Speaking of memory lane…
Why the name ‘Hot Metal’ for the newsletter? Hot metal refers to the way newspapers were produced for nearly a century: with a linotype mechanical typesetting machine.
What’s the significance? For one thing, Kelley’s father worked for a small town newspaper. As a little kid, she enjoyed peering into the bowels of the building where her dad worked. There, a giant, churning printing press pumped out newspapers, day in and day out. It was great fun to get a special tour upstairs in the cooler, quieter offices where she watched staff paste up the daily paper.
Hot Metal, like the name Ink Works, harkens back to another era, the age of machine production. We like the juxtaposition: a name that evokes the industrial era and big, solid machines that made lots of noise. Yet, we work mainly in a quiet digital environment with machines made of plastic and silicon, ideas that proliferate through the bits and bytes of cyberspace.
We also like the fact that this older era, the age of the Arts and Crafts movement, evokes the kind of craftsmanship and design principles we value.
