This piece is inspired by an undergraduate project I ran working with couplets from William Blake's poem. I wanted to play too! I wanted to do something with the whole poem. The only type I had in anywhere near the right quantity was a 6 on 7pt Univers. This was going to be fiddly!
After many hours of setting, and a couple of extremely trying changes in justification I was ready for proofing. Each couplet is set across the page on a single line, justified to both margins with a wide and irregular river down the centre. I use carbon paper to make a quick, inkfree, non-messy proof.
Proofing reveals spelling errors and letters accidentally set upside down (tricky with this poem as William Blake had an idiosyncratic approach to punctuation, spelling and capitalisation). However, the proof also revealed something worse...about halfway through the poem I had begun to run out of sorts and had to get creative, first by substituting with bold but when I ran out again I was forced to switch typeface. The only alternative sans-serif I had in near the correct size was some 6pt Gill. However this was on a 6pt body so when I looked at the proof, not only was it a poorer match than I had hoped it also varied as to where it sat on the baseline due to that 1pt of wiggle room : ( You can see several of the offending letters in this image.
Back to the drawing board...or setting table...I managed to fet hold of some 6 on 7pt Grot 215 so it was time for some serious faffing about with very fiddly swap outs and makeready. Tweezers, a magnifying glass, a couple of headache pills and a large G&T were my essential tools.
Finally, proofing on the beautiful Fedrigoni 360gsm Materica paper in Clay with a jewel-like purple ink. Despite my best efforts, at this stage I spotted more errors that needed fixing. Clearly in times of old when typesetters would be fined for errors I would not be making much money!
I have finished...although I think the first line should perhaps read:
To see a world in a piece of type
And Heaven in a well set line
