10 & 11 October 2019, Weston Library, University of Oxford

This conference considers the progress of the post-1945 printing industry including the technologies, processes and products of print, and also the users and consumers of the printed word.

Provisional Programme available HERE. Tickets, price £25, available HERE.

DAY ONE Dave Steel From duplicating to digital; Jim Pennington, The stencil duplicator; Gülizar Çepoglu, The break of the rigid dichotomy between text and image; Rebecca Roach, Books or mainframes? Rockefeller and Ford Foundation print policy in the post-war years; Patrick Goossens, From organ to microchip: dissimilarities in technology or from the swan song of hot metal to the hymn of ‘hot’ letterpress; Martin Andrews, Golf-ball typesetting; Erik Spiekermann, Post-digital printing; Mohamad Dakak, The complex status of current Arabic type design and usage in relation to post-war contexts; Vaibhav Singh,Technologies of transition: Intertype’s Fotosetter and filmsetting for Indian scripts.

After the talks there will be a visit to the Bodleian Rare Books Section for a ‘show-and-tell’ session with its collection of artists’ books. This will be followed by a ‘swop-shop’ of post-war printing material and ephemera.

DAY TWO Gong Xiaofan, Interpretation on the covers of 'Red Books' 1949-66 in China from the perspective of political iconology; Matthew Wills, Propaganda and paperbacks: Creating a National Socialist readership in Mao’s China; Meaghan Allen, Paper traces: Projekt journal and the distribution of Polish poster design; Wendy Stephens, Modernization or expurgation?: revision and recalibration of canonical American children’s literature; Miriam Intrator, Print and the post-war reconstruction of people; Gina Baber, A paratextual and bibliographical study of Allen Ginsberg's Howl; Oral history project.