An All Well sewing book! Spectrolite layouts!
A whole lot of sneak peek screenshots + some upcoming zine news
We’ve been working on a really big project this year… there’s an All Well sewing book in the works. (With Abrams Books, not risograph printed — way too big!) This has been a huge hope for Amy and I (Amelia) since the start of our collaboration. We’ve been working on and talking about this book for a long time.
Practically this has meant lots of FaceTime (Amy is in Pittsburgh), copious google docs writing, and making book map spreadsheets, and developing new sewing patterns, drawing diagrams. We’re sewing a lot of samples before the book photoshoot, reading through the manuscript and making a shot list. You can read more on the All Well blog if you want!
If you like behind the scenes book-making stuff, follow along on the All Well newsletter, @allwellworkshop on instagram!
Probably some on Amelia’s sewing instagram @tomato.garlic too.
New art layouts and zine templates
In Spectrolite land, the new art print layouts and zine stuff is getting really really cool. This is one of those big new feature releases, the type that takes a few months to build and develop. So I thought I’d show you a few screenshots work in process!
First of all, new template types! Not just zine imposition, but art prints, posters and business cards! Like these ones we’ve been testing out to start with:
(These are just to start; we’re going to figure out a way for people to submit useful templates to share!)
Let’s say we chose the “two 8x6 art prints" on ledger paper. There are spots to drop images into, and printers marks to help you trim the prints:
You can also turn on a display overlay that shows where the cuts will be:
After you print, you use the trim marks to help you cut where those lines are overlaid, to end up with your separate stacks of prints.
In the sidebar, you can pick if you want full bleed or not, and you can also turn off the trim marks so they don’t print on your page, if you prefer.
AND did you see the overlays for RISO specific areas?!
The shaded pink area shows the spots where it’s good to not have lots of ink. The outermost edges of the paper, the lead edge area (about an inch) that feeds into the machine first, and the center where the feed roller handles the paper. The RISO areas overlay is a quick way to visually check your designs to take into account when printing. For example, you might want to add more drying time for prints with areas with multiple passes through the machine and heavy ink in the center, if you can’t avoid it in your layout.
Here’s a look at an art print template with some artworks added (just photos in this example, but it could be drawings from Procreate or scans of watercolors or exports from a vector drawing program like Illustrator or Sketch — whatever you want). You can move the art around and zoom to resize them within their windows, and see each print’s info on the sidebar.
Similar idea for a full page poster, and business cards… and we’re also adding trim marks, cut and fold overlays to the zine imposition templates (far right, and second image below):
It can be really helpful to see the cut — and fold - - - lines overlaid on the imposed layout, especially for the more unusual booklet impositions. Here’s an example that shows the half letter zine with the binding on the short edge:
Excited to get the new version of Spectrolite out to you, hopefully soonish but definitely by the end of the year. And legal size paper using riso pals: we’re going to add some zine and print templates for 8.5x14” paper for the first time too!
Spaghetti Magazine No. 1
Kit Buckley’s Spaghetti Magazine No. 1 is coming from our risograph publishing endeavours soonish too.
One summer in college I had a radio show on our college station and every week the Greatest Living Painter in America would call into my show to make a request. I know that he was the Greatest Living Painter in America because he told me he was. I swear this all actually happened.
Get excited, because in addition to the story/essay it includes original watercolor paintings, including one of Sufjan.
(Yep, zine layout in google docs, then imposition & color separation in Spectrolite. Our free software + remote collaboration publication stack for zine making.)
We’re also about to help print Mundane Fantasy issue 02 comic. The art on the test print sheet looked SO GOOD. Subscribe here to get a copy!
A few more things
In the last update I mentioned something launching October 30th… Un-mark your calendars for that, because we’ve gotten an idea for doing something little more ambitious with it. Will let you know when we have a new release date!
Drink Books is coming soon to Phinney, and we’ve been enjoying seeing the sneak peeks at the shop construction and build out that our friend Kim has been sharing on instagram. Always a sucker for behind the scenes, how things are made.
If you’ve been wanting to try risograph printing and use Spectrolite, Taxonomy Press’s fall workshop schedule has classes for making two color prints, postcards, holiday cards, recipe zines, or calendars. Classes are on zoom, then you get your prints in the mail!
A first venture into Tartine sourdough using rye flour instead of whole wheat (and more water in the dough) has turned out well this morning. (For fellow bakers: 20% leaven, 80% hydration, 17% rye and 83% bread flour, 2% salt, with a longer autolyse than usual.)
We got three heads of garlic and are about to break them into cloves to plant in the p-patch, and the radish seeds we planted a few weeks ago have the cutest little plants growing now. Plus a lot of rain, a lot of new weeds and some that look like they might be sprouts from seeds from the previous gardener, but how to tell!
Seattle friends: you should have gotten your ballots in the mail for the Nov 2nd election. I’m voting Gonzalez for mayor and basically a straight Stranger ticket.
And last, some links: notes on a bookstore; an interview with Li Edelkoort, more motivation to get involved with local organizing and voting rights, and a short story that I read a long time ago and keep thinking about.
Stay in touch,
Amelia (& Adam)