Jim Rimmer of New Westminster, B.C. is one of the greatest typographic treasures that Canada has to offer. For nearly 60 years he has been working in the field of Graphic Design in newspaper, advertising, and layout, as a pressman, compositor, typesetter, designer, lithographer, illustrator, bookbinder and teacher. However, it is his impressive contribution to type design that I’m writing about today.
The Pie Tree Press, his imprint these many years, is named after the tree in his yard that the neighbour’s kids would come and pick apples from for their pies. The Press occupies part of his basement, a hand built addition to the back of his house and a small bindery/studio opposite the entrance to the press room. At the entrance is an alphabet of Jim’s Duensing Titling face carved by him into a printer’s stone. Inside are his presses, casters, cases of type, a machine shop for building and repairing equipment (which he does himself), and a collection of typographic objects. His main printing press is a 14 x 22 Colts Armory Platen that he literally rebuilt by hand with many homemade parts.
1) The Entrance to the Pie Tree Press; 2) Duensing Titling, carved by Jim
3) The Colts Armory Platen Press; 4) The Ogata with the Bindery visible through the window
Jim is remarkable in his approach to type design. He has been lettering for decades and does all of his rough work by hand and then translates them to digital using the Ikarus program. Ikarus is a vector based encoding system introduced in 1973 to deal with digitizing vast film-type libraries and was the first successful tool used by most of the major foundries. The original art is laid out on a graphics tablet and with a digitizing puck – a device similar to a plotting pen, but the puck resembles a mouse with different buttons for specific kinds of points. It sets a variety of control points defining the outlines of straight lines and arcs. There is nothing really new about this part of the process, but Jim takes it a step further by using it as the basis for his metal type design and casting.
1) Stern, the pen drawings; 2) setting the points with the digitizing puck;
3) cleaning up the letters on the screen; 4) preparing the letters for mounting
After outputting the characters on a laser printer, he mounts them on bristol and cuts the forms out to create a 36 pica paper Master Pattern. He then mounts those on a particle board substrate and, using a Taylor Hobson pantograph router, he reduces them incrementally; first to an 18 pica lead Working Pattern at half the original size and finally scaling it to a brass Matrix on the more modern Ogata RS-260 Pantograph at the appropriate point size – 16 point, in the case of Stern. The Matrix cutting is tricky as the shoulders need to be cut away enough that the cast type will be able to be removed easily from the Matrix. Also, the depth must be precise to create type that is the appropriate height (0.918″), so measurements are done by the thousandth of an inch with less than .0005″ leeway.
1) Jim making the Working pattern on the Taylor Hobson; 2) reducing from the Working pattern on the Ogata
3) the paper Master in comparison to the lead Working pattern; 4) a collection of brass Matrices for his Duensing Titling
Frederic Goudy used the Deckel Engraver (similiar to the Benton pantograph, the first matrix-engraving machine designed by Linn Boyd Benton in 1884) to the same effect in creating typefaces for his own Village Type Foundry. Goudy preferred the control of working from his own drawings, rather than having the staff at Lanston Monotype interpret them for him. A 1930s video can be found here. This is a faster process than punch-cutting and allows for a greater deal of scalability. Multiple sizes can be created from the same Master patterns, though both an intuitive sense and an educated understanding of the translation of the characters to the different sizes is needed to accurately interpret the subtleties in the cutting process. Jim is quite adept at this by now. He has also done some punch-cutting, but finds the pantograph process better suited to his needs.
After the matrices are all made, Jim casts his type. He has three Monotype casters; a Thompson Caster, a Super Caster, and a Composition Caster which works with his Monotype Keyboard. For his upcoming book, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, he designed an 18 pt face called Hannibal and rigged the mat to fit within the confines of Garamond and was able to key in the text on the Monotype Keyboard and cast it on the Composition Caster.
1) Thompson Caster; 2) Super Caster;
3) Monotype Keyboard; 4) Composition Caster; 5) Hannibal matrices in a Garamond layout
Despite the mechanical aids, this is still a time consuming manual process, so output is limited. Regardless of the time involved, designing the faces, making the patterns and matrices, casting and setting the type, proofing and printing the pages, collating and binding the books, and tipping in the illustrations, Jim’s output has been quite prolific for a one man operation. Working to metal is very different from working direct to digital, and, in doing so, Jim has managed to cross-over a century of printing technology using digital as an intermediate step. Both the quantity and the quality of his work and his own exacting standards speak for themselves. While William Morris may never have appreciated the computer, I believe he’d be hard pressed to find fault with Jim’s remarkable œuvre.
His Metal faces, in chronological order, include:
- Juliana Oldstyle 18pt, 1981
- Nephi Mediaeval 18pt, 1983
- Fellowship 24pt, 1984
- Albertan 16pt, 1985
- Cartier Roman 14pt, 2004
- Cree Syllabic 14pt, 2006
- Duensing Titling 12, 14, 18, 24, 36, 48 & 60pt, 2004-07
- Hannibal Oldstyle 18pt, 2003
- Quill 14pt, 2006
- Stern 16pt, 2008
His Digital faces are all sold through the Rimmer Type Foundry (RTF), which is a division of P22 Type Foundry. They are currently available through P22 and MyFonts.
They include, in alphabetical order:
- Albertan - designed as a 16pt metal face, to be a proprietary face for the Pie Tree Press. The italic was included a few years later
- Alexander Quill - originally designed in 14pt, it was finally cast in metal in 2005 for Leaves From The Pie Tree
- Amethyst - a well weighted digital face designed for book or advertising work
- Cadmus - a reworking of Robert Foster’s typeface Pericles, an inscriptional Greek style sans serif
- Canadian Syllabics
- Cotillion - a 1920s style “Social Print” face designed in 1999 intended for advertising luxury items
- Credo - a multi weight sans serif face
- Dokument - A Grotesque style sans serif
- Isabelle - a charming and graceful duo of faces originally designed by Elizabeth Friedlander for the Bauer Foundry
- Fellowship - a calligraphic face designed as a tribute to the ATF and cut in 24pt metal for the titling in Shadow River
- Lancelot - this is the handsome digital version of Duensing Titling cast in multiple sizes for letterpress
- Lapis - a casual slabbed serif style face with“edgy” curves designed for book and advertising work
- Posh Initials - a stylized set of initials harkening back to the days of the privileged British Ocean Liner Upper Classes
- Poster Paint - a version of one of the 1930s movie style fat faces. Jim did this form memory loosely based on Goudy’s Stout, but with lots more character
- Zigarre Script - a sumptuous brush script of the 20s & 30s, with a hint of Imre Reiner
His beautifully printed and illustrated Books include:
Alison’s Fishing Birds by Roderick L. Haig-Brown, printed for Colophon Books; 1980. Illustrations by Jim Rimmer; 1980. - sold out
Illustrations from Alison’s Fishing Birds
A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens with an introduction from Crispin Elsted; 1998. Printed in Garamond with linocuts by Jim Rimmer - sold out
Illustrations from A Christmas Carol
Shadow River: The Selected and Illustrated Poems of Pauline Johnson; Autumn 1999. Printed in Centaur with Fellowship titling; with linocuts by Jim Rimmer; bound in Deerskin with Cedar Frond printed cover papers. - sold out
Illustrations from Shadow River
Leaves From The Pie Tree: Memories from the Composing Room Floor; 2006. Printed in Quill with Duensing Titling, with illustrations and linocuts by Jim Rimmer. - a few copies still available from P22
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain; forthcoming. Printed in Hannibal with linocuts by Jim Rimmer. For ordering information contact Jim at rimmertype@shaw.ca
Title page from The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
Other articles about Jim Rimmer
One Comment
Brian — this is really great! Took me long enough to get here, but I learned a lot and I’m really impressed all around!
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