On Monday, August 30th at 11AM, after the well-received launch during Typecon 2010 in Los Angeles, my Ligature, Loop & Stem cohorts and I opened the doors to the general public for our latest labour of love affectionately known as the “Typographic Anatomy Lesson” — or more simply — “Lesson Plan”, a new letterpress print designed by myself, Grant Hutchinson and Luke Dorny.

Photo by Grant Hutchinson / CC Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic

As much as I like to think Grant, Luke, Carolyn and I were all humbled by the overwhelmingly positive reaction last November to the launch of the LL&S site and the now award winning Ampersand print, this time it feels even more gratifying. This one feels like a grand slam.

The amazing (crazy?) part is that we’re basically doing this without a plan. We’re just following our gut, and having a great time with it. This is a good thing and also means we’ll keep at it.

But, before I say any more — I’d like to thank everyone for their time, attention, support, kind words, referrals and of course, purchases.

A very special thanks also to these fine sites whose support is enormous in our eyes.

• A Typographic Anatomy Lesson at FontFeed
• Type News: Past, Present, Quirky at Typedia
• Lesson Plan at I Love Typography
• Typographic Anatomy at FontGear

Their support, along with that of so many other wonderful people on Twitter and elsewhere across the internets, contributed greatly to this print selling out as quickly as it did.

Sold Out. Again.

Yup, you heard right — as of 8:23PM on Friday, September 3rd, all 100 prints are gone.

One of the takeaways from the production of the Ampersand print was to simply make more. So we did. Four times as many actually. Apparently that still wasn’t enough though.

Unfortunately, “limited edition” means just that — no second runs. Definitely no third runs. Not unless it was somehow significantly different. Fortunately, plans are afoot already on the next “thing” (or three).

Signed or Not — That is the Question…

The original plan was to sign each and every print, but logistics make that challenging since I’m in Toronto, Grant’s in Calgary and Luke’s in Los Angeles. Two countries. Three timezones. A shipping nightmare.

What ended up happening was that since we were all attending Typecon, I brought half the prints to be signed. Just half because they were, frankly, very heavy, and it would have been even more risky to squeeze them all into my suitcase. As we got ready for the start of the conference, we ran out of wax after stamping 32 prints, couldn’t get more in time, and so it was decided those first ones would be a slightly more special edition. Did I mention we’re winging it?

But after chatting with Grant and Luke yesterday afternoon about whether or not we should just sign the remaining prints, we sent an email to everyone who ordered one up to that point and asked their opinion. The overwhelming majority said “yes”, but there were a few folks on the fence. So… to keep everyone happy, here’s what we’re going to do:

1. The remaining signed prints from the first 32 initially available at Typecon will be shipped as quickly as we can package them up and get them on their way.
2. For the handful of folks that wanted their prints sooner rather than later and without worrying about it being signed by Grant and I, those will be on their way next.
3. For everyone else who did want their prints signed, those will be carefully packaged, shipped off to Grant to sign, returned, the wax seals applied, carefully packaged and then shipped out to their final destinations around the world.

Our expectation is that the delay from shipping prints from Toronto to Calgary and back shouldn’t take too much more than a week or so but we’ll keep everyone posted if that changes significantly.

Next?

As much as we’d love to just hop on the next things right this second, our priority is to get prints out the door as quickly as possible. And so if you’ll please excuse me, I have to go print a stack of shipping labels. Err, right after bed.

On my flight home from Los Angeles (I was there for the fabulous Typecon conference — more on that later), I watched the documentary Beyond the Lighted Stage for what I think was the third time.

During one segment of the film, the filmmakers explore the period in which Rush were recording and promoting their landmark 1981 release, Moving Pictures. Through a part of that segment, the song “Tom Sawyer” played in the background.

For whatever reason, my brain latched onto those lines from the song and I realized that they so suscinctly sum up how I try to approach just about everything. As a designer, drummer, music enthusiast, and I hope, well-rounded human being, it’s exactly that which drives me to do over-extend myself in my own work — to hope for the best, to try to do more than I’m able — or at least think I am. To push myself and others toward new things and to never sit still for too long.

After an unexpectedly long hiatus, Luke, Grant and I are back at work on some new stuff for Ligature, Loop & Stem and over the last few days I’ve shared a couple peeks at one of the pieces we’re finishing up on Dribbble.

The big news, aside from that we’re doing something new is that we might do things differently this time based on the frankly overwhelming reaction to the Ampersand print. This could go a few ways:

1. A first limited edition letterpress run. Possibly at an extra-large size as we now have a line on a printer than can handle letterpress work up to 28” × 38” (I know — wow!)
2. An in-person only conference exclusive (Hint: Typecon) since Luke, Grant and I will all be in attendance to sign and number the prints and pose for glamour shots
3. A second general run based on a smaller print size and possibly different inks and stock

We haven’t finalized anything yet but will shortly. While we don’t want to give the game away too soon, we’ll no doubt toss a few Tweets out and provide some sort of early info via either Twitter and/or Dribbble.

I don’t think there’s any denying that technology and the internet, two interrelated things that should be helping streamline parts of our busy lives often result in the opposite.

Over the years many, many articles and studies illustrating this have been written and smart people have come up with approaches to at least attempt to counter the constant barrage of information, requests for our time and attention. These things each conflicting with our basic need to be in the moment or to be able to just get on with it.

I’ve been struggling with these things over the last few years myself as many people know. They directly relate to my experiences with burnout. Recently I started to notice that my particular burnout buttons felt like they were being pushed again — little by little.

This time though I’m ready.

I like to think I generally learn from my mistakes. As a result I’m taking a proactive approach and closely monitoring those particular triggers. This means changing routines and taking an objective look at how my days have been and are generally structured.

In doing just that, what I quickly discovered was that I’d become lazy about certain triggers. In other words, someone left the water hose on and the dripping was turning into more of a trickle.

To counter this I’ve started setting new rules for myself and going back and revisiting ones I let slip. Simple as that. For example:

• Very deliberately breaking my day into managable segments
• Turning off all social media distractions throughout the day
• Setting specific times when I will check and respond to email
• Taking deliberate breaks to clear my head
• Setting limits and reinforcing how long I’ll allow myself to work on something
• Maintaining a clear work-home boundary (with obvious exceptions when required)
• Prioritizing tasks more effectively

These rules and others that I’ve been attempting to set up around myself are simply to ensure the time I need to be creative is carefully guarded. If that time isn’t protected and nurtured, it’s easily trampled on by others, whether intentionally or not.

If you feel like you’re days are too often spent in a reactionary tailspin, you might want to take a hard look and do some of the same.

The other night while home alone with the kids I had a little accident and slipped and fell, landing badly on my right hand. At first I figured I just sprained it, but the pain didn’t go away and the next morning I found myself in the ER to get my hand checked out.

I was told it was fractured, or rather my fifth metacarpal was. And so now for the next few weeks I get to enjoy being somewhat useless due my being right-handed. Fantastic.

Using a mouse is near impossible, or at least comical, especially as I try to compensate with my left. Writing or drawing with a pen is equally pointless mostly due to an inability to move my wrist because of the splint. My Wacom hasn’t proven to be much help either.

What I realized though was that this was going to be a good opportunity to use my iPad to it’s maximum potential. I can type reasonably well with one hand (I wrote this entry as such in Simplenote) and can doodle with my finger using Adobe Ideas or Drafts. Anything detailed is pretty much out of the question though which is going to prove challenging knowing what I have to accomplish over the next few weeks.

This time I suspect will also turn out to be somewhat of an exercise in better empathizing with the accessibility needs of those with reduced motor skills or inability to use a mouse; if for no other reason than for the next few weeks I more or less am one of those people.