Project ELF - Eliminate Legal-size Files

OK, so it has been a very long time since I went to a print shop to have one of my comix reproduced. And the experience has given me yet another in a growing number of Rip Van Winkle moments.

30 years ago we generally had three sizes of photocopied comix. There was the minicomic, those little 8 pagers which were letter size folded twice and cut; regular digest size, which was letter size folded once; and enlarged digest size, which was legal size folded once.

Throughout the 1980s I published a lot of comix in enlarged digest size, and eased into regular digest size by the 1990s.

So when I decided to use the original enlarged digest master copy to reprint some old comix from the 1980s for the Mortyshop I discovered legal size is, as one printer told me, "obsolete." In fact, trying to find legal size card stock for the covers of these things was a lost cause. The four print shops I approached don't even have it. The covers of these reprints had to be cut from larger paper, which, of course, made printing them much more expensive.

Then I learned about this thing initiated as a cost saving measure called Project ELF (Eliminate Legal-size Files) and pushed by the Association of Records Managers and Administrators. This apparently started in the 1980s (at the same time I was happily publishing in legal size) and has grown into an accepted standard since that time.

Meanwhile, Sarah has tracked down a place where I can order legal size card stock online.

In the meantime, it is weird to see printers more vexed over the form of my material than they are over the content. That's new.