Tom Hanks | Chris Aldrich

Clack! Analog Attitude for the Digital Age – Vol. 1 – Summer 2026

Yesterday at the QWERTY Typewriter Festival in Carson, CA, Bryan Mahoney of The Typin’ Pint released Issue 01 of his new zine Clack!

I’ve just finished reading it this morning (from cover to cover, though I admit I haven’t finished the crossword yet) and it is truly fantastic! There’s so much to love inside its pages. My favorite parts were the poem (who doesn’t love a good clown story?!), numbers 9 and 11 of Tom Hanks’ “Eleven Reasons to Use a Typewriter” and Sarah Everett‘s essay about Barbie typewriters which has the cleverest of titles.

It’s so jam-packed with typewriter-y and analog goodness that the editor didn’t have the space to include a table of contents, so for those who need one, I’ve typewritten one which I’m including below.

The limited zine release has 500 numbered copies. Brian got the first two copies, Tom Hanks snagged numbers 3, 4, and 5. First in line, I managed to get issue number 6. I saw Michael Hanttula swipe number 7, and Lyn, who had just purchased a lovely duo-toned gray Royal Royalite typewriter moments before, got number 8. Which number(s) will you collect?

Because there really ought to be an issue number 2 and 3, I’m already brainstorming things that I might type up for them. And if somehow that doesn’t happen, then they’ll just have to go into my own zine…

Tom Hanks’ ingenious custom typewriter covers/mats

We often see typewriter cases and/or simple typewriter covers and people will post photos of how they display typewriters, but I saw a clever method on Saturday at a local type-in in Southern California.

Aaron Therol of Typewriter Connection brought along a signed Voss from Tom Hanks’ collection which included a sturdy green canvas typewriter cover with leather edge trim and an embossed leather Playtone logo. The cover included small, strong magnets sewn into the front and back edges which allow it to be physically attached to the front and rear of a typewriter’s metal body to keep the dust out while it’s sitting on a shelf in an open room and out of its case.

The cover was customized to the dimensions of the typewriter to cover from the front “chin” of the typewriter to the bottom of the back bottom edge. The color of the cover, trim, and materials can obviously be customized to the room and display shelving to highlight one’s collection and the decor of the room. In the case of this particular example the dark hunter green pairs well with the light metallic green of the Voss’s body and the dark colored keys.

With such a well-designed cover, one can then take the typewriter down off the shelf and place it on a typing surface and then the cover could double as a typing pad to dampen the sound as well as potentially preventing it from walking across one’s desk while being used. Given the weight of the piece, I would expect a piece of internal felt was (or could potentially be) sewn into it.

I look forward to seeing what the rest of the typosphere does with this clever method.

I remember chuckling when I saw Tom Hanks’ tags on his typewriters. Now that I’m over 15 of my own which are constantly out and about the house, I realize the benefit of matching tags on machines and their cases. I don’t have an issue with identification and matching (yet), but if nothing else, less interested family members can properly store them out of the way if they need to without causing issues. Interested visitors can also get a quick précis of machines they run across.

Thank goodness I’ve got a card catalog big enough to log and cross-file a couple hundred models. I’m thinking of categorizing by manufacturer, by decade, and including typeface samples, which I’ve already been doing as I add them to the typewriter database.