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Typeface
Early in this gentle doc, Purdue University design professor Dennis Ichiyama suggests that wooden-type printing demands that people accustomed to working with computers slow down 50 percent. The same might be said of this film. For this look at the art of old-fashioned printing, Nagan takes it slow and easy, letting people tell their stories at their own pace. It’s a story about an old craft that used to be a state-of-the-art industry and now survives only for hobbyists and as part of a DIY art movement. To appreciate this doc’s elegaic mood, you have to relax into it.
The Hamilton Wood Type and Printing Museum in Two Rivers, Wisconsin, is home to a massive collection of handmade wooden type from the era when printed matter had to be handset, letter by letter. The last remaining experts from the days when the Hamilton company made type are all in their eighties, and the museum seems like a lonely outpost, except when designers from Chicago and teachers of printing and design stop in. Nagan spends time with both the old-timers and the young, hip professionals who are now embracing the textured look and sensuality of wooden type to make art. Nagan lets the irony of that trajectory—from thriving industry to hipster hobby—speak for itself.
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