Born to Swim

So, I went to see Bruce Springsteen last night at Wembley Stadium. How he, and the E-Street Band, can play for over 3 hours for every show they do I shall never understand – Bruce himself is over 60 years old! Not complaining though, every minute of it was excellent.

Born to Run has always been a favourite Springsteen song of mine, and album too – plus I really like the album artwork, or the photography anyway. I have a t-shirt that says “Born to Surf” on it. I wasn’t born to surf, in fact I’ve never even been surfing but it was a prize in a raffle. However, if I switch run/surf for swim it makes more sense…

CSMSSC colours:

Nicer colours:

Lyrical letterpress

Or fake letterpress at least.

Now it's actually the Easter holidays I'm not quite sure what to do with my time. I spent much of the day in the studio at uni so I figured it was probably wise or at least wouldn't be wrong to take the evening off. Problem is, I can't seem to switch off.

So what I've done this evening was creative/fun but not at all uni-related. I've been playing with LetterMpress. The first "print" is a line in Frank Turner's I Knew Prufrock Before He Was Famous, that I've been meaning to do something with for a while. I think I just like the banjo reference.

Another nice wallpaper for my desktop.

This is just one of several gnome-related quotes I have noted down.

Genres

I've been playing some more with LetterMpress. I really like the word "folk" and taking it in the musical sense, I created these prints. None of which are accurately centred, but that's all part of the charm, right?

EDIT: Now we have even more genres! I've tried to match the genre to specific fonts that I think reflect that style of music. The colours are sort of matched too.

And then there's this one, currently working rather nicely as my desktop wallpaper. My two favourite genres. Together.

LetterMpress

LetterMpress is a "letterpress" application for Mac. Of course it's not that much like a real letterpress because it is all simulated. But from the few hours I spent playing with it on Wednesday, I can at least say that it's pretty fun, as well as being quite difficult to use. Difficult in that the pieces of type move with the slightest click of the mouse (or trackpad in my case) and it's not easy to rotate things. But I think it will just require some practice.

My first prints were for a birthday card for my friend [Lauren] Tooze.

And then I discovered more typefaces and stuff!

Now I just need to do something productive with this… or stop playing and do some actual work, ahem.