Not surprisingly, managing two data projectors through one PC interface doesn't come naturally to Alan Kitching. But although he struggled throughout his talk to master the new fangles contraption, he remained unfazed.
In a down-to-earth, northern accent, that made me think of him (oddly I know) as some kind of typographic John Shuttleworth (with apologies to less local readers for that reference), Kitching began by explaining how he started out: First, in a composing room, he talked about the influence the work of Tschichold and Max Bill had had on him. Then how he found himself working with the legendary Anthony Froshaug, one of my personal heroes Derek Birdsall, Fletcher and Colin Forbes. He talked about his vagabond existance in the sixties and how it took him years to break away from his early influences.
He told us how he likes to, whenever possible, work at actual size becuase of it's "truth" and how he has the largest wood type collection in Europe; how Fletcher showed him how to compose work in a way that Froshaug could never do; how there are times when you just have to get out your tennant saw and slice off a bit of your wood type to fix the kerning; how to make your ink glow on black art paper by underpinning it with perfectly registered opaque white first and how some of his stuff takes 3 months to print.
Brilliant.
Comments