There are no available registration dates at this time.

Note: This Multi-week Course will be held online using the Zoom Platform
Class meets Wednesdays from 9am-12pm EST (12 Total Sessions)

All your summer plans have been cancelled! Why not take this time to plan, design and create a limited edition book. The result of this class can be sent to an online publisher such as Conveyor Studio or Blurb or we will explore other options. You can take the InDesign files that you create to a commercial printer or do the printing yourself on Maine Media’s letterpress when the campus opens again or print on your own press. 

This summer long class will meet once per week in a 3 hour Zoom platform where we will talk about your project, explore your weekly progress, answer production questions, and hear from each other. I will prepare demonstrations and show basic tool uses. We will have guest experts. At the other end of the technology spectrum, I will offer computer file formatting tips and explain the printing vocabulary and process. Each online publisher has slight variations to their production system, but we will navigate those so you can choose which is right for your book design.

Beginning book designers are welcome, but you will need Adobe InDesign software and content for your book. If you are not familiar with Adobe InDesign, I would strongly recommend taking David Allen’s class offered June 8 – 12 to get familiar with the program and printing concepts so you can keep up with the class and get the most out of what is being offered in this course. We will not be teaching InDesign, rather we will be taking your knowledge of the program and applying it to how to create a production file to the specifications of your online publisher.

Books take many forms: Conventional cookbooks, Artist’s Books, Journals, Chapbooks of Poetry. Whether you are a writer, photographer, or artist, a book is an expansive platform expressing visual concepts and playing with sequence and visual timing. Choice of paper, printing technique, placement on the page, image selection, variation of scale and more become notes in your symphony. This is an opportunity to take your ideas and have someone else print and bind the book of your dreams.

Images by Richard Reitz Smith

 

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Instructor: Richard Reitz Smith

Richard Reitz Smith is a letterpress and book artist who excels in marrying traditional techniques with technology and is the Book Arts Program Chair and Studio Manager at Maine Media. He is the owner of DoubleDoor Creative in Camden, ME. In 2015, Richard was the first Book Artist in Residence at Maine Media where he wrote, illustrated, printed, and bound a limited-edition abecedary of alliterative haiku. Richard received a BFA from Carnegie Mellon University in painting and illustration.

After working for three years developing products for Crayola and Liquitex, he returned to school and earned an MFA in graphic design (Tyler School of Art- Temple University). Then started a five-year tour of universities as an art and design professor which led him to New York City, where he taught at Pratt Institute and School of Visual Arts. While doing this, he freelanced as an illustrator and graphic designer for companies like The GAP, Macy's, American Craft Museum, Metlife, Pearson Education, and Scholastic. Then he took positions at Clicquot, Inc. and Clinique Cosmetics consecutively. For Clinique Cosmetics, he managed multi-million-dollar, international, seasonal product and promotional launches as the director of package design worldwide. For Clicquot, Inc. he was a one-person art department for the wine importer/promoter of Veuve Clicquot, Krug, Bouchard, and many other ultra-premium wines. It was in NYC, that he found and frequented The Center for Book Arts learning much about letterpress and the book as an art form.

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