Their type never seems to change.

Their type never seems to change

In an era of desk-top publishing, computer typesetting and quick-print shops on every corner, Los Angeles' Colby Poster Printing Co. uses technology that was introduced before Christopher Columbus was born.

Family-run Colby Poster is one of a handful of companies nationwide that still prints poster using hand-set wood and metal type and an antiquated letterpress printing press, dinosaurs in a computer-driven information age.

A year ago it replaced a four-ton Miehle letterpress built in 1895 with a newer, lighter model, built in 1917. Much of the type is hand-carved from maple wood and older than the business itself, which was founded in 1946.

The staff at Colby Poster in fact is using much the same process developed by Johann Gutenberg in the 15th Century, except that the press, which can be turned by hand, is today driven by electricity.

"It's a dying art," says Glenn Hinman, grandson of the company's founder and vice president of Colby Poster.

Counters G. Rouse Hinman, Glenn's father and the company's president, "They've been saying that for 40 years."

Colby Poster prints something sometimes called "show prints." They are big, colorful, cardboard posters, utilizying large type but few words, bright colors but little adornment, and are usually stapled to telephone poles or placed in store windows. Others call them "boxing cards" or "window cards."

In the 1940s and 1950s, before television brought entertainment into the home, show prints were everywhere, the primary method for advertising coming attractions like circuses and rodeos, tours by big bands and rock 'n' rollers alike. They were synonymous with boxing and were used to make roadside billboards, too.

Silk screen printing eventually replaced letterpress for most types of outdoor advertising, offering greater design flexibility and the ability to print larger sheets. Colby Poster, in fact, incorporated silk screen into its operation and the process supplanted letterpress as its biggest source of income in 1960.

Show prints, however, remain viable today not as museum pieces, but because they are quick, visible and cheap. They can be printed in quantities of as few as 100 for as little as $120.

Most modern printing methods have more expensive set-up charges. "A lot of lithographers and offset printers take a hundred sheets just to get the color right," Glenn Hinman says.

Show prints continue to be a staple for promoting touring carnivals and school board candidates, blues legends and journeyman country acts - for anything, in fact, with a minuscule promotional budget. They're used as union strike placards, grocery store window displays and to promote fish fries, revivals, picnics and dances.

They've also become popular with artists, designers and collectors. The latest album cover for million-selling rock act Tom Petty emulates a show print. Albums by rockers The Georgia Satellites, country singer Jimmy Dale Gilmore and a re-issue of music from western swing pioneer Bob Wills also feature show print covers.

The younger Hinman pulls a slide out of his desk drawer of a collage an artist made from a series of Colby show prints. Movie producers occasionally root through dusty shelves for show prints to help evoke an earlier era on film.

A recent book "The Art of Rock" featured a chapter devoted largely to historic music show prints. Pop music collectors offer stacks of dollar bills to printers for metal engravings of long dead legends only to find the unwitting printers - who view their work as commerce but rarely art - have have long ago lost or thrown them away.

One of a few other surviving show print operations, Hatch Show Print of Nashville, Tenn., its history so linked with the country music tradition, was bought by country music theme park Opryland in 1985.

Opryland moved part of Hatch's operation from the shadow of the original Grand Old Opry House to the suburban amusement park and Hatch now reprints classic show prints promoting landmark shows by Elvis Presley, hillbilly legend Hank Williams and Southern California folkrockers The Byrds.

Show prints can be crude and ugly, crowded with too much type or garish from colors too bright, but they can also be functional, if somewhat accidental, works of art.

The inherent limitations of the show print style also result in a simplicity that is among the form's greatest virtues.

The posters are made by organizing individual pieces of raised wood or metal type horizontally within a metal frame, called a chase, that is the same size as the poster. Colby offers two poster sizes, 14 inches by 22 inches and 22 inches by 28 inches. Each letter or number is on a single piece of wood or metal and type sizes range from a quarter inch to 18 inches tall.

The type must be "locked" perfectly in the chase, like a puzzle made exclusively of rectangular pieces. The typesetter varies the size of the type on each line and the spacing around the words and lines to make the jumble of metal and wood fit within the chase.

The constraints of the process dictate that the poster be simple. Each line must be horizontal. Curved lines won't fit the puzzle. Any other design element - a picture or a logo, for instance - must be engraved by machine or hand onto a rectangular piece of metal or wood so that it too will fit into the locked chase.

Colby charges extra if a poster includes more than 30 words. Anything more becomes too crowded and is discouraged. Special engravings for artwork must be shopped out and also cost extra. A four-inch-by-five-inch picture, for instance, might run $50. The engraving, or "cut," then becomes the property of the customer.

Certain stock cuts, standard items like stars, flags, boxing figures or checkered lines, are also available. Posters can be printed in black, red or blue ink on a variety of backgrounds, from white to a three-colored rainbow to day-glo pink.

The type styles offered are big and bold, decidedly low-tech, gothic styles reminiscent of D-Day newspaper headlines, many of the letters battered from decades of use. Subtlety doesn't work on telephone poles.

"We don't try to build them up to be more than they are," Glenn Hinman says. "There are some nicks and dings. It's like a kid playing with building blocks. But from 10 feet away you aren't going to see the difference."

Colby Poster, located on a dead-end street in downtown L.A. just west of the Harbor freeway, was founded 43 years ago by Herbert L. Colby.

The majority of the company's business in the early days was printing sheets for billboards. When the silk screen process was introduced a few years later, the company initially devoted its attention to show prints, printing cards for national tours by jazz greats like Glen Miller, Harry James and Les Brown.

Today silk screen accounts for 70 percent of Colby's $1.2 million annual revenues. Only two of 15 company employees devote their full attention to the letterpress operation.

There was a time when Colby had two letterpress machines operating and six employees working the show print operation. There were a half dozen show print companies in Los Angeles alone. There are barely that many in the entire country now.

Rouse Hinman went to work for Colby part-time as a shipping clerk in 1949, a month after he began dating Colby's daughter. They were married a year later. He continued to work for Colby after he divorced his wife in 1974 and took over the operation when Colby retired in 1976.

"He was more on my side than his daughter's," Hinman, now 60, recalls. "I said to him, "Mr. Colby, I don't know anything else, but if you want me to leave, I will.' He said, `What the hell for?'"

Hinman's three sons work for the company now. Glenn, 35, is second in command. Lee, 39, sets the type for the letterpress operation. Larry, 33, is an all-around handyman and troubleshooter.

Parts are hard to find anymore for the old letterpress equipment. The presses haven't been made for decades. Few companies still manufacturer the type.

Colby, nevertheless, has no plans to scrap its show print operations as long as there is enough business to support it and pressman Andy Tarby doesn't retire. Tarby, 58, has been running Colby's letterpress machines for 18 years.

"The only reason we would ever stop is if our pressman didn't get at least three days work," the elder Hinman says.

PHOTO : Poster pride: Andy Tarby displays handiwork

PHOTO : Old reliable: Printer Andy Tarby operates 72-year-old press