back at it in the letterpress studio
A few weeks ago I had the incredible opportunity to print for three days at Tipoteca Italiana (for more images of the museum and more about my letterpress history refer to my previous post.) I worked for three days straight and stayed in our camper van near the museum at night. It felt so good to be back in the studio. I was a little worried I’d be too rusty to remember the entire letterpress printing process, but as soon as I started grabbing materials everything came rushing back after years away from the press. I was able to document more or less everything for my Graphic Design and Art + Design Fundamentals students at West Texas A&M University—this was definitely an added bonus to the whole experience (see the instagram reels above if you dare). The selection of type and overall quality of the studio at Tipoteca was, as one could expect, unbelievable.
To prepare I selected 10 bits of my writing—some old, some new—and simply threw everything into a text edit document on my laptop. I also created a digital template that captured the basic ” Unsolicited Public Service Announcement” (PSA) framework I wanted to create. This turned out so be super helpful, given I needed to work fast. I selected type intuitively from the catalog for pairings. Some lock-ups turned out more successful formally than others—in particular regarding proper typographic weight/color on the page. I learned a lot in a very short period of time and worked to make improvements with each small edition. I felt like a kid again—it was great. My goal was to produce as many small editions out of the 10 pieces of writing as possible. I ended with 5 editions—given the spin-up time I was super pleased with how productive I was with the studio time. I think the writing more or less speaks for itself—it’s all centered around navigating the pitfalls of modern technology—in particular social media. The value of going through the process was invaluable for me as a creative practitioner, but more importantly it was deeply therapeutic working through these ideas with my hands and body. It goes without saying everything is feeling very unstable right now. This was grounding in such a human and wonderful way. Anyways…I have all of the pieces. If you’re interested in acquiring anything please reach out to me! That’s all for now—ciao.
🤲➕📓➕✍️➕🖤