I mark the true start of winter from the date I hurriedly put the last few things from the yard—the garden hose, the wheelbarrow, the deck chairs—into the back shed because it’s about to seriously snow. Today was that day.

I also moved my bicycle, and Oliver’s, inside, marking the end of cycling season (last year I went all the way to December 2), put the lawnmower to bed, and moved the snow shovel up from the basement.

It seems more winter this year because I’ve started to turn down lunch and dinner dates, moving my personal COVID Code Red ahead of Public Health’s in the abundance of caution (and prevalence of anxiety).

As it happens, Amazon Web Services has been having a technical issue today the result of which is my receiving a text message every 15 minutes or so that says, in essence, “everything’s okay.” While under different circumstances that would be annoying, today the constant reassurance, as snow starts to fall, is welcome.

One of the aspects I love about letterpress is that, unlike digital design, where anything goes, there are hard limits to what’s possible, given the nature of the process, the typefaces in my collection, and my own creative limits.

When I launched Queen Square Press, I realized I’d need a logo for the new enterprise, and, because I wanted to be able to print the logo, it needed to hew to the limitations of the medium.

I recalled that I had a square in my collection of ornaments–I think I acquired it from Letterpress Things at the Printing Arts Fair in 2011–that I could perhaps build something around.

My favourite and most reliable font of type is 24 point Bodoni Bold I purchased in Montreal in 2012 (and hauled back to PEI in the back of a KIA Soul): it’s a foundry-cast font, and is tough as nails.

After a bit of playing around with the position of the “Queen Square Press” and the square in OmniGraffle, here’s the digital version of what I came up with:

In metal, I set the type and then started out with an all-red version for position:

Once I got everything positioned properly, I removed the type that I would later print black, Queen Square Press, leaving just the square to print in red; I printed 60 cards with red squares.

Next, after some time for the red to dry, I swapped out the red square and replaced the Queen Square Press, and printed the black layer:

I realized, as I was printing the black, that the impression of the red square was a little too deep for my taste; I console myself that it emphasizes the letterpress-printed nature of the cards, even if it does violate the traditional rules of the trade:

The cards themselves are grey linen-finished, part of the collection of business card stock I was generously gifted by Gertie and Bill Campbell when I purchased their Golding Jobber № 8 (which should last me a lifetime).

You’ll notice that the weight of the Bodoni in the printed version is heavier than in the digital; I’ll need to update the digital to match.

If you order something from the Queen Square Press shop, you’ll receive one of these cards in your package!

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Update: I secured a digital font of Bodoni Roman that better matches the weight of what I have in metal, and prepared an updated version of the digital logo.

Here’s the original:

Here’s the update:

Much-improved!

I took advantage of having red ink on the press yesterday to prepare a special limited-to-12 edition of the UNPRECEDENTED broadside. This version is on 140 lb. Canson cold press watercolour paper, and is a slightly larger 9 by 11 inches. Because of the heavier weight of the stock, there’s a more obvious “three dimensionality” to this version, as the type bit into the paper with more tenacity.

I’ve added this version to the Queen Square Press shop.

There’s a spot along the headwaters of the Hillsborough River known as The S. It’s an officially registered geographic name. It is shaped, not surprisingly, like an S.

New off the letterpress today (and on sale in the Queen Square Press shop), You Are On Mute printed on a № 6 shipping tag.

I used a couple of fonts of battered old sans serif type: “Are On” is type from a printer in Montreal who was downsizing; “You” and “Mute” a font on loan from Holland College.

Eight months in, the government adds simultaneous sign language interpretation to Dr. Heather Morrison’s COVID-19 updates. Let’s hope this becomes standard operating procedure for all government events.

My plan to keep the outstanding bookstores of Earth alive through coronatimes continued with today’s arrival of Set Me On Fire: A Poem For Every Feeling, from Ella Risbridger, from Shakespeare and Company in Paris.

The delivery was lovingly packaged: 

When I placed the order I ticked the boxes for two “upgrades,” the free “custom book stamp” on the title page:

and the 83 cent “custom book poem,” a rendering of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Sonnet 14:

I am a satisfied customer.

If We Make It Through December, a new album from Phoebe Bridgers, a Christmas album of sorts. The title track is a cover of the original from Merle Haggard.

If you like seasonally-themed Phoebe Bridgers tracks, her cover of John Prine’s Summer’s End is priceless.

Thanks to the generosity of our friends Oliver and Cheryl, Oliver and I had the pleasure of attending Superfest in October, on Zoom. One of my favourite parts of the weekend of films and panels were these comments from Thomas Reid, host and producer of Reid My Mind radio podcast, about what makes for good audio description:

Yeah.  So let me break that down into some of the components of what I think is good audio description and talk about it in that sense.  

Good audio description or AD has several components.

It’s about being respectful, meaning you don’t try to explain the plot because blind people can figure out the plot by themselves. You don’t over describe the movie. For example, when a phone is ringing, there’s no need to tell me a phone is ringing. I heard the phone. Right?  

So you don’t censor those things you find offensive.  Because if it’s on the screen and if it’s in the story, we should know about it.  Right? Good AD means good audio.  I shouldn’t have to ride the volume control up and down to hear the audio describer and then higher or lower to hear the actual film.  

You take the time to make that audio right.  Good audio description doesn’t step on dialogue.  Right?  

At its core it’s about providing access to the visuals.  Those who see the film learn certain information about a character that can be their color, sometimes ethnicity, or race.  Other indicative information about the person, it can be relevant to how they interpret that film.  

Blind viewers also should have access to that information.

It’s worthwhile reading the entire transcript, as Reid goes on to talk about the representation of race in audio description and reflects on the audio description of the film we’d just all watched.

There’s also a two-part series on Reid’s podcast, Flipping the Script on Audio Description (Part One, Part Two) that offers many additional insights.

In the spirit of Reid’s words, I’ve been working to pay more attention to the “alt tags” in the images I include here on the blog, using the same points to guide me.