Understanding This Book / or Zen and the Art of Metal Type Maintenance / or Let’s See Your AI Do THIS.

Viroqua, Wisconsin:: Heavy Duty Press,, 2023.. Edition of 18. 28 x 23 cm, 20 pages. All sorts of antique Franklin Gothics printed in four colors with Spiffy the Vandercook on Hahnemuhle Biblio, Ingres, and Bugra (jacket) paper. Bound by hand with a simple pamphlet stitch into a Hahnemuhle Photo Rag cover, giclee printed with photographs documenting the process, tucked into a rigid Bugra jacket. Signed and numbered by the artist. Michael Koppa: "When all my drawers of Franklin Gothic type needed to be cleaned, the mundane but necessary shop maintenance task turned into a book about the process. The result is a 20-page book featuring every last sort from nine California job cases of genuine ATF Franklin Gothic typefaces-maybe not older than the hills, but definitely older than me-in varying stages of wear, arranged according to a variety of strategies only likely to occur when composing individual metal types by hand. "The final product of this very spontaneous and time-crunched project is a bold book conveying the frantic experience of creating it, while celebrating Franklin Gothic in a typographically jazzy manner..