New Lead Graffiti friend, Mark Cashion, and old Lead Graffiti friend, Bill Roberts of Bottle of Smoke Press invited us to design and print the covers for a project to benefit the charity Ambitious about Autism, home of TreeHouse School in London.

Nick Hornby (a British author best known for his novels High Fidelity, About a Boy, and Fever Pitch) wrote Songbook, which included an essay published in McSweeney’s about his love of the song “Thunder Road” by Bruce Springsteen. Mark and letterpress printer friend, Jim Camp, had the idea of reprinting Hornby’s Thunder Road essay, along with the lyrics to Springsteen’s song, to raise money for Ambitious about Autism. Proposals were made and permission was granted by both writers. The text for the essay and lyrics was designed and printed via letterpress in Los Angeles by Jim Camp at Synaesthesia Press.

We produced 200 soft cover books signed by Nick Hornby, 32 hard cover books signed by both Nick Hornby and Bruce Springsteen, with 6 sets included in a clamshell produced with Bill Roberts and presented to the main participants in the project.

The hardcover and softcover copies are sold out.

The image above is the presentation set to Lead Graffiti.

The four-panel wraparound cover is printed in silver on Somerset Black Textured 250 GSM with a handrolled yellow edge along the deckle edge. Jill Cypher of Lead Graffiti produced a woodcut illustration which is printed black on blackon the cover and then repeated white on white Mulberry as a flysheet for the essay. We must have listened to "Thunder Road" 50 times during the various stages of this project.

        "The screen door slams
          Mary’s dress waves
          Like a vision she dances across the porch
          As the radio plays..."

Every part of this project, from the creative to the construction, from the cause to the colleagiality, was fun.

You can read more about the project on our blog.

 

An email from a purchaser :

"Dear Mark,

I visited a friend in Edinburgh, Scotland and came home on Monday. I found the envelope with your books on the kitchen table. They arrived safely and without any damage. You packed them well. Thank you. I am actually overwhelmed. I expected it to be beautiful. I could see that it is beautiful on the internet on the "The unbearable banishment" blog. I have to confess the pics in the internet don’t cope at all with the real book. Mark, what can I say to this great, stunning work? This book is worth dropping your knees for. Thank you so much for having this really gorgeous idea. Thank you for not giving up. Thank you for all the love and passion you put in this "job". And I swear you couldn’t have done this job better. FABULOUS!!!"