Hi everyone! Nicole here. I set type for the first time this afternoon and wanted to share my experience with you all. Melanie started me off with the tiniest size we have – 6-point! You need to be really careful with small type especially to make sure the letters are set in the correct orientation. As someone new to this craft, I also had to keep reminding myself that the letters were supposed to be upside-down and backwards!

I was laying out the following set of letters for a specimen sheet (specimen sheets are used to display everything included in a typeface):

NOW IS THE HOUR,        6-POINT
THE QUICK BROWN FOX JUMPS OVER THE LAZY DOG
0123456789          $&?!

Typically there would be another line to display the lowercase letters, but this typeface was all-caps. It doesn’t look like a lot, but it took a lot of effort! Every day that I’m here I gain more appreciation for the ease of today’s design software, and for people like Melanie who take the time and care to compose text by hand and print it using a letterpress. I’m really looking forward to more practice – hopefully there is an original composition in my future!