Genre-Free printing

Prototype #1 is a new __________ from four of us in the North Bay Letterpress Arts community. We’re leaving that blank because it is still bemusingly unclear to us what the hell it actually is. It began as a new way to fulfill the NBLA subscription series, but it’s not really a magazine since there’s no index of articles and artwork. It’s sort of a journal but there is no textual reportage.  It’s not a zine really because we are putting a lot of time & effort into it. It’s not fine book art since its pages are on plain newsprint & it includes repurposed pages; yet it will be a bound and covered book-let.  It’s not a periodical yet it will have a serial life. 

A prototype is just …what it is. It’s the first of its kind. It is original in spirit, including a sense of the process of printing and conceiving text. It is obsessed with the graphic intensity of actual type as befits anything made in a letterpress shop. And it is always and ever the beginning of something, which must mean that one can’t really name it yet.  

Fittingly, the first Prototype is a set of compositions both textual and graphic about the nature of Titles. The title of this issue is however not “Titles”. Its theme is the way that titles preempt experience or shape it. If we called this Titles, what would you think? If we called this a magazine? If we said this is a book arts experiment? A zine? A post-neo-modern salvo against conventional printing? A paean of tribute to the ancient & original art of  language symbols? A spontaneous late night printshop jam caught on tape? Each has its connotations that set your dials one way or another. And all are true.

One thing is clear: the four of us who are printing it have had a great time discussing the indiscussable. We hope it shows in these pages.

Printed and bound in an edition of 100, & ready for sale at the end of September. All proceeds benefit the NBLA, ink mice, door lizards and typographic sundries.

Creative contributors include: judi goldberg, Brooke Holve, Eric Johnson and Tiana Krahn

*The prices includes shipping & handling for all domestic U.S. orders. For international orders you can pay the balance via Paypal once determined.