The Amateur Printer is an ongoing artist’s book series by Alex Durlak. Each edition in the series uses an article, written in 1949, by Peter Beilensen (a printer, designer, and founder of Peter Pauper Press) as the content of the text. In the article, Beilensen discusses the importance for all book printers to frequently take time out of their professional activities to hand-make a book purely for the fun of it. For him, this act not only serves as way for one to rediscover the creative spirit in both the printed word and it’s physical incarnation, but also as an important arena for experimentation and creative progress, which he feels are the central duties of the book printing trade. As the viewer reads through the text they realize that the object in their hand is in fact Durlak’s own personal response to Beilensen’s call to duty. Each edition in the series will be presented in a unique style where the article is used as placeholder text for Durlak’s experimentation in layout, format, binding, and printing processes. This first edition is intended as a simple, handsome printing of the article in book form and will act as the base line from which future editions will progress in their ambition. The edition will feature a pasted-on leatherette cover with a foil-stamped title; the text will be printed using risographs on a vellum finish off-white stock. It will be typeset in Figgins Sans, a typeface design by Nick Shinn that is based on the earliest known examples of sans-serif faces from early 19th Century London. It is printed in a limited run of 250 copies.

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Alex Durlak is a Toronto based artist and musician, best known for his contributions to the music community spanning over a decade. His parallel artistic practice strongly focuses on the graphic arts, including typography, print-making and book design. An interest in text based works, the history of the arts in Canada, and institutional representation are prevalent in his practice. Durlak is also the proprietor of Standard Form, a young press interested in working with and on the behalf of the vanguard in Canada’s flourishing art scene. His work has been shown at Art Metropole, Printed Matter, Mercer Union, 401 Richmond, The New York Art Book Fair, and on the shelves of record stores across the continent.