About
A typesetter who writes about the page
I set books for small publishers in Belfast. Since 2019 I have written VERSAL on alternate Thursdays: essays and notes on typography, printing and slow reading.
The work
I set text for a living: books, journals, the occasional exhibition catalogue, mostly for publishers small enough that the designer and the typesetter are the same person. It is less romantic than the photographs suggest. Corrections, arguing about whether a table can lose a column, second proofs at eleven at night.
Before that I spent six years in a jobbing print shop off the Ormeau Road, which is where I learned that most problems on a screen were solved on a press a hundred years ago, and written down by someone nobody reads any more.
The letter
I started VERSAL in 2019 because I kept writing the same three emails to the same three people. There are 10 pieces on this site and around 140 in the members’ archive, in three series: On the page, Metal and ink and Reading slowly.
It goes out every second Thursday and never more often. Each letter takes about six days, and the week is set out alongside.
Who pays for it
Readers. 612 members pay £6 a month or £60 a year, which covers the hours, the hosting and the paper for the founding members’ broadside. Nothing here is sponsored or affiliate-linked. If a post names a tool, it is because I use it.
Corrections and reprints
I get things wrong in public and correct them in public, with a dated note. Quote anything with a link. To reprint a whole piece, ask; the answer is usually yes and always free for non-commercial use.
