Editing The Pen Addict 279/transcript (section)

== Kickstarter Backers ==


'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. So this is the reason why we're here is for our Kickstarter backers. They allowed us to do this. We do. We've been doing one project a year where we take the show on the road, if you will. And it started with Atlanta and then three years ago. And then it's kind of grown from there to where we've been able to travel to different places. So I wanted to thank all the Kickstarter backers who allowed us to do this. Yep. It's wonderful. Thank you so much.

'''Myke Hurley:''' 10 years, 36 limited editions. I've got to ask this question. Favorites. Brian?

'''Brian Bedell:''' 37s at the printer. Don't forget.

'''Brian Bedell:''' Always be selling. I usually go to Two Rivers. I think that was my favorite because just the most fun to work with those guys. That was one of the rare ones where we really had a good idea what we were doing very early on. And it took tons and tons of time to do so. We had to plan very far ahead on that one. But getting to go up there several times and work with Aaron and Matthew to typeset the actual forms and working with Jim and Stephanie to sort the paper. It was just such a long, complicated process. And they came out exactly as I'd hoped. They couldn't have looked more like what I had in mind when we started. And I was really happy with them. So that's probably my overall favorite.

'''Jim Coudal:''' That's not my favorite, but my favorite part of Two Rivers is that we also raised a bunch of money for the Hamilton Wood Type and Printing Museum in Two Rivers, Wisconsin, which you should all go to see.

'''Jim Coudal:''' I changed like the wind. If you ask me now and then ask me tonight, I will definitely have a different answer. But for right now, I'm going to say Ravenswing. And for me, that's because it was pretty early. And that's different than what I told Brian two hours ago that I was going to say. That's true. That's our favorite. I was going to say by line, but I just changed my mind. And that's because we used an interesting duplex paper that we hadn't used. They were all really letter pressed by hand by one guy. And I don't know. I think that signaled a move towards a more ambitious design aesthetic for the brand. Like up until that point, I love Mackinac Autumn and Just Below Zero and all those. But they were generally speaking were French colored paper with ink on them. And they were thematically interesting and packaged in interesting ways. But I think that Ravenswing sort of signaled a leap forward in what a Field Notes Mamo book could be, at least for me.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Ravenswing was what?

'''Jim Coudal:''' Black on the outtick gray.

'''Myke Hurley:''' No, I remember it vividly. It's the first edition I'd ever seen. Eight or nine. Yeah, about the eighth edition. And talking about the power of blogs, it was a Daring Fireball link, I think, if I remember rightly. It was to Ravenswing. And I didn't buy them then, but later on I hunted immensely to get a pack. And I do have a pack. And it's the orange band and the beautiful black. I was going to ask if there was a...

'''Jim Coudal:''' It's blind embossed too, right? Yeah.

'''Brian Bedell:''' Yeah, yeah. There was some varnish.

'''Jim Coudal:''' A little varnish, but no ink on the actual. Can I tell you that way?

'''Brian Bedell:''' That's one of my least favorites. Yes. Yes. Dan, Varen, who printed it, used actual pieces of... Now, generally, if you're printing something with letterpress, you would get an entire plate made of the entire side of it and print it. He actually printed it with separate pieces. He had little elements made of each line of type and locked them down on a plate. And the Made in the USA line on the back slipped while he was printing it. He didn't notice it. So Steve and I had to go out to the printer and sort through all 8,000 of them or whatever with a ruler and measure how far it slipped and make a judgment call about whether they were good or not. Wow. So I'll ask you a question on that. That was five hours of my life on a printer. Wow.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So it didn't really bother me that much.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' That's why we love you, though.

'''Myke Hurley:''' This is a question I know the answer to, but why did you do that? Why didn't you just ship them?

'''Brian Bedell:''' Well, they were pretty obviously messed up. It was really bad? Well, it was... They moved... That was the problem is there weren't some that were bad and some that were good. They moved ever a tiny bit at a time. So... And then by the time they were cut and sorted and we noticed it, they were all mixed up. So there was sort of a judgment call we had to make where these were good ones and these were bad ones. And I made a little... I remember I made a little template and we'd hold it up over each one. That one's good. That one's bad. And it took hours.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Wow.

'''Jim Coudal:''' And there are little tiny things that have happened that we know about that we've never even got an email about. Yeah. That we felt like we could have done that better on this edition. And they... And they bother us till forever.

'''Brian Bedell:''' It's like a musician listens to their song and hears every little tiny mess up and no one else will ever hear that. I tell them my daughter is getting really into illustration and drawing. And I look at her drawing, so I'm like, just my mind is blown at how good they are. She's like, oh, that song in the hand looks terrible. No, like, look at this thing. Like, if you could look at this without being the person that made it, you wouldn't believe how great it is.

'''Jim Coudal:''' The film we made for Raven's Wing is probably our best piece of printing porn. Because you get to see this old machine going and Dan was so into it and so sincere and talking about how he got into printing. And the saddest part of the whole thing is he's not printing anymore. But which is fine with him. Fine with him, not with us. Yeah, not with us. But if you come back at the end of the show and ask him what our favorites are, I wouldn't be surprised to hear two other stories.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Would Sweet Tooth ever be one of your favorites?

'''Myke Hurley:''' You just can't leave it alone. I can't leave it alone. I gotta know. I gotta know.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So I'm in the minority, though. Everyone loves the Sweet Tooth except for me.