Contact information

Gerald Lange
The Bieler Press
4216-1/4 Glencoe Avenue
Marina del Rey, CA 90292

Send an e-mail to The Bieler Press

Typographic and book production services

The Bieler Press specializes in a number of book related services, including fine typographic book design and composition, careful and intelligent letterpress and digital book printing and production, and exacting digital restoration of historical images and letterforms.

Digital letterpress services and materials

Photopolymer platemaking:
The Bieler Press has provided photopolymer plate processing to the studio-letterpress community since 1995. We offer well-made, premium-grade plates for today’s popular bases (Bunting Magnetic Cerface, Patmag, Boxcar) with extremely fast turn-around at competitive pricing. Plates are processed and shipped same day/next day. Plates are also available for convenient 24-hour pickup. For further details go to Photopolymer plate specifications and rates.

Bunting magnetic bases:
The Bieler Press is a manufacturing representative and distributor of the industry standard Bunting Magnetic Cerface™ Flat Base for Bunting Magnetics Co. The crème de la crème. Inquire for pricing and ordering.

Monograph on photopolymer platemaking and letterpress printing with digital type:
The Bieler Press is the publisher of Printing digital type on the hand-operated flatbed cylinder press, the primary manual for letterpress printing with the photopolymer plate process. See the Bieler Press Monographs page for a description of this title.

Letterpress Instruction

Photo courtesy Tracy Gilbert.

Digital Letterpress
Art Center College of Design, Archetype Press, South Campus
950 South Raymond Avenue, Pasadena
Next offering: Spring semester.

Digital Letterpress
Otis College of Art and Design, Otis Laboratory Press, Goldsmith Campus
9045 Lincoln Blvd, Los Angeles (Westchester)
10 weeks. Saturday afternoon, 1:30-4:30.
May 31–August 9.

Finer Points in Letterpress Typography
Art Center College of Design, Archetype Press, South Campus
950 South Raymond Avenue, Pasadena
14 weeks. Tuesday night, 7 to 10.
May 13–Aug 12.

Introduction to Letterpress
Otis College of Art and Design, Otis Laboratory Press, Goldsmith Campus
9045 Lincoln Blvd, Los Angeles (Westchester)
10 weeks. Saturday morning, 9:30-12:30.
May 31–August 9.

Maintaining Your Vandercook Press
Art Center College of Design, Archetype Press, South Campus
950 South Raymond Avenue, Pasadena
Next offering: Fall semester.

An online group site Subiaco serves as a referential component to these instructional venues. All currently enrolled students should sign up for membership as the site contains syllabi, handouts, recommended textbook listings, posted announcements, and other resources. Previous students are welcomed as well.

The Bieler Press Catalogue

The Bieler Press Catalogue 2008 is available in PDF form. This provides information on all currently available Bieler Press books, chapbooks, and broadsides (including currently in-print titles produced for other publishers). Descriptions of selected titles can be found on the separately linked pages at Fine Press Limited Editions.

Notices & miscellany

A paper on contemporary typography and fine press printing was presented by Gerald Lange at the 32nd Annual Conference of the American Printing History Association Conference, October 2007. A synopsis of the talk, by Jennifer Schaffner, can be found in the Winter, 2008 issue of the APHA Newsletter (Number 165).

An interview with Lange on Bieler Press activity can be read in the September, 2007, issue of Galley Gab: A Monthly Online Publication Devoted to Letterpress Printing.

An article by Lange, “Cristal Reconstructed: A Digital Letterform Remade for Letterpress Printing” was published in Parenthesis: The Journal of the Fine Press Book Association, August, 2007.

An article on The Bieler Press, written by Richard Goodman, can be found in the May/June, 2006, issue of Fine Books & Collections Magazine.

Biographical sketch – Gerald Lange / The Bieler Press

Gerald Lange is the proprietor and founder (1975) of The Bieler Press, a small printing and publishing firm specializing in studio letterpress, typographic design, and the publication of finely-printed limited edition books.

In 2005, Lange was chosen to present the Eighth Annual Stephen A. Kanter Lecture on California Fine Printing at the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, University of California, Los Angeles. In 1991, he was selected as the first recipient of the prestigious Carl Hertzog Award for Excellence in Book Design. His publications have also won awards from the Type Directors Club, the American Institute of Graphic Arts, and the Chicago Book Clinic.

In 1985, the University of Minnesota established The Bieler Press Archival Materials Collection to provide and maintain historical documentation of the Press. In support of his early endeavors, Lange was awarded five assistance grants from the National Endowment for the Arts as well as grants from the Elmer L. and Eleanor J. Andersen Foundation.

Lange has written extensively on typography and the book arts, contributing articles for publications such as Parenthesis (FPBA), Galley Gab, Ampersand (PCBA), Printing History (APHA), Guild of Book Workers Newsletter, Counter, Serif, Bookways, and The Typographer. In 2007, he was selected to present a paper on contemporary typography for the 32nd Annual Conference of the American Printing History Association. Lange's self-published monograph, Printing digital type on the hand-operated flatbed cylinder press, is currently in its third edition printing.

Lange provides instruction at Art Center College of Design (since 2000) and Otis College of Art and Design (since 1997). From 1986 to 1993, he was Master Printer at the USC Fine Arts Press. While at the University of Southern California, he was also editor of the scholarly journal Coranto. Lange has also taught workshops/provided coursework for Lala Press and Tiselle, California Institute of the Arts, Minnesota Center for Book Arts (Master classes), Scripps College (Frederic W. Goudy Workshops), Kent State University (Blossom Visual Communication Design Workshop), University of Minnesota, School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

From 1990 to 1996, Lange was editor of AbraCadaBrA, the Journal of the Alliance for Contemporary Book Arts, an organization he co-founded in 1987. He was Chairman of the Fine Press Book Association (NA) from 1999 to 2001. In 2001, he founded PPLetterpress, an online forum on investigative, exploratory, and alternative printing and typographic techniques.

Recent exhibitions of Bieler Press work include California Printers in the Fine Press Tradition, 1975–2006, Stanford University, 2007; Master Printers, Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery/Barnsdall Park, 2006; Books & Books, Otis College of Art + Design, 2005; Matter & Spirit: The Genesis and Evolution of the Book, Wells College Book Arts Center, 2004; Ninety from the Nineties: A Decade of Printing, New York Public Library, 2003.

Institutional collections of Bieler Press work include The British Library, University of California, Columbia University, Harvard University, New York Public Library, Princeton University, Stanford University, Victoria and Albert Museum, Yale University.

PPLetterpress

PPLetterpress is a forum and clearinghouse on studio-letterpress and letterpress-related typography founded by Gerald Lange in August of 2001. While the subject focus is on printing with digital type and the photopolymer plate process, the group site also encompasses related investigative and exploratory printing and typographic techniques, as well as historical and contemporary letterpress practices and concerns.

PPLetterpress serves as both a discussion list and reference site with online resources on type and typography, experimental and traditional printing, and allied interests.