Books about the work of Jim Rimmer?

Joe Hales
Joe Hales Posts: 1
in Type Resources
Does anybody know of any books on the work of Jim Rimmer?

Thanks, Joe

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  • John Hudson
    John Hudson Posts: 3,487
    No books. There is a short film by Rich Kegler of Jim’s work designing and making metal type, which you can watch on Vimeo.

    I gave a talk about Jim’s work—actually, more about the place in which he did it and his relationship with his tools—at a GDC scholarship event a few years ago. When our new website is live, I plan to write it up or record it as a video and publish it there.
  • John Savard
    John Savard Posts: 1,183
    edited August 2022
    This thread motivated me to do a web search, which led me to the most common and obvious source of information about anything: Wikipedia.
    It appears to claim that Jim Rimmer himself wrote and published the book Leaves from the Pie Tree Press. As well, a magazine article about him is noted: Remembering Jim Rimmer, in issue 19 of Parenthesis, by Richard Kegler.
    It was also interesting to learn that his typefaces are now available through Canada Type.

    Viewing the type specimen for the very handsome Roman type Albertan on the Canada Type web site led me to find the book Frenzied Fiction by Canadian humorist Stephen Leacock, which I will shortly proceed to amuse myself by reading. It certainly is not surprising that long before James Bond graced bookshelves, just as the Second World War led to many books, both nonfiction, and novels, about espionage during that conflict, the same was true about what was then known as the Great War - and, long before the filming of Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery, or even the television show Get Smart, it was also possible to apply satire to that sort of thing.
  • Justin Penner
    Justin Penner Posts: 66
    edited August 2022
    Leaves from the Pie Tree is indeed an autobiography of Jim Rimmer. Only 40 copies were made, but you can see a scanned version of it at the following cumbersome website that displays it as a series of single-page PDFs:
    https://digital.lib.sfu.ca/bcpba-1135/inside-front-cover
    (EDIT: I just learned there was an expanded trade edition of this book released by Gaspereau Press in 2008, so that might also be worth a read if you can find it.)

    SFU (Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, British Columbia) also holds a substantial collection of Jim Rimmer's work.
    https://atom.archives.sfu.ca/msc-41

    In 2006, Jim's friends and colleagues in the industry put on Rimmerfest, an evening celebrating his life and work. It was filmed and you can watch it here:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVLoRM3DyyY

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