Letterpress

This article considers the role of traditional letterpress printing technology in the context of contemporary design, printing and publishing. What is the implication of employing these traditional tools, and how do we balance their role in cultural production and education against the principles of preservation? Framed as a travelogue, the article describes visits to a number of Canadian and American letterpress shops, each wrestling with, and sometime resolving, this question in its own way. Featured shops include: The Porcupine’s Quill (Erin, Ontario), The Aliquando Press (Dundas, Ontario), Slow Print (Dubuque, Iowa), Linotype University (Denmark, Iowa), Green Frog Historic Village (Crocket County, Tennessee), Kennedy Prints (Gordo, Alabama), Hatch Show Print (Nashville, Tennessee), Larkspur Press (Monterey, Kentucky), Bixler Press & Letterfoundry (Skaneateles, New York), Richard Langdell, Papermaker (Lebanon, New Hampshire), Dartmouth College Printshop (Hanover, New Hampshire), Wolfe Editions (Portland, Maine) and The Tides Institute & Gallery (Eastport, Maine). The article was originally published in Devil's Artisan: A Journal of the Printing Arts, No. 72 (Spring/Summer 2013).

The aim of this thesis is to examine in detail the value that letterpress printing provides by connecting people to the craft. By looking at relevant sources from examples of contemporary letterpress work to literature surrounding the topic it sets out to determine this value.
Firstly, this study looks at the desire that exists to reconnect with letterpress as a craft in reaction to mass produced print material. It then goes on to discuss the importance of letterpress being taught to design students as a way of internalising core design principles. Finally, the use of technological advancements such as 3D printing and laser cutters being used in conjunction with the letterpress process is examined. By building an argument through these areas of research, this thesis proves that there is value to connecting with the craft of letterpress printing.

An introduction to the life and work of Detroit-based letterpress printer Amos Paul Kennedy, Jr. Primarily a poster artist working with wood type and Vandercook proofing presses, Kennedy employs these traditional tools to explore themes of race and social justice, reimagining the role of letterpress printing in contemporarty culture.

500 yıl önce bilginin oluşumunda temel yöntem olan tipobaskı (letterpress), çağımızın sayısal teknolojilerinden sonra artık pek kullanılmaz oldu. Buna rağmen, günümüz baskı tekniklerinin yanında tipobaskı; fantezi, nostaljik bir teknik olarak yeni anlamlar arayan tasarımcı ve sanatçıların arasında “sanat, tasarım ve zanaat” üçgeninde “ikincil bir hayat” buldu. Endüstriyel anlamda, basım sanayi ekonomisi açısından atıl kalmasına rağmen tipobaskıyı bugün de değerli kılan, bu ikincil ömrünün getirisidir. Günümüzde tipobaskı “narin” bir zanaat olarak kendine has ve ayrıcalıklı bir yer edindi. Artık bir çoğaltma yönteminden çok; zanaata dayalı, sanat ve tasarım arasında özel bir grafik üretim şekli olarak görülüyor.

Sunumun girişinde, zaman içinde grafik ürünün öznesi haline gelen tipografik tasarımın yükselişinde, tipobaskının rolü inceleniyor. Birinci bölümde, görsel iletişimde beğeninin değişimi, baskının kusurlarını değerlendirmede yaşanan dönüşüm irdeleniyor.  İkinci bölümde ise grafik tasarım ve tipografi eğitiminde geçmişin tekniklerinden yararlanarak temel bilgilerin öğrencilere nasıl daha etkili şekilde aktarılabileceği aktarılıyor. Son olarak da tipobaskı atölyelerinin grafik bölümlerinde kurulması ile özgün baskı resim dersleri ile endüstriyel grafik tasarım dersleri arasındaki ilgileşimin artırılabileceği yönünde bir öneri sunuluyor.

La Trobe Journal, No. 95 March 2015

First para: "‘Australian interest in fine printing, letterpress or offset, has always been delicate,’ said Geoffrey Farmer in 1999. This is still true today, when there is far more international interest in Australian output than there is within the country itself. Australia has always had distinct waves of fine press and book art activity that surge and recede, connected to groups of people and similar waves of educational and technical opportunities. One such surge was around the early 1970s, when printing technology drastically transformed (yet again) and letterpress was easily and cheaply come by; with it came a solid wave of activity that then seemed to crash and break in the mid to late 1990s. It is important, for the purposes of this paper, to separate ‘fine printing’ from ‘letterpress usage’, because in the space between the late 1990s to now, there has been more than a millennial turn."

“Tipobaskının ‘sanat, zanaat ve tasarım’ arasında ikinci defa kendine yer edinmiş olmasını, Namık Kemal Sarıkavak, yeni kuşakların baskının doğasını anlayabilmemeri için yararlı bir deneyim olarak nitelendiriyor.”

Basım Dünyası dergisi, Kasım 2009, Sayı 59, syf 86-88.

Between the 1960s and the 1980s the printing industry in advanced capitalist economies underwent dramatic technological change. While the transition from “hot metal” compositing to computerized typesetting has been the focus of much analysis, there was another transformation occurring simultaneously, which has received far less attention. In the press-room, letterpress was gradually replaced by offset-lithography. Many letterpress-machinists retrained in offset-lithography: moving from a heavy, manual and time-consuming technology (with an entrenched patriarchal culture), to a method that was faster and less physically taxing.

This paper examines the change from a long-established technology to a socially unsettling one, by focusing on relationships that existed between skilled workers (press-machinists) and their technologies, in an Australian government printery. This transition involved the development of new practices, altered social relations of production, and, crucially, the continued enactment of masculine craft identities. Intrinsic to this experience of technological change was a masculine embodiment that was attuned to and shaped by the materiality and aesthetics of printing technologies. This embodied dynamic enabled some press-machinists to maintain their employment, dignity and control over their work. Essentially this paper establishes how masculine craft identities do not rely exclusively on skill-based mastery of traditional technologies, they are also related to other dimensions of technology, such as aesthetics, embodied “know-how”, and the physical presence of large-scale industrial machinery.

Günümüzde tipobaskı (letterpress) “narin” bir zanaat olarak kendine has ve ayrıcalıklı bir yer edindi. Artık bir çoğaltma yönteminden çok; zanaata dayalı, sanat ve tasarım arasında özel bir grafik üretim şekli olarak görülüyor. “Basım Dünyası” dergisinde 2009 yılında yayımlanmış, endüstriyel anlamda atıl kalan tipobaskının, bugün de değerli olmasını sağlayan bu ikinci ömrü konuşuluyor.

Basım Dünyası dergisi, Eylül 2009, Sayı 58, syf 84-86.

Tendo como objetivo conhecer mais sobre a produção tipográfica brasileira, em particular a paulistana, contribuindo para os estudos sobre memória gráfica paulistana do século XIX e XX, a pesquisa relatada neste artigo consistiu na catalogação do repertório tipográfico de Jorge Seckler, importante impressor de almanaques comerciais de São Paulo. Dando continuidade a estudos realizados por outros integrantes da equipe de pesquisa, examinou-se o almanaque editado por Seckler para o ano de 1884. As 46 famílias tipográficas encontradas neste almanaque foram então comparadas com as fontes utilizadas em publicação do mesmo impressor para o ano de 1878, chegando assim a uma descrição da evolução de seu repertório.

Since its first appearing, in China, movable type allowed for the expansion of communication media. Nevertheless, since the nineteenth century other forms of composition and printing made it almost completely obsolete. Based on the presupposition that movable type is something of great relevance for graphic history and memory, the research reported in this paper aims to cataloguing the fonts belonging to FAUUSP letterpress workshop, and more specifically those donated by USP Oceanographic Institute, and that were not previously identified.

The author has experimented with laser-cutting printable letterforms and patterns from acrylic material for a pantograph to trace, resize to produce traditional wood type by routing and to specifically fit patterns in conjunction with Monotype’s original industrial machines that cut detailed steel punches to manufacture matrices for the pouring of new metal type. Methods of working with type onscreen for printing in letterpress are also discussed and examples shown.

Between 1961 and 1962, the legendary typographer Hermann Zapf developed the hot type Hunt Roman exclusively for the famous Hunt Botanical Library of the Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Zapf’s American friend, Jack W. Stauffacher, a professor for typography, facilitated the project. We may consider the Hunt Roman as a prototype for exclusive fonts, which became an alternative concept in a time when Helvetica and Univers were universal.

Ferdinand Ulrich was a visiting student in Pittsburgh, when he discovered the legendary font in the hot-metal setting workshop of the university three years ago. His intensive research in archives and collections, and his stay with Jack W. Stauffacher in San Francisco, a correspondence with Hermann Zapf and – of course – his focus on the font in a setting and printing context have led to a comprehensive study, which reveals the branched and maze-like genealogy of this extraordinary typefont.