Letterpressing!

So the other weekend I came into Uni with Lorna to do some letterpressing. It was a combination of doing what we wanted to do and working for an audience, as it was an open day for prospective students wanting to study at Chester.

It was the first time I managed to try letterpressing out, all of my friends had done it and I have even watched them do multiple projects using it before but never had the opportunity to use it for a purpose. For my Promotional module (basically to get my portfolio up to standards) I want to use a combination of bookbinding and letterpressing to create an instructional book on how to make a book. Seems pretty random but after 3 years of non stop computer design work I would like to get back to doing more craft skills in at least one of my projects this year.

To begin with we had a set chase to see the differences between lead and wood type, and we used them on both the Adana and the flatbed presses (only way I can describe it). Using a few different paper types it was clear to see that the weight and material made a huge difference in the quality of the print.

In the end we ended up with prints that weren't far off what we would be proud of and so made a start on our own designs. I decided to go for a simple phrase; You only live once. The spacing was nice and easy for me do and so it was set pretty fast so that I could experiment. I did a couple of examples that day but knew I wanted to try more and so went back last week to try other colours/mixes etc and the picture belows shows a few different effects. A couple which I am pretty happy with. Although it is a very time consuming method of designing I can definitely say I will be doing something which combines letterpressing and graphic design more within my work over the next few months. Some neon ink perhaps...

A few different experiments with colour combinations!