Blogslacker

The Gaspereau Press blog has been silent as of late thanks in part to the untimely death of my camera, but also due to my partial distraction. In short, my wife and I sold our house and moved our family into a tent for the summer while we build an off-the-grid house in the woods. Our perpetual shorthandedness at the press doesn’t really allow for a summer-long disappearance on my part to build said house, so I’ve been essentially burning the candle on both ends. Blogging seems to have been a casualty of this, but I’ll see what I can do to reinstate the Gaspereau Press blog as a part of my week. Much is, after all, afoot!



Even on the construction site, I see grids and letters.

Speaking of grids, letters, and buildings, I’ve been madly working away designing a book by architect John Leroux and photographer Thaddeus Holownia on the architecture of St. Andrews, New Brunswick. Combining text and images in a way that looks seemless is always a tricky thing, but rewarding when it falls into place. John and I have also been collaborating on maps which help the reader should they wish to use the publication like a guidebook. As well as being a Gaspereau Press publication, the book is a fundraiser for the Nature Trust of New Brunswick. There will be a launch in St. Andrews on July 17, so, umm, I better quit this and get back to work.



Also on my desk at the moment is the next North American issue of the fine press journal, Parenthesis, published by the Fine Press Book Association. I’m typesetting it in a pre-release version of Vancouver-based Tiro Typeworks’ new pan-American type, Huronia, designed by W. Ross Mills. I’m liking Huronia very much. Ross, Like Rod McDonald, knows how to design a type that stands up to a range of applications. It’s got, well, tensile strength and character. You can see samples and read more about Huronia at the Tiro Typeworks web page. This is the third issue of Parenthesis to be produced at Gaspereau Press. (Every alternate issue is produced in the UK.) Magazines are a whole different kettle of fish than books, and I always look forward to doing this project for that reason. For one thing, it's chop full of wonderful colour images.


Dump it in, sort it out. How will all this fit on a spread!?

Novels by Norman Ravvin and Bruce Johnson are simmering away in the editing process and soon to be typeset, as is an astonishing book by Tim Bowling about book collecting and mid-life. We’re also up to our necks in setting and proofing a new edition of Jan Zwicky’s epic Lyric Philosophy, and designing missing anglo-saxon glyphs to set a bilingual edition of Old English poems translated by Christopher Patton. Did I mention that we’re also releasing a Gaspereau edition of George Elliott Clarke’s classic Whylah Falls?

Soooo ... it’s busy. Especially if you’re also trying to wrap your head around the 2010 changes to the building code.

ANDREW STEEVES ¶ PRINTER & PUBLISHER