When I came across the Moon type for the first time, I was instantly intrigued by it. I was already curious: Has it something to do with the moon? Of course, it has. It was named after its inventor William Moon. His typeface impressed me because it seemed to me as if I already understand what I'm reading. This is because Moon's design is based on a visible type. William himself became blind later in his life and so this type was originally designed for people who were blind or partly sighted, who already have an experience with visual type. According to William Moon and other scripts I run into while researching, this was the reason why the Moon is easier to learn than Braille. 

But Moon has another advantage. Because of its shapes, it enables the ability to read even to those who have less sensitive fingertips. While Braille requires a much greater degree of sensitivity of the fingertips. 

Unfortunately, the Moon type is rather inaccessible, primary for economic reasons. First, the cost of implementation of tactile fonts is quite expensive. Especially if we want the recognition of individual characters and following the sentences and paragraphs with fingers to be effective and then to be the most effective. There are cheaper alternatives but the decrees the efficiency of tactile reading. In addition, the size of the market is very small. Whatever we do or do not compare it Braille, which is better known and thus integrated into the school system for blind and visually impaired people. 

To learn more about Moon or its implementation contact me at katja@vresk.com.

Case study:

Persistent browsing through libraries, the internet, and discussions with people, led me to discover the Moon type. The whole project lasted for nine months. Three months for a research and 6 months for making of the book, which begun in 2014. It was a uni ISTD assignment, which was the making of a type specimen book, and I wanted to create something that took me completely and brought food to my adventurous mind. 

Information about the Moon character are very scarce, but with the help of St. Bride Library and RNIB organisation I was able to extract the content for the book and insert it in a landscape format. The decision about the format was brought up by rare specimens of Moon type from 1880 (you can see and feel them live in St. Bride Library London and buy textbooks and workbooks for a symbolic price at RNIB in London) also in such format, which is the most suitable for tracking Moon letters. One Moon sentence can be spread through three of four lines of an A4 landscape format when the letter is in an appropriate size of efficient readability. 

During the layout design, I was trying to figure it out how to create an attitude that appeals aesthetically but at the same time to create a technical product which is not loaded with any visual decoration. Through experiments, I eventually decided to use reddish tones for the visible typeface. This color was selected to complement the yellow ten of printing paper and to create a feeling of warmth just enough to still be legible. As a contrast to geometrical shapes of Moon the inserted visible typeface is Minion Pro.

  

While designing a layout I had to decide which technology to use for the implementation of the book. Since for the Moon embossing technique was the most reasonable and the paper had to stand a lot of watering, Matt, the printing technician, suggested using screen printing technique, to keep the color undamaged. Because of chosen printing technique the smallest size of Minion pro was 12 pt regular and 10pt for imitating Small Caps.

When preparations for the screen printing ended I started to print visible typeface on 250 gsm yellow summerset paper for letterpress.

Meanwhile, me and Dan, the laser cutter technician, were cutting out Moon letters. A laser was constantly vandalizing the smallest specimens of letters, so we spent quite some time, to figure out the right software settings that would cause a minimal damage. Moreover, we had to make letters slightly thicker than they were otherwise cut out. On the advice of Ian, the letterpress expert, we're cutting letters from 2mm plexiglass. This height was expected to enable a smooth tactile reading experience.

And back to Plexiglass. How to make a cliche, which would not me damn expensive was another problem. Instead of using nine clichés, which would be cut out of a 4 mm A3 plexiglass, which was the size corresponding to the original format of the book. We decided to use two A3 plexiglass and cut out a limited number of individual characters. The characters were then glued to PVC foil with a set of tweezers and a two-component adhesive glue. For a typesetting guidance, I already had a template left when I was preparing the screen for screen printing. The number of cut-out letters was sufficient for four templates, so when they were embossed on the paper, the letters from templates had to be scraped off and re-glued to other remaining templates.

Since the whole project already consumed so much time, I didn't have the guts to send the templates, cliches and paper through letterpress machine. Ian and Matt took the matter in their hands, while I was biting my nails and hoping for the best. We didn't know whether the glue will hold, or will the machine crush the letters, will the soaked paper tear and did we got the alignment of the paper and cliche right. When we started to roll the machine we could actually hear the crunching of the letters when they were under the pressure of the machine cylinders. We couldn't believe what it came out on the other side. The letters have remained intact, the paper was not torn, the color remained the same and the whole layout was in place as it was meant to be. 

The book consists of the folder and eight pages: of Moon's alphabet, features, family, size, kerning, tracking and two pages containing only Moon's characters as an exercising sheet for reading Moon. 

This was during my studies in the UK, where the practice of letterpress is more in common. I was a little bit disappointed that I will not be able to have a similar experience in Slovenia until I found out about the workshops for letterpress and spacing material used for typesetting. These workshops were in Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia and where the upper photos were taken from. From these workshops I also recorded some impressions:

SPACING MATERIAL: BETWEEN LETTERS N’ PRESS

Impressions from the workshop for relief printing, with emphasis on spacing material, Breg ob Ljubljanici, tipoRenesansa studio, 20 th September 2015.

At one point in history, the manual copying of manuscripts was replaced by relief printing*

and the calligraphic skills of medieval manuscript-writers were substituted by skills of a

typesetter, whose job consisted of patient and exact insertion of letters into a metal frame,

called a composing stick. Afterward, he or she placed everything onto a tray, called a galley and prepared the letters for multiple printing. Actually, he created some sort of a matrix,** which, in addition to the letters, also incorporated spacing material. In the past, such matrices were used in printing workshops, such as one, located at Breg ob Ljubljanici (Breg embankment area by the Ljubljanica river), tipoRenesansa, led by calligrapher Marko Drpić. Together with his team, he had a presentation on Sunday about relief printing and spacing material.

The location of the studio can be easily recognized due to a giant press in front of the

entrance. Immediately after entering the studio, one can see a bookbinding press, greeting them at the entry to the gallery, leading to the room, where the workshops were. The studio holds various printing devices and accessories of various sizes and systems, such as press with cylinders, a small table press and a printing guillotine, all in good shape and ready for use.  

A Large part of the workshop wall is taken up by a rack with drawers full of spacing material. Spacing material encompasses parts of a matrix that fill in the blank spaces between letters and are not printed. Larger letters need more space and thus more spacing material. The material comes in various square shapes and sizes. The shape and size of the material are determined by the size of letters and spaces between letters and rows. The system can be composed of various materials, such as wood, plastic masses, lead or a combination thereof. To achieve a lower mass of the whole system, some lead part can be hollow or in the shape of the letter H.

Each letter and each spacing material element used to affix the letters and set spacing

between letters, words and rows was solid material. The function of spacing material was

exclusively as an accessory to technically and aesthetically improve the look of the printed

text. Today, letters and spacing between letters, words and rows are designed digitally.

Printed texts are mass-copied by other means of printing, and relief printing is free to

explore new and unique options. One can print all kinds of objects, usually with interesting

shapes or surface structures. During the workshops, we printed spacing material, and what was once unseen, turned before our very eyes into visible and printed material.

Terminology:

* Relief printing is a procedure where colour is applied on the raised parts of the matrix,

which is then pressed against paper. By regulating the amount of colour and pressure of the press, one can change the quality or the desired effect of the print. Spacing material is used with the type of relief printing, called letterpress.

** Matrix is a surface that incorporates a negative image for serial printing and is a general term used for relief printing. At letterpress, the matrix is a piece of metal, where a letter is actually an indentation. The entire composition put together by a typesetter, is called layout and is a term used for relief printing.