The graphic resources in "Wood Type Impressions" have been assembled to provide designers with fun, creative flexibility and ease of use in their typographic explorations. Understanding a few basic premises will go a long way towards helping you get the most out of your Wood Type kit.

THE MOST IMPORTANT NOTE:
These are NOT keyable fonts. You CANNOT TYPE with them. They are all IMAGES made either from photographs of the actual wooden letterforms or from scans of gorgeously textured, hand pulled, ink on paper, wood type prints. They are intended to be used in an image editing program like Adobe Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro to create typographic images and designs. Each letterform or graphic element will need to be hand set one at a time to get the desired effect... much like using real wood type! These products are intended primarily to create decorative effects or to compose letterform based images intended for use as Display Type.

It's really all about the TEXTURES. Digital fonts won't make this good an impression!

WOOD TYPE IMPRESSIONS Vol. 1 & Vol. 2

BACKGROUND INFO:
Each image set has been printed on a relief proofing press using real, antique wood type. They were printed in a progressive dark to light series onto textured fine art printmaking paper. The majority of these sets also include experimental alternate prints (distressed, scratched, over or underinked, spritzed with solvents, etc.) All the prints were then scanned, corrected and optimized.

The resulting digital image files were saved as Grayscale, 300dpi (Volume 1) or 600dpi (Volume 2) Tiffs. This was done essentially as a way to provide lots of variety at sufficient resolution while still conserving file size.

REGARDING SIZE:
The original, antique wood type letterforms that were printed, ranged in size from approximately 1" to 4". There were a few stray characters considerably larger (in the 7" - 9" range.) While some lowercase letters were small: a 1/2" high or so, the majority of the original wooden letters were in the 2" to 4" range. At 300-600 dpi there should be sufficient resolution in these images to use them for posters and broadsheets.

If for some reason, you might need to use them larger, we've had good luck scaling them up 300-400% using Genuine Fractals 5. Photoshop's image scaling routines seem to do a fine job within this range as well.

LAYERED TIFFS:
Each individual Tiff has already been pre-separated into at least two layers: a solid white background layer and another layer (or layers) above it containing the isolated letterforms & characters. This layer is also in Greyscale, but because of how it was made, includes full 8 bit transparency. This means that the letterforms are more opaque in places and more transparent in others. This can come in handy later, when you try to apply layer style effects to your compositions.

SELECTING LETTERFORMS:
The advantage of having the characters separated from the background is that it will enable you to easily select, then cut and paste individual letters or shapes onto their own layers in your working document. This will let you have the most creative control and flexibility in composition.

A few individual characters have, in some instances, been left deliberately a little grungy for textural effect. If you don't want that effect then just be a little more careful when you select these particular letterforms.



OPACITY & SCALE:
Once you have isolated individual characters onto separate layers in your working document, you can easily explore combining and arranging them, varying their opacities, blending modes, etc.

Each image has been scanned at either 300dpi (Volume 1) or 600 dpi (Volume 2), giving you the opportunity to use them at relatively large sizes for posters or print work. If you decide to use them at smaller sizes, maybe for a web project, it’s easy enough to scale down individual forms or compositions using the transformation tools in your Image Editor. Experiment with your Editor’s layer alignment and distribution tools too. They can be a great help to you when composing and a real time saver.

POSITION & TRANSFORMATION:
Once you’ve got a handle on controlling scale and opacity, you can begin to explore other variables like position, rotation, juxtaposition, symmetry, transformations, and color. That's where you can really start to have fun.

COLOR:
If you want to color the images or any designs you make with them, first convert the Greyscale files to RGB or CMYK. You can also cut and paste (or drag and drop) letterforms into a RGB or CMYK working document, where you can then freely apply colors.

LAYER STYLES & EFFECTS:
Putting the characters onto their own layers in the way described above lets you take advantage of the 8 bit transparency that’s built into them. Because of this you can get some interesting things to happen when you combine different layers using blending modes or apply layer style effects.

For example, the "cast aluminum" effect on the "A" above was a completely happy accident that occurred just by playing around with simple metallic layer styles in Photoshop! Because the images have this transparency built into them, the various, subtle transparent to opaque "ins and outs" in the forms can produce unexpected results and suprises when using some effects.

Above all play & have fun. Find new combinations. Make cool stuff!