMPORTANCE OF FOLLOWING COPY & CORRECTING ERRORS.


TYPESETTING CAREERS JOBS WORK WORKING LABOR INDUSTRIAL ARTS PRINTING GRAPHIC DESIGN AND PRODUCTION