Typeface Organization Furniture/System?
I would love to own some real type cabinets someday, but for now I am only a hobbyist with a handful of typefaces at my disposal. Does anybody have any creative solutions for organizing them (I mean furniture/boxes/personalized IKEA drawers, rather than the grouping of letters as in the Briar Press banner head) ? Many thanks for sharing!
A while back I bought a hobbyist printing outfit where some one had made cases using matchbox insides. You know, the boxes wooden matches come in. You can still buy them in most grocery stores. He made a few thin plywood bottom “trays”, with thin wood sides; and taped the boxes together as shown in the photo I just took to demonstrate.
I have kept them just because….
I have 9 or 10 of them. They must be 25 years old and still work well, although the tape is coming off in places. I suppose they could be glued also; whatever works.
Genuine type cases are nice, but you could hook some up like this with a little time and not too much money and have a nice supply of wooden matches left over afterwards.
[edit] Come to think of it, this might not be so economical in the long run….I don’t know how much wooden matches cost these days, and I’m counting 40 compartments in each space. I thought it was clever nonetheless.
Matchbox Case.jpg
Very cleaver, when i started out i used egg cartons, the eggs you can eat, matches don’t taste as good. Dick G.
Hello evnstarwen,
Craft stores and home improvement stores have myriads of sectioned storage boxes for small things like beads and fasteners. Here’s one that I’ve been using. It works great.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/lunadabayletterpress/2211762460/in/set-7215...
Someone else here on Briar Press uses similar boxes and has made some very nice shelving to slide them into. Maybe he will post his photo again. (Couldn’t find it in the archives.)
Barbara
Barbara,
I had the feeling we would hear from you on this one.
I remember seeing the other innovative storage solutions you’ve come up with. Makes for a very tidy shop/living room space.
I use similar plastic boxes for dingbats, spacing and borders; not so much with type. They are very handy.
Dave
These are great ideas! Thank you all so much!!
Plastic ice cube trays are cheap and the stack easily. Not an ideal solution, but I still have a few fonts in them 30 years after starting without any type cabinets or cases. I also don’t use these fonts much anymore.
I’ve used small boxes from the Danish company Raaco to store my spaces. They come in all different sizes and are very practical.
raaco_boxes_1.jpg
fine_spaces.jpg