Quire Ink

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Letterforms, and the making of pages

A signature, a gathering, a quire

Printing · · 2 min read

A signature, a gathering, a quire

Three words for nearly the same thing, and the small differences that still matter at the bindery. One of them gave this software its name, which seemed worth explaining.

Registration, and the millimetre that ruins a spread

Printing · · 2 min read

Registration, and the millimetre that ruins a spread

Four inks, four passes, and one of them a hair out of place. Everything you know about print colour — trapping, rich black, the fear of hairline type in three colours — follows from that single millimetre.

Ink, paper, and the colour between them

Printing · · 2 min read

Ink, paper, and the colour between them

A palette is two decisions: what the ink is, and what it sits on. Everything else is adjustment, which is why one hex value can read warm on a cream page and dirty on a white one.

Typography · · 2 min read

Kerning is not tracking, and neither is spacing

Three controls, three different jobs, and a great deal of type ruined by reaching for the wrong one. Kerning fixes a pair, tracking colours a paragraph, and letter-spacing is what you do to small caps and to nothing else.