DINNER + BIKES tour wrap-up video!
Missed the DINNER + BIKES tour? Check out this video!
Featured Awesome Product of the Week: Eberhardt Press blank notebooks!
For the final part of our celebration of the massively awesome Eberhardt Press, we present our “Featured Awesome Product of the Week” (the first installment of a new weekly blog series here at the Microcosm blogifesto.) This week it’s Eberhardt’s blank notebook/journal series. They’re available in a bunch of different sizes and designs, five of which feature the art of surrealist Max Ernst and two more (two colors, blue and orange) feature a gorgeous lookin’ tiger. We’ve only got a small amount of these beauties so get ’em while they’re hot. (For more info on Eberhardt read an interview we did with Ebehardt’s Charles right here.)
Interview with Eberhardt Press!
If you’re looking for someone awesome and dependable to print your zine or book you should totally check out Eberhardt Press. Charles from Eberhardt does all our zine printing and the guy’s work is always solid. We chatted up Charles and got the scoop on what he does…
Q: For folks unfamiliar with Eberhardt, tell us what kind of services you offer…
A: Eberhardt Press is a small not-for-profit publishing house and print shop. No one here is actually named Eberhardt — the press was actually named for anarchist adventurer and writer Isabelle Eberhardt, an inspiring woman who passed away more than a century ago. We print books, zines, cards, bookmarks, posters, fliers, and anything else people need. We do offset printing exclusively, no digital, and no letterpress (even though we sure do love letterpress). However, Eberhardt Press shares a shop with two screen printers who can accommodate any screen printing needs people may have, so our building is kind of a one-stop shop for printing. Eberhardt Press also has a full suite of bindery tools. For job printing, we specialize in print runs between 200-2000 copies, and we are more than happy to work with people on custom or non-standard projects. Our goal is to serve the community by providing affordable, high-quality printing services in a way that is welcoming to people, because we believe that the literary and journalistic tradition of small independent publishing is more important than ever in the age of global digital media networks. (I will withhold my long-winded critique of the internet, you’ve probably heard it before.)
Q: How (and when) did Eberhardt get started?
A: Eberhardt Press rose from the ashes of a short-lived printing collective in Eugene, Oregon, that had gotten a hold of an old Chief 117 one-color press. The poor thing had been stripped down for parts and had a molleton dampening system, which is kind of like trying to print something with a pair of old socks wrapped around your water rollers. One piece at a time the press was restored to working order, and eventually was upgraded to a Kompac automatic dampening system. A tremendous amount of printing was put through that press–more than any one-color duplicator press should ever have to suffer. We’re talking millions and millions of impressions over a four or five year span. It was a great workhorse, but has since been retired.
The operation was renamed Eberhardt Press in 2004 and moved to Portland that summer, and piece by piece Eberhardt Press assembled its bindery operations, shifting slowly from time-consuming hand work to light machinery that was more suited to completing press runs of 500-2000 copies in a timely fashion. At some point I got a hold of an old Bind-O-Mat 200, this reeking, smoldering perfect binder with an exposed glue pot that definitely took its pound of flesh. What a beater–at the end, it kept catching on fire and electrocuting the crap out of me. Finally after choking out one last book job it went to the dumpster, which was really the best place for it to be.
Eberhardt Press has always been a publishing house as well as a job shop. Our publishing efforts focus on printed matter that is of interest to anarchists and political radicals, but the job shop is open to anyone. We print all sorts of stuff for all sorts of people, mostly small publishers, musicians, authors, poets, micro-businesses, activist groups and of course other anarchists. During the past couple of years most of the emphasis has been on job printing for reasons of survival, but we continue to publish and reprint original titles as resources and time allow.
Q: What kind of equipment do you use?
A: Eberhardt Press now has a 2-color Ryobi 3302 “Twin Tower” offset press, a true two color press with a double impression cylinder. At the risk of offending my pacifist friends, I often say this upgrade from the old press would be like Snoopy upgrading from his imaginary World War I biplane to an F-16. It enables much higher production capacity, much higher quality and much better registration, and makes four-color printing a reality, though it can still be tricky. Some of my Luddite friends are horrified by the fact that it is of recent enough vintage to have digital controls, but it’s an extremely well-engineered and built machine that I’ve been very impressed with (pardon the printer’s pun). All presses have their vulnerabilities and difficulties, but compared to that calamitous Chief 117 it’s usually a dream to operate the Ryobi.
Eberhardt Press also has all the basic tools of bindery–nothing extravagant, just a bunch of decent used equipment that was picked up here and there on the cheap. We recently moved up to an FC-10 collator, a high-capacity 10-bin machine that drastically reduces collating errors and greatly speeds up that aspect of the bindery process. We also have a Bindfast V perfect binding machine, which is a decent tabletop machine capable of binding around 50 books per hour. It does a reliable job, although it’s nothing fancy by any means. For wire binding, we have a manual 3:1 wire-0 binding machine, a great little machine for making notepads and other lay-flat books like cookbooks. For saddlestitch books, we have a Plockmatic bookletmaker in pretty good condition that staples and folds booklets in one shot. Then they go to the old Challenge Diamond paper cutter for trimming, an antique cutter more than a century old that was reportedly used to cut all the phone books for the Pacific Northwest during a previous lifetime. (I have no evidence for this claim, and I was told this by a professional clown, so take it with a grain of salt.)
All of the prepress is done with a typical diy CTP (Computer-To-Plate) system, specifically an iMac hooked up to an HP5100. The 5100 has a high-temperature fuser element that really bakes the toner onto the polyester plates that we print from, so that the image on the lithographic plate doesn’t deteriorate under the rigors of printing. There’s no RIP (Rapid Inline Processor) or anything like that–people just send in their PDFs or we scan their artwork, then impose it in a layout program and send it directly to plate with no intermediary process, no chemistry or anything like that. This not only reduces overhead, material costs, labor and toxicity, it also produces crisp, clean images for text and black & white line art. For grayscale photographs or screened artwork with subtle tones, this system is sometimes inadequate, but we can also go to our service bureau to have metal plates made if the tonal details in the artwork must be very precisely reproduced, or when hairline registration is required.
Eberhardt Press uses low-VOC press supplies to reduce toxicity, and we have an in-house ink recycling program as well for dealing with leftover ink. Customers can get a small discount if they choose “Old Smokey,” a smokey-hued black mix that is 100% re-used ink, or they can choose “Smokey 50”, which is a blacker mix consisting of 50% re-used ink and 50% fresh black ink. Ink waste is a significant contributor to the toxicity of a printing operation, so we try to waste absolutely as little as possible.
Q: Tell us about how your collaborative planner with Justseeds came about?
A: Oh geez, let me set the way-back machine to 2009… as I recall it, I had done some postcard printing for Justseeds, and Roger Peet and I had been throwing around some ideas for collaborative projects between Justseeds and Eberhardt Press. I think he first proposed the idea, and I was all for it right away. The first one, the 2010 Organizer, was really just an experiment to see if such a project was viable. Roger’s concept was to provide people with a simple, clean, functional datebook-style organizer for people to use, with some really beautiful but radical artwork. We only printed 500 of them and barely managed to get them finished before the end of February 2010, with considerable flaws in the printing (luckily no one ever seemed to notice). But people loved them, and we moved the whole print run. Last year we printed around 1100 of them and they came out really nicely. I’m down to my last three datebooks now from that press run, so this year we’re going to do a slightly larger print run and try to get them out there a little more widely, since they’ve been so well received so far. The 2012 edition should hopefully come out pretty nicely–the artwork from Justseeds is great as always and we’ve cleaned up the layout a bit. Presswise, it’s a real undertaking, involving around two dozen spot color inks and around 35,000 sheets of paper, but it’s a real joy to be able to work on a unique project like this.
Q: What kinds of printing projects do you like to do most?
The ones that come out right! Ha ha. Seriously, in terms of job printing, I love printing standard-format zines of 64 pages or less, maybe with a two color cover. We can get them done quickly at very high quality, which always makes people happy. In terms of Eberhardt Press’ publishing efforts, the cards and ephemera are always really fun to put together–they aren’t labor intensive, they serve people’s practical needs and they’re beautiful. Pamphlets too–you can create them relatively quickly and distribute them relatively inexpensively. Whether it’s radical literature or simply a blank book for people to record their thoughts, its nice to know that the material you produce is being put to good use, so whatever the project is it’s always a privilege and an honor to be able to work on it.
Q: What is your advice for someone who wants, say, 500 to 1000 copies of their zines and has a bit of money to have it printed?A: Well, everyone’s on a tight budget these days it seems, but there’s a lot you can do without spending a huge amount of money. One of my favorite things lately has been to add dustjackets to books and pamphlets that ordinarily would never be wrapped in such a thing. It doesn’t cost a huge sum to print a dustjacket, and it opens up a lot of creative possibilities. A dustjacket also makes a book seem special somehow, perhaps because we traditionally associate dustjackets with hardbound books. It conceals the staple binding on a zine’s cover. You can fold the center of a dustjacket to resemble a book spine, so that a staple & fold zine suddenly can sit spine-out on a bookshelf and still be identifiable, with the title printed on the spine–something that works especially well with a heavy text sheet or light cardstock sheet. You can print additional information or artwork on the inside flaps. Using nice endsheets or printing on the interior cover can also be a nice way to enhance the introduction of a printed work without adding tremendous expense. Of course, a lot of people see the dustjacket as nothing more than a glossy publisher’s sales pitch to be discarded by a worthy reader, something that gets in the way. But if you design it well and use nice paper or great artwork, it can be an inexpensive way to really make a project stand out. If the dustjacket seems like too much, consider a simple paper band–it’s less expensive and discardable, but it gives you some options for making your project stand out on a shelf.
On the issue of budgets and printing, lately one very problematic issue has been the steep increase in prices for recycled paper pulp and the resulting closure of so many mills specializing in recycled paper, such as Gray’s Harbor in Washington and Blue Heron near Portland, to name just two. The paper and printing industry is under crushing pressure right now, and I fear that due to the economics of trade globalization, recycled paper will more and more become a luxury that expensive projects may boast of, but which becomes less accessible to the average individual because of excessively high cost. Most non-recycled sheets these days still contain 10-30% recycled fiber content and are FSC-certified and all this sort of thing, but finding affordable 100% post-consumer recycled paper for general use in a variety of weights has rather suddenly become more difficult and about twice as expensive. Of course, if you’re just printing on 20# copy paper, there are still plenty of options, at least for now. And more and more tree-free papers are becoming available, although “tree-free” does not always mean “sustainable”.
Regardless, I think the best way to invest in your zine is to use the best materials possible. For anything under 36 pages, I’d go with a 70# text sheet; it feels so much more substantial than a plain 20# sheet of copy paper, and has much better opacity (less show-through from the other side of the sheet). For anything from around 36-80 pages, a 60# text sheet is usually suitable. Also, a nice cover stock can make all the difference. Neenah Environment has a very nice selection of 100% recycled cover stocks, and I like the Neenah Sundance Felt a lot also. We use Neenah Classic Laid for a lot of covers and cards also. There’s also the Mohawk Loop series, which has a lot of recycled options, but usually you either have to pay an awful lot per sheet or you have to order unbroken cartons of parent sheets, which is inconvenient. But use the best materials you can afford.
Also, the method of printing is key to getting your best deal. For small quantities, say 50-150 books, I have to admit that print-on-demand is probably the most cost effective option. Your cost per book is high, but there’s not a less expensive way to print them. Of course, if you rub the page with your thumb the toner will come off, but it’s still your most economical option for very small editions. Offset printing like we do at Eberhardt Press is more suited to longer press runs–the longer, the better. The smallest press run I recommend for offset printing here at Eberhardt Press is 250 books, because the shorter the press run is, the higher the setup costs will increase your cost per book. This is true of all offset print shops, although most commercial shop won’t even touch a run of fewer than 500-1,000 books with an offset press. Eberhardt Press specializes in print runs of 500-2000, so we’ll give you the best price possible in the narrow void that still exists between print on demand and commercial offset printing.
Q: Finally, where can people get in touch to have printing jobs quoted?
Folks can email printing@eberhardtpress.org to get in contact, or see eberhardtpress.org for more information.
Interview with Henry and Glenn Forever’s Tom Neely about HIS NEW BOOK!
Last week we chatted up Henry and Glenn Forever‘s Tom Neely about his awesome new book, The Wolf! Here are the results! The book is somethin’ special, so make sure to check out those awesome illustrations at the end!
Q: For people who haven’t gotten a chance to check out the new book, tell ’em a bit about what they can expect…
A: I’m never very good at describing my art, but here goes: It’s a surrealistic story told through a narrative series of paintings that pull you through a psychedelic nightmare of werewolves and skeletons and forests and sex and… it’s also a love story.
Q: This book is vastly different from Henry and Glenn Forever, do you think the people you liked HG will be into it?
A: Some of them might. I don’t expect everyone to like everything I do. It’s about as different from Henry and Glenn as you can get, but it would be cool if some of the people who love Henry and Glenn would give The Wolf and some of my other art a chance. The art-comix fans and the metal-heads who read my stuff seem to be latching onto it. It’s more of a serious, arty, poetic piece, whereas Henry and Glenn Forever is just random and funny, but if you like werewolves and sex and scary skeletons and symbolism and surreal art, then you might be into it.
Q: You’ve been working on The Wolf for three years. How did it originally come about?
A: It started as a series of semi-pornographic werewolf paintings I did for a solo gallery show back in 2007. From there, the ideas for the characters and story kept evolving over time. This book took longer than my others because the process was more improvisational and always in flux. Ideas were always changing and taking me in new directions. I wanted the whole book to evolve as I went along. I didn’t know if it would ever end, but it finally finished itself.
Q: What’s next? What sorts of projects do you have under your belt?
A: Oh, too many things… I’ve always got more ideas than time. I’m working on a few short comic stories for some anthologies. My next graphic novel is already written, but I don’t know when I’ll start drawing it. I’m working on some paintings and other art projects… and what everyone really wants to hear—yes, we are working on more Henry and Glenn stuff.
Order Tom Neely’s The Wolf here. http://www.iwilldestroyyou.com/store.html
Why Not? Fest Recap
Here’s a recap of 1% of what went on at Minot’s Why Not? Festival.
If you are interested in holding a benefit show to raise money for supplies for the DIY punx who are doing volunteer restoration work on homes during an extreme housing crisis, contact <a href=”billyluetzen@yahoo.com”>Billy</a>.
Eberhardt/Just Seeds’ organizer book mega sale! Mega cheap! Mega awesome!
The good folks behind Eberhardt Press and Just Seeds have teamed up to create an awwwwesome 2011 day planner (think Slingshot.) These lil’ puppies are beeeautiful and feature 14 Just Seeds artists, including Icky A., Shaun Slifer, Erik Ruin, Josh MacPhee, and Kristine Virsis! The design, by Charles Overbeck, is elegant and tasteful, and features curatorial help from Roger Peet. In the back is a lunar phase calendar. Strong wire binding allows it to sit flat on your desk. Thick cardstock protects it in your pocket or your messenger bag. Totally, totally solid.
Right now to celebrate all-things Eberhardt and Just Seeds (stay tuned for an interview with Charles Overbeck and Eberhardt blank notebooks available through this site!) we’re doing a big ol’ planner sale.
Go here to check ’em out and buy ’em for $5 (marked down from $6) or just opt for a between $3-$7 sliding scale option.
These organizers are a special thing. We hope you get as stoked about them as we are!
Love,
Microcosm
Hey Baltimore! It’s a “Smile, Hon, You’re in Baltimore” reading event with editor William P. Tandy tomorrow!
Hey Baltimore friends!
Smile, Hon, You’re in Baltimore editor William P. Tandy is hosting an event tomorrow (Tuesday, August 9th) in Baltimore’s downtown! The free event stars at noon. Info from the SHYIB folks below! Fun! Yow!
Here’s the official word:
Smile, Hon, You’re in Baltimore!
editor William P. Tandy will regale lunching office workers, street people and sundry ne’er-do-wells with his own strange blend of humor and misanthropy as part of the ongoing summer series “Poets in Preston,” Tuesday, August 9, in Preston Gardens, St. Paul and Pleasant Streets, in downtown Baltimore. This free event begins at noon. And Hell will surely follow. Poets in Preston is a presentation of the Downtown Partnership of Baltimore, Inc. Read more about it here: http://www.godowntownbaltimore.com.
In related news,
Smile, Hon, You’re in Baltimore! No. 14
is coming soon from Eight-Stone Press. Pre-order your copy and read samples from the new issue here: http://eightstonepress.com/hon/hon14.htm.
For more information about
Smile, Hon, You’re in Baltimore!
, contact me at wpt@eightstonepress.com.
Cheers,
William P. Tandy, Editor
Eight-Stone Press
P.O. Box 11064
Baltimore, MD 21212
wpt@eightstonepress.com
www.eightstonepress.com
eightstonepress.blogspot.com
www.facebook.com/wptandy
www.twitter.com/eightstonepress
Hey Portland! Reading tonight: Ariel Gore with Tomas Moniz and Jeremy Adam Smith of Rad Dad!
Suuuuper awesome event goin’ down at Powell’s in Portland tonight. Rad Dad editors Tomas Moniz and Jeremy Adam Smith are “opening” for Ariel Gore, who will be reading from her killer new book All the Pretty People. Check out Ariel’s blog here, Tomas‘s here, and Smith’s Daddy Dialectics site. All the fun starts today (August 5th) at Powell’s (1005 Burnside) at 7:30pm. It is free, free, free…
ABOUT ALL THE PRETTY PEOPLE This new book by Ariel Gore brings out all of the dirt on 1970s suburban hippies. Through an authentic voice, funny stories alternate between warming and saddening your soul. It’s a queer love story. But it’s also got no shortage of shame, violence, and Barbie envy. It’s about the pretty people she used to know in California—the people she wanted to be but never quite felt she was. “How was I to know that all the pretty people got their answers from TV?”
ABOUT THE NEW RAD DAD BOOK Rad Dad: Dispatches from the Frontiers of Fatherhood combines the best from the award-winning zine Rad Dad and from Daddy Dialectic, two kindred publications that have explored parenting as political territory. Both have pushed the conversation around fathering beyond the safe, apolitical focus and have worked hard to create a diverse, multi-faceted space to grapple with the complexity of fathering. Today more than ever, fatherhood demands constant improvisation, risk, and struggle. With grace, honesty, and strength, Rad Dad’s writers tackle all the issues that other parenting guides are afraid to touch: the brutalities, beauties, and politics of the birth experience, the challenges of parenting on an equal basis with mothers, the tests faced by transgendered and gay fathers, the emotions of sperm donation, and parental confrontations with war, violence, racism, and incarceration. Rad Dad is for every father out in the real world trying to parent in ways that are loving, meaningful, authentic, and ultimately revolutionary. Contributors Include: Steve Almond, Jack Amoureux, Mike Araujo, Mark Andersen, Jeff Chang, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Jeff Conant, Jason Denzin, Cory Doctorow, Craig Elliott, Chip Gagnon, Keith Hennessy, David L. Hoyt, Simon Knapus, Ian MacKaye, Tomas Moniz, Zappa Montag, Raj Patel, Jeremy Adam Smith, Jason Sperber, Burke Stansbury, Shawn Taylor, Tata, Mark Whiteley, and Jeff West.
Microcosm Artist Feature: Do-It-Yourself Screenprinting’s John Isaacson!
If you haven’t heard it from us (or through ye olde grapevine) we are running a Kickstarter campaign to fund the re-publishing of John Isaacson’s book Do-It-Yourself Screenprinting. Sadly, the campaign isn’t going so well. We currently have seven days to raise nearly $4,000 of the $5,000 goal (which is one half of the printing costs; we’re shouldering the rest.) So if you can find it in your big ol’ heart to help John’s book spring back to life, here’s the Kickstarter link. Meantime, feast your eyeballs on this collection of the dude’s screenprinting work! We love ya, John!
Interview with DIY Screenprinting author John Isaacson!
We’re running a Kickstarter campaign right now to help fund one of thee most awesome DIY guides of all time: John Isaacson’s epic, wonderful, hilarious, helpful graphic-novel-as-silk-screening-manual Do-It-Yourself Screenprinting! Right now there are only a few days left until the Kickstartin’ is Kickstopped and it’s not lookin’ too hot. We could hella use your support on this one! If you’ve got a coin or two lying around, here’s the Kickstarter link. Now, without further adieu, meet John Isaacson. He’s a really amazing dude…
Q: Tell us how the book originally came about; where were you in your life?
A: I was discovering mini-comics for the first time in the early 2000s. I was a street vendor selling t-shirts I screenprinted. A lot of people bought shirts from me, but even more wanted to know how to print on their own shirts. They were like, “How do you do this?” So I would explain, and I tend to be a little long-winded, so their eyes would glaze over after a certain point. Then I realized, “Hey, I should just make a little mini-comic about how to silk screen and then more people will get what I am talking about. Then they won’t have to remember what I said; they could just look at it in a little book.”
Q: Do you remember your first screenprinting project?
A: I think it was a stencil of the Operation Ivy skanking punk. Either that or Kokopelli designs. Dancing people for the “Dance Weekend” event at my high school.
Q: What kinds of things are you screenprinting these days?
A: Mostly the odd poster here and there. A few comic book covers.
Q: What’s the first bit of advice you’d give a would-be screenprinter?
A: Be patient, be willing to start over from scratch, remain calm, think critically, and learn from your mistakes. Reuse materials to keep it cheap. Also, buy my book!
Q: Is there anything you wish someone would’ve told you when you were first getting started!
A: That you don’t need to wash out the emulsion with hot water after exposure. Also, that the spray from a spray bottle is not strong enough to remove emulsion.
Q: What kind of town is Portland for screenprinters?
A: Totally amazing. There are so many studios for printing in and great printers like Daria Tessler, Zack Soto, Kinoko, Keegan Meegan, Corinne Teed, Roger Peet, and E*Rock. I wish I saw more screenprinted posters on the street…
Q: What would you say you’ve learned most from screenprinting?
A: I’ve learned to solve problems creatively. I’ve learned to constantly trouble-shoot and always look for solutions, to never expect “perfection”, to experiment and try new things, and to be loose and not uptight.