The Print Project
We were given a talk by Nick from The Print Project which is a letterpress printing company formed in Shipley in 2010. He explained how he got into the commercially dead art of letter pressing which I found really interesting as he didn't plan this as a career it was just a hobby that kept on evolving. He explained how he worked with 500 year old printing technologies of letter pressing that is now commercially dead and only practised as a bespoke art form. His passion for letter pressing really came through in his talk as he said its at the heart of everything he does.
I was interested in hearing how he set this business up from a hobby and has made it economically viable to live off as his soul means of income. He told us that he hasn't had a day off in 3 years and that he won't be a millionaire any time soon but that genuinely didn't bother him because he was able to say that he does what he loves every single day. I admire this and hope some day I can find a niche that I love as much as Nick loves letter pressing and home that I can somehow incorporate this into my practise.
He told us that as part of his work he does a lot of talks such as this one where he educates people about letter pressing to make people aware it is still being practised today, He is also involved in a range of exhibitions up and down the county as well as taking on commercial projects for clients requiring letterpresses work. These works have been featured in design magazines such as Creative Review, Form Forty Five and Design Week and is an example of how I could transform my passion into a career path.
Later in the day Nick held a print workshop, In this he showed us the basics of typesetting with a letterpress and demonstrated how the whole process worked from start to finish. He then gave us the opportunity to print our own word from setting the type in the metal frame to placing it in the letterpress applying the ink and producing our own letterpresses word. I found this process quite time consuming and difficult to navigate but I was re-assured that it would be difficult the first time. I liked the results of letter pressing as the texture added to the overall design. I think that this technique could work well for large scale type posters and now I have been introduced to it, I could consider using this process as a response to a brief if I felt it would be appropriate.
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