Letterpress Printing The Cover For Gillian Welch’s The Harrow & The Harvest

This is a little follow-up to Wednesday’s episode of My Type of Music with some extra information on one of the album covers I discussed. In the comments to the post Erik Spiekermann, spiritual father of The FontFeed, pointed out the great video below. It documents the creation of the album cover insert for The Harrow & The Harvest, the new Gillian Welch album. Featuring interviews with Aardvark Letterpress, illustrator/musician John Dyer Baizley, and recording artists Gillian Welch and David Rawlings, it details the creation process and production in letterpress. By the way, you can briefly see a Linotype in action at the 6:12 mark. Most of all the video shows how commitment, dedication and love for the craft, combined with the occasional happy accident, can produce truly unique album cover inserts. A tutorial by Gillian Welch and David Rawlings on how to coffee-stain your copy of the letterpressed CD insert (US version) shows how to make that quite literal.

Tags: album covers, letterpress, Linotype, music, video