This week we sent out the fourth issue of my daughter’s analog magazine, The Letterbox. Now that it is safely put to bed, as they said in my newspaper days, I can write this post without the hypocrisy of saying and not doing.

The Letterbox consists of 20 pages, half-sheet size, produced by hand or written up on a typewriter, then scanned, printed, sewn, and mailed.

A Slow Process

Abigail oversees the entirety of the content but asks for help with some aspects of brainstorming, editing, and production.

To kick off a new issue, we start with an editorial meeting and brainstorm the contents that typically include:

a cartoon of some recent ridiculous goings-on in our household
letters or contributions from readers
a recipe
a competition
an interview
a column called ‘Cat Capers’
‘Book Nook,’ a book review or two
‘The English Correspondent,’ a column of reminiscences from Abigail’s English nana
Abigail’s first love, poems, many written during typewriter poetry events for teens

It is frankly a slog to hand make a magazine! Especially one that is well written, with no (well, few) typos, and that makes sense. With each page’s draft complete, the finished page is typed numerous times to get it right.

For this issue, we drew up all the outstanding to-dos on a big whiteboard in my studio and that helped break down all the details into more achievable chunks.

Travels with my Sketchbook

Sketching Jubilee the Raven at the Tower of London, October 2021

Fitting text around images requires extra forethought when you’re using a typewriter

The most recent edition had a lengthy article, Travels with My Sketchbook, detailing an almost three-week trip to the UK last fall, peppered with excerpted images from the full sketchbook Abigail filled. This proved especially tricky. Not only squeezing relevant details told well into five pages, but choosing the images, where to put them, and then typing up the content around the image slots. No drag and drop when it’s an analog production.

Yes, that is why we usually use computers. But there is something lovely about producing writing in this tangible way.

Layout

Next comes the layout of the magazine overall to produce the most pleasant order of articles. Once that’s settled, the contents page can be written and cover images finished.

Abigail makes a small dummy magazine using that page order so we know what each signature should contain.

Then we turn to the digital at last and scan the finished pages. Images had been printed and glued in place so they in effect get scanned twice leading to an even more homemade appearance.

We scan a double spread, then its reverse, and save each as a numbered signature. When all are ready, we sent them to the printer, Abigail’s brother’s rather good printer upstairs …

The Typewriter Cat also does odd jobs supervising printing

There are often issues along the way: margins that are off the page, last-minute typos, and other frustrations to resolve, but with each issue there are fewer mistakes and a smoother order of operations.

Time to Assemble & Sew

Finally, we clear my studio desk, give it a good clean, and layout the signatures in piles.

We set up the sewing machine, fetch the thread chosen for its color before the cover is made, set up the bobbin, check the machine tension, and sew a few test pieces.

Thread usually is from the astonishing stash left us by my husband’s grandmother, who liked to be known as G.G. rather than Great-Grandmother. (The one who ran Geffken’s, the bar in Canarsie, New York, the bar where the ‘Goodfellas’ met to plan their doings—somehow whatever we do ends up having a story attached …) So from trays of thread in G.G’s sewing table comes one seasonal color or another.

*The Letterbox* Issue #4, all set up and ready to bind

From the Archives: The Typewriter Cat keeps an eye on sewing Issue #2

The Books By Hand bone folder is a brilliant tool for the job of creasing pages

It is a satisfying moment when we compile the first copy, triple-checked for order, from beneath the lolling cat who guards the table, carefully rule the line of the spine if it is not clear, and run it through the sewing machine as straight as possible.

The first completed copy! Too late to change anything now.

We sew in groups of five or ten, then out comes the bone folder, to fold the sewn group in half precisely and check each page can open properly. One final crease across the back and that copy is complete.

When the whole print run has been sewn, we snip the threads, stuff the hand-addressed envelopes, and walk off to the Post Office.

A satisfying pile of finished magazines. Over fifty copies in this print run.

A long, long checklist on the whiteboard, all now checked off

This issue: an attempt at covering costs!

Abigail’s youngest ‘reader’ is three, and the oldest is in her 90s, who writes a detailed letter of what she enjoyed about the issue and reminisces about a similar enterprise she did at the same age, a magazine production in her youth. Copies go to several countries in Europe and about ten states.

It is a homemade affair, often frustrating, forever later than we meant, but the source of much learning and pleasure. It is satisfying to complete each issue, to produce something yourself that you can hold in your hand, and to hear back from all sorts of readers who’ve taken delight in what they received in the mail.

Just because something can be done quicker, does not mean that it has to be.

Typewriters Used

Hermes 3000

Over four issues Abigail has settled into a pattern of using a Hermes 3000 for the bulk of the typewritten pages.

It has a clear, Pica typeface (10 characters per inch). The Hermes 3000 also has a newly re-covered platen that gives excellent print quality.

Once we’ve figured out the magazine’s rather narrow page dimensions, it is helpful to leave this typewriter’s margins set for the duration of writing the issue.

The cover of the first issue with Hermes 3000 typewriter now used for most articles

Olivetti Lettera 22

But for articles with dense info and low on space, such as Travels with My Sketchbook, out comes the Olivetti Lettera 22 with its beautiful, rounded Congressional Elite typeface that is 12 characters per inch.

The lovely dark ribbon makes text that shows up well when scanned.

The Olivetti Lettera 22, poses for a cover shot with a hand-crocheted bunny for Issue#3

“People tell me I’d go faster if I used a computer, but I don’t want to go faster.
If anything, I want to go slower.”

— David McCullough on using a typewriter for all his Pulitzer prize-winning history books

Issue #3 cover mock-up. Figuring out how to space the typed captions. You can read the Tom Furrier interview mentioned, here. Captions are typed with the Olivetti Lettera 22 with Congressional Elite typeface.

A Little Bit of History

This enterprise really is the fulfillment of a long-held dream.

Abigail made her first ‘magazine’ at age three. She set up ‘mail boxes’ made entirely of taped-together paper outside each bedroom door upstairs in our house, and gave each room an imaginary address.

She sort-of-folded sheets of printer paper in half and made a pretend version of Boy’s Life, the magazine for Scouts, that came monthly for her two brothers. Her covers always seemed to feature a canoe in peril. The text was a scribbled mash-up language that only she could read but which we exclaimed over with great interest.

And so, it began.

I wonder where it will end.