Printing Films

Preserving the Visual History of the Printed Word A.K.A. print​ing​films​.com

If you under­stand: gara ¹²⁄₁₄ U&lc fl/fr x 28p galleys 9am (or even if you don’t)
Printing Films is a site for those of us who love type, printing and its history.
I stole all this copy and made grabs from the movies that are shown on the site. Go spend some time at a place of memo­ries. Maybe the smell of print­er’s ink will come to mind.
Enjoy.
Piet

Print​ing​Films​.com is a collec­tion of vintage films that show­case the tech­nolo­gies and processes of printing, jour­nalism, and typog­raphy. It was estab­lished by Doug Wilson in 2012 after his work as director of Lino­type: The Film.

The collec­tion started when Doug was given a box of 16mm Lino­type promo­tional films by Dave Seat for digi­ti­za­tion. In 2013, Carl Schlesinger (a former Lino­type oper­ator at The New York Times) donated his exten­sive collec­tion of films to The Museum of Printing which assisted in the preser­va­tion of these films in 2015.

This film was created by the Inter­na­tional Typo­graphic Union to encourage their members to become more comfort­able with the new ​“Cold Type” tech­nology revo­lu­tion­izing the type­set­ting industry.

Starting with an expla­na­tion of the hot-metal process, they feature the Inter­type Foto­setter and then go through the entire photo-composition process. The film shows camera work, strip­ping, chem­ical devel­op­ment, and paste-up. It ends with an aerial view of the ITU building in Colorado Springs, CO.

“You and the World of Print” — 1976 — 19:02

​“Where does print come from?” is the ques­tion asked at the begin­ning of the film and it attempts to show the process of printing from tress to final product. Using a few of the Kimberly-Clark Corpo­ra­tion ​“Graphic Commu­ni­ca­tions Through the Ages” series of oil paint­ings, the film shows the history and tech­no­log­ical improve­ments of printing.

A simple expla­na­tion of offset-lithography is given along with views of large, web presses, bindery tech­niques, and paper making. Created by the Printing Indus­tries Asso­ci­a­tion of Texas, the film ends with a pitch for people to join the printing industry and get jobs that will even­tu­ally become high-paying and skilled.

See more at Print​ing​Films​.com